"Pierrot Le Fou" (1965)

The criminals in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot Le Fou feel as though they've seen a few too many gangster movies, and they're self-consciously adopting the posturing of the wisecracking and hardboiled personalities that inhabit so much of the crime genre. Pierrot Le Fou is not always the playful movie that it's so often described as; it's heavily intellectualized and Godard is sorting through some weird, nagging obsessions that only feel like half-formed ideas. Interspersed between its more typical genre based moments are cuts to, among other things, classical artwork, snippets of incomprehensible journal entries, and fragmentary voice-overs. But even the genre elements are reflexively attempting to undermine our expectations. Jean Paul Belmondo's Ferdinand leaves his stifling marriage and goes on the run with his intriguing and mysterious mistress (Anna Karina). The criminal couple quickly demonstrate an inability to truly function as criminals. They literally burn through their money in a car explosion, trying to fake their death. Their efforts to be inconspicuous only make them all the more visible criminals on the lam. When they go into hiding at a beach cottage, they soon become bored. They're attempting to make their lives match the Hollywood movies and novels that they hold so dear. But there's a slice of life quality to much of their escapades with Godard showing all the tiny details of what actual gangsters on the run would be like. They inevitably are at each other's throats as two people who are only in it for the thrill of it and who miscalculate attraction as true connection. But Godard turns much of this into a piece of comical absurdity (The ending feels like live-action Looney Toons). Stylistically cinematographer Raoul Coutard puts a strong emphasis on making the film brightly stand out like a piece of pop art. And the film is in some ways a piece of pop art in its own right, commenting on society, culture and consumerism with sardonic wit and morbid cynicism. The social and political commentary is strong right out of the gate with Ferdinand getting bored at party where the guest can only find interest in talking about consumer products. And it's possibly even more memorably and bizarrely depicted when the couple dress up like an American soldier and a Vietnamese civilian in a bit of play acting for actual American military personnel. Pierrot Le Fou has an anarchic and sketch-like nature. It comes in fits and starts, and there are just as many moments that ring as weird and questionable -- even highly unnecessary and indulgent -- as there are ones that are hilarious and whimsical.

Roger Ebert wrote about the film back in 1966, "So let this be a warning: You probably won't like 'Pierrot le Fou.' One of Godard's films, seen by itself, can be a frustrating and puzzling experience. But when you begin to get into his universe, when you've seen a lot of Godard, you find yourself liking him more and more. One day something clicks, and Godard comes together. And then, perhaps, you decide that if he is not the greatest living director he is certainly the most audacious, the most experimental, the one who understands best how movies work." Much of this remains true of Godard. His films don't seem nearly as iconoclastic because he, and so many others of the French New Wave, made iconoclasm a more appropriate form of filmmaking and because his iconoclasm feels less fresh in some of his films than it did upon its release. Now that postmodern awareness seems more stilted and at times too temperamental. Pierrot Le Fou tosses around a lot of, sometimes interesting, ideas from an ideologue and now they can feel like the random, caustic mutterings of someone who wasn't entirely certain how to bring together the ideas overflowing from his twisted mind.

Grade: 3/4 ★★★