As with all of Godard's movies I feel I'm only skimming the surface of a deep pond full of greater meaning than I'm capable of attaining without having seen all of the same movies, read all of the same books, heard all of the same songs, thought all of the same thoughts, or breathed all of the same breaths as Godard. I suppose that's what makes him a definitively personal filmmaker, his "fingerprints on every frame" as my Francophile film studies professor would repeat like a damn mantra. It can be alienating at times, but in Pierrot Le Fou I think the perfect balance is struck between Godard the ponderous semiotician, Godard the strident leftist, and Godard the movie dude.…

"Chapter Eight"

The fragmentary incoherence of the stories we tell about ourselves; the inherent contingency and inconsistency of both narrative and identity.

I’ve been trying to include more plot synopsis in my reviews, because I easily get carried away with a lot of nonsensical posturing, but Pierrot le fou makes that a rather difficult task. At its most basic, it’s a story about a man who runs away with a woman (the French New Wave’s two most beautiful people, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina), but it’s filled with so much structural experimentation and narrative ambiguity that such a summary sells the movie short by ignoring its most interesting elements. Godard confines himself to some extent to the formal constraints of…

I guess it was only a matter of time before I was so impacted by a film that I wrote something in regards to my personal life as much as an actual review of a film. It's something that I've been wanting to talk about for the longest time but deep down, I always feared that something like this would only annoy people on top of contributing nothing to the discussion of the very films that make me feel this way. But then I remembered that letterboxd is explicitly designed to work like a diary, and what are diaries good for if you cant express yourself and your fears. I'm being weird and rambling and blaghhhh so I'm gonna move…

Another Godard, another pleasantly inviting, off-kilter trek with charismatic outlaws. Jumping from Breathless to Pierrot le Fou couldn't have been a more serendipitous selection, as their similarities are shocking. Not just in star Jean-Paul Belmondo, nor in the tale of two lovers on the wrong side of the law, but in the vibe and content - a strike against society and its inane, mundane commercialism. Here, instead of the law, Godard has Belmondo escaping from a drab life full of corporate sponsorship, empty philosophers, and family just as sick as he is, but too apathetic to change. Both Michel and Ferdinand craft fantasy personas for themselves; Michel a gangster, Ferdinand a poet. And both are in way over their heads;…

Godard's greatest achievement seems to be the way he defies what cinema seemed to be during his time, constantly pushing the bounds of the medium and showing us that movies can be more than leaden Hollywood melodramas (I say this jokingly of course, I'm a fan of this style myself).

In-line with that tradition he continues it here; Pierrot le Fou is the classic road-trip romp starring two gorgeous leads embarking as criminals on the run. Romantic stuff, the fare of countless other films, yet Godard is not here to retell it but to deconstruct this myth.

Namely, when placed in a modern landscape this story does not work. Ferdinand (our "Pierrot" or "fool") and Marianne are both bored and…

This review may contain spoilers.

Fingers crossed on my viewings for Contempt and Alphaville, the two of the six more Godard movies I have yet to screw my eyes with because right now, I am not enjoying his cinema. I just had to be super honest with the rating. I just had to skip thirty seconds, one after another. It was just so painfully boring and unbearable to me I had to shut it off. It’s not even necessary at this point having said three negative statements but I’m saying it, I don’t care: Pierrot le Fou is a bad film.

I root for filmmakers when I watch their films but I cannot unsee the base-level motivations of Godard to…

One of Godard's most celebrated films, Pierrot le Fou uses an unorthodox storytelling that I'm sure was daring, even groundbreaking, at the time of its release, and somehow echoes Belmondo's character urge for intellectual satisfaction. I understand that the fragmented and repetitive narrative or some of the editing choices are a manifesto against the formalism; that the dialogues are (or try to be) philosophical meditations about the disenchantment of modern life; or that the constant use of pop art elements, from colours to juxtaposition of images, is used to create an avant-garde piece of art.
I get it, Godard is playing with cinematic conventions, defying logic; he even inserts a couple musical numbers and the characters break the fourth wall.…

Pierrot le Fou perfectly demonstrates the confidence that Godard carried in his approach to filmmaking. Drawing on the theories of Bertolt Brecht, Pierrot Le Fou exhibits all of the stylistic trademarks we have come to expect from the auteur: unnaturalistic lighting, monochrome stills, characters breaking out in to song, music abruptly ending and of course fourth wall breaking. Godard wants us to feel detached from the lives of his characters, and while at times this can make the film feel as though it is lacking in momentum, it serves as a perfect plain for us to step in to the psyche of Ferdinand and Marianne. This deliberation in audience detachment allows us to feel the dejection of the characters for…