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Pierrot le Fou
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Wikipedia article
'Pierrot le Fou' (, French for "Pierrot the Fool") is a 1965 French New Wave film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. The film is based on the 1962 novel 'Obsession' by Lionel White. It was Godard's tenth feature film, released between 'Alphaville' and 'Masculin, fminin'. The plot follows Ferdinand, an unhappily married man, as he escapes his boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with Marianne, a girl chased by OAS hitmen from Algeria.
It was the 15th-highest grossing film of the year, with a total of 1,310,580 admissions in France. The film was selected as the French entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 38th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Plot
Ferdinand Griffon is unhappily married and has been recently fired from his job at a TV broadcasting company. After attending a mindless party full of shallow discussions in Paris, he feels a need to escape and decides to run away with ex-girlfriend Marianne Renoir, leaving his wife and children and bourgeois lifestyle. Following Marianne into her apartment and finding a corpse, Ferdinand soon discovers that Marianne is being chased by OAS gangsters, two of whom they barely escape. Marianne and Ferdinand, whom she calls Pierrot an unwelcome nickname meaning "sad clown" go on a crime spree from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea in the dead man's car. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run, pursued by the police and by the OAS gangsters. When they settle down in the French Riviera after burning the dead man's car (which had been full of money, unbeknownst to Marianne) and sinking a second car into the Mediterranean Sea, their relationship becomes strained. Ferdinand reads books, philosophizes, and writes a diary. They spend a few days on a desert island.
A dwarf, who is one of the gangsters, kidnaps Marianne. She kills him with a pair of scissors. Ferdinand finds him murdered and is caught and bludgeoned by two of his accomplices, who waterboard him to make him reveal Mariannes whereabouts. Marianne escapes, and she and Ferdinand are separated. He settles in Toulon while she searches for him everywhere until she finds him. After their eventual reunion, Marianne uses Ferdinand to get a suitcase full of money before running away with her real boyfriend, Fred, to whom she had previously referred as her brother. Ferdinand shoots Marianne and Fred, then paints his face blue and decides to blow himself up by tying sticks of red and yellow dynamite to his head. He regrets this at the last second and tries to extinguish the fuse, but he fails and is blown up.
Cast
* Jean-Paul Belmondo as Ferdinand Griffon, a.k.a. "Pierrot"
* Anna Karina as Marianne Renoir
* Graziella Galvani as Maria Griffon
* Dirk Sanders as Fred
* Jimmy Karoubi as Dwarf
* Roger Dutoit as Gangster #1
* Hans Meyer as Gangster #2
* Samuel Fuller as Himself
* Princesse Acha Abadie as Herself
* Alexis Poliakoff as Saylor
* Raymond Devos as Man of the port
* Lszl Szab as Lazlo Kovacs, Political exile
* Jean-Pierre Laud as Young Man in Movie Theatre
* Georges Staquet as Staquet
* Henri Attal as Gas station attendant #1
* Dominique Zardi as Gas station attendant #2
* Viviane Blassel
Themes and style
Like many of Godard's films, 'Pierrot le fou' features characters who break the fourth wall by looking into the camera. It also includes startling editing choices; for example, when Pierrot throws a cake at a woman in the party scene, Godard cuts to an exploding firework just as it hits her. The film has many of the characteristics of the then dominant pop art movement, making constant disjunctive references to various elements of mass culture. Like much pop art, the film uses visuals drawn from cartoons and employs an intentionally garish visual aesthetic based on bright primary colors.
Production
Sylvie Vartan was Godard's first choice for the role of Marianne but her agent refused.[http://assets.cambridge.org/97805215/73757/sample/9780521573757wsn01.pdf Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou] ed. David Wills, Cambridge University Press, 2000 (first 20 pages) Godard considered Richard Burton to play the role of Ferdinand but gave up the idea.
As with many of Godard's movies, no screenplay was written until the day before shooting, and many scenes were improvised by the actors, especially in the final acts of the movie. The shooting took place over two months, starting in the French Riviera and finishing in Paris (in reverse order from the edited movie). Toulon served as backdrop for the film's denouement, photography for which included footage of the storied French battleship 'Jean Bart'.
The director said the film was "connected with the violence and loneliness that lie so close to happiness today. It's very much a film about France."Godard--France's Brilliant Misfit
Ardagh, John. Los Angeles Times 17 Apr 1966: b8.
Jean-Pierre Laud was an uncredited assistant director on the movie (and also appears briefly in one scene).
The American film director in the party scene is Sam Fuller as himself.
The Criterion Collection first released 'Pierrot le fou' on Blu-ray in September 2008. It was one of its first titles released on Blu-ray before being discontinued after Criterion lost the rights to StudioCanal. In July 2020, Criterion announced the film would be given a re-release in both Blu-ray and DVD with a new 2K digital restoration.
The 1962 Ford Galaxie that was driven into the water and sunk was Godard's own.p.651 Brody, Richard 'Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard' Henry Holt and Company, 13 May 2008
Reception
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film received an 86% "Certified fresh" approval rating, based on 43 reviews collected with an average rating of 8.12/10. The website's critical consensus: "Colorful, subversive, and overall beguiling, 'Pierrot Le Fou' is arguably Jean-Luc Godard's quintessential work." In the 2012 'Sight & Sound' polls, it was ranked the 42nd-greatest film ever made in the critics' poll and 91st in the directors' poll. In 2018 the film ranked 74th on the BBC's list of the 100 greatest foreign-language films, as voted on by 209 film critics from 43 countries.
See also
* List of submissions to the 38th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
* List of French submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
* 'The Hair' (film), also based on the 'Obsession' novel
References
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