Pierrot le Fou

Produced during the peak of his powers, Jean-Luc Godard's 10th movie plays like a greatest hits collection. As the director once mused, “Pierrot le Fou is not a film, but an attempt at film.” In this CinemaScope adventure, Godard comments on radical chic (as in La Chinoise), consumer culture (Two or Three Things I Know About Her), and the Hollywood musical (A Woman Is a Woman). Like Breathless, also available from Criterion, the story revolves around a man, television producer-turned-novelist Ferdinand (frequent Godard avatar Jean-Paul Belmondo), and a possibly duplicitous female, babysitter/gun runner Marianne (Anna Karina, a luminous presence in many of her former husband Godard's films). One evening, Ferdinand hits the town with his wealthy wife (he runs into hardboiled filmmaker Samuel Fuller in a clever cameo), while ex-girlfriend Marianne keeps an eye on their children. Afterwards, the writer leaves his bourgeois life behind for a trip with his former flame Marianne to the French Riviera. The couple are penniless, so they steal what they need, eventually settling into an abandoned villa. Shot by Godard regular Raoul Coutard—who uses red as a recurring motif—and inspired by Lionel White's Obsession, the film features a multi-layered narrative that is—to quote Ferdinand—“tender and cruel...real and surreal...terrifying and funny...nocturnal and diurnal...usual and unusual.” This Criterion Collection edition presents a Coutard-approved digital transfer of the film on the first disc and a range of supplements on the second, including new and archival interviews, the video essay “A Pierrot Primer” with audio commentary by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin, a documentary on the director and his muse entitled “Godard, l'amour, la poésie,” and a 45-page booklet. Highly recommended. (K. Fennessy)[Blu-ray Review—Sept. 29, 2009—Criterion, 110 min., in French w/English subtitles, not rated, $39.98—Making its first appearance on Blu-ray, 1965's Pierrot le fou sports a great transfer with mono sound. Blu-ray extras include Luc Lagier's “Godard, l'amour, la poesie” documentary on director Jean-Luc Godard (53 min.), “A Pierrot Primer” making-of featurette (36 min.), an interview with costar Anna Karina (15 min.), archival interviews with Godard, Karina, and costar Jean-Pierre Belmondo (10 min.), interviews with Godard and Karina from the 1965 Venice Film Festival (4 min.), and a booklet featuring an essay by critic Richard Brody, a 1969 review by critic Andrew Sarris, and a 1965 interview with Godard. Bottom line: if you don't already own the recently released DVD version or are building a budding Blu-ray collection that can encompass Jean-Luc Godard, this is highly recommended.]