1960’s

Pierrot Le Fou (1965)

I apologize in advance for the huge number of pictures this blog will have of the movie. To get a hint at Jean Luc Godard’s cinematography, you just need to see it.

 By the 1960’s, movies had existed and been commercialized for long enough that certain directors started to “rebel” against the mainstream conventions  of film.  Godard may not have been the first to pioneered this rejection of the norm, but he’s been universally recognized as a leader of the French New Wave movement. And this film is understood to be his opus, as the elements he inserted strike hard and his stylistic choices allowed the range of emotions to hit every peak.

This movie, narratively, was tough. The most noticeable example is the cut between the main characters Ferdinand (who is grudgingly called Pierrot) and Marianne driving through the rain together to Marianne cooking breakfast in the same with an unknown male stabbed in the neck with scissors. There was no warning or hint at this transition; they barely even address who the dead man is. This quick switch actually surprised me to the point I watched the previous scene to make sure I didn’t somehow miss a transition. At first glance, it seemed very disjointed. However, understanding this to be a conscious choice by Godard, it began to seem refreshing and almost grown-up. The movie doesn’t need to be feeding you all of its details to keep you understanding the plot. It also adds a sense of mystery to the character’s relationship, which is a focus of the film.

Ferdinand falls under a seemingly large trope of hopeless, intellectual romantics. He writes prose constantly in a journal using emphasized phrases including words like “death” or “bitter” and his conversations with Marianne are consistently poetic and revelatory. It would be like taking the spoken word essays individuals perform and somehow making that the average dialogue between the two. This stylistic choice seems highly unrealistic, and yet, it adds a further surreal nature to the film, attracting the viewer into the atmosphere. We additionally see Ferdinand ultimately lose everything, including his own life, through this mindset of romanticism. In the end, he commits suicide with dynamite, but not before realizing the errors behind the thinking of this “glorious” death. Thus, Godard presents his concept of a romantic both idealized as well as rationalized and raises questions about this lifestyle view.

Godard allowed new stylistic ideas to permeate his movies, which created this cohesive design historians would later put under the “New Wave” category. My personal favorite is the consistent inclusions of “breaking the fourth wall”, which is where the characters stare directly into the camera or openly address the audience. While this technique has become much more widespread, it was, at the time, rare and seen as relatively radical. By utilizing this, it acknowledged the intelligence of the audience by showcasing the characters understanding the world they live in is set up. It adds a quirky charm and brings levity to some darker material the movie presents.

In short, I absolutely adore this movie. It is pretentious and jumbled, but also revolutionary. Godard was able to take the medium of film and leave his own personal stamp on every frame, inventing a final product as innovative as can be.