Jean-Luc Godard

Pierrot le fou

Pierrot le fou

Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeois world behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: the tenth feature in six years by genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard is a stylish mash-up of anticonsumerist satire, au courant politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, “the last romantic couple.” With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, Pierrot le fou is one of the high points of the French New Wave, and was Godard’s last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema.

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Film Info

  • France
  • 1965
  • 110 minutes
  • Color
  • 2.35:1
  • French
  • Spine #421

TWO-DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 2K digital restoration
  • Interview with actor Anna Karina from 2007
  • A “Pierrot” Primer, a video essay from 2007 written and narrated by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin
  • Godard, l’amour, la poésie, a fifty-minute French documentary from 2007, directed by Luc Lagier, about director Jean-Luc Godard and his work and marriage with Karina
  • Excerpts of interviews from 1965 with Godard, Karina, and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Richard Brody
  • New cover by Steve Chow

    • Purchase Options

    TWO-DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

    • New 2K digital restoration
    • Interview with actor Anna Karina from 2007
    • A “Pierrot” Primer, a video essay from 2007 written and narrated by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin
    • Godard, l’amour, la poésie, a fifty-minute French documentary from 2007, directed by Luc Lagier, about director Jean-Luc Godard and his work and marriage with Karina
    • Excerpts of interviews from 1965 with Godard, Karina, and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo
    • Trailer
    • PLUS: An essay by critic Richard Brody
  • New cover by Steve Chow
    • Pierrot le fou
    Cast
    Jean-Paul Belmondo
    Ferdinand Griffon
    Anna Karina
    Marianne Renoir
    Graziella Galvani
    Mrs. Griffon
    Dirk Sanders
    Fred
    Raymond Devos
    Man on pier
    Roger Dutoit
    Gangster
    Hans Meyer
    Gangster
    Credits
    Screenplay
    Jean-Luc Godard
    Producer
    Georges de Beauregard
    Director
    Jean-Luc Godard
    Cinematography
    Raoul Coutard

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    Anna Karina

    Actor

    Anna Karina
    Anna Karina

    Anna Karina has written and directed films, taken on prominent stage roles (including in plays directed by Jacques Rivette and Ingmar Bergman), had a successful singing career, and written four novels, but, of course, she is cited most often as Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave muse and first wife. Godard decided he wanted to put her on-screen after seeing her in a sudsy Palmolive ad on television in the late 1950s. Though she turned down a small (nude) role in Breathless, she was soon cast in Godard’s next film, Le petit soldat (1961), at age twenty, and would go on to appear in six more of his films during the sixties, including the iconic Vivre sa vie and Band of Outsiders (she and Godard would also cameo together in Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7). Though their cinematic collaboration seemed harmonious, behind the scenes, their relationship was tumultuous and bitter, made all the more difficult by the fact that it was under constant public scrutiny. Their three-year marriage ended in 1964, though they continued to work together until 1966. Karina stayed with film acting in the coming decades, working with such directors as Rivette, Luchino Visconti, George Cukor, Tony Richardson, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

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