I once wrote of it as "Godard's most virtuoso display of his mastery of Hollywood genres," I now see it more as the story of silly characters who have seen too many Hollywood movies.
1 Comment
10/23/04
Pierrot Le Fou (1965)
82
%
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Reviews Counted:34
Fresh:28
Rotten:6
Average Rating:7.7/10
Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: French auteur Jean-Luc Godard continues his fascination with the crime genre--after BREATHLESS and BAND OF OUTSIDERS--with PIERROT LE FOU. After escaping his stale, bourgeois marriage, Ferdinand... [More]
Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Jean-Pierre Léaud
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
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Reviews for Pierrot Le Fou
Top CriticIt works well enough on that level alone -- a simple crime thriller -- but it also functions as an allegorical view of the Vietnam War.
05/24/03
Arguably one of the few Godard pictures to have the desired balance of romance, adventure, violence, and humor on one side, and philosophy, literary and cinematic allusion, and Brechtian distancing on the other.
08/29/06
As a simple on-the-road crime thriller, it works well enough although parts of it don't make a lot of sense.
05/22/09
... endlessly charming and entertaining ...
09/11/07
And then there´s the color. As much as anything, "Pierrot" is a film about red and blue, as well as a little bit of yellow and green.
09/26/09
Totally bizarre and ultimately without much point -- Godard's message about commercialism is drowned in a sea of oddity.
03/02/03
No review available.
02/08/04
A wild-eyed, everything-in-the-pot cross-processing of artistic, cinematic, political and personal concerns, where the story stutters, splinters and infuriates its way to an explosive finale.
05/22/09
...ultimately nothing more than an infuriatingly vague and utterly pointless piece of work...
07/25/07
Brilliant but disturbing essay on love and a myriad of other things.
03/01/04
Godard opens up his box of tricks and tips it all over the screen in a flurry of improvised, postmodernism that takes scattergun shots at consumerism, cultural imperialism and the Vietnam and Algerian wars.
05/22/09
At its worst, in some of its improvised rambles, it demonstrates the value of a well-thought-out screenplay. At its exhilarating and poignant best, it proves that a film can play all sorts of postmodern games yet still touch its viewers’ emotions.
05/28/09
No review available.
06/27/05
It's one of Pierrot's unique charms that Godard doesn't regard Ferdinand and Marianne's situation with emphatic mockery or inordinate reverence.
02/17/08
No review available.
03/09/06
More surprising is how lushly romantic the film seems now -- even the frostiest qualities of the director's volatile aesthetic are warmed by the Riviera sunlight and the presence of Karina at her most beguiling.
08/09/07
Pierrot is a mess, no matter how many times you see it, but it’s a brilliant mess. Death of love, (re)birth of cinema.
04/23/09
An eye-poppingly vivid exercise in genre-busting filmmaking. Here is one of the most persistently intriguing directors of the 1960s at his most watchable and entertaining.
05/22/09
Made in 1965, this film, with its ravishing colors and beautiful 'Scope camerawork by Raoul Coutard, still looks as iconoclastic and fresh as it did when it belatedly opened in the U.S.
08/09/07
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