Pierrot le fou (1965)

Jean-Luc Godard’s most effervescent escapade, a primary-coloured lovers-on-the-run blow-out heading south with Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Hollywood classics such as You Only Live Once (1937) and They Live by Night (1948) had long established the archetype of doomed, criminal lovers taking to the road to escape their fate. Continuing his headlong reinvention of cinema (this was his tenth film in six years), Jean-Luc Godard used the model to tell the story of what he called the “last romantic couple”: a Parisian (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and his babysitter (Godard’s then-wife Anna Karina) who take off for the south of France with a cache of gunrunning money.

In true Godardian style, the flimsy plot played coathanger for satirical digressions (on commercialism and the Vietnam war), kaleidoscopic stylistic devices, sunny musical numbers and a merciless examination of male-female incompatibility, shot in intoxicating primary colours by Raoul Coutard.

“Possibly an end and a beginning for Godard. A frolicking escapist romantic road-trip adventure, but also a blistering critique of bourgeois culture, a political satire and a collage of anti-consumerist capitalism. Anna Karina’s star shines for herself.” Helen DeWitt

“The gangster noir template is chopped and broken, then reassembled as a bricolage of signifiers, to forge a mesmerising generic satire that also seems to reinvent colour.” Dario Llinares

1965 France, Italy
Directed by
Jean-Luc Godard
Produced by
Georges de Beauregard
Written by
Jean-Luc Godard
Featuring
Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Dirk Sanders
Running time
110 minutes

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for Pierrot le fou

Critics

Inácio Araújo
Brazil
Adam Batty
UK
Moinak Biswas
India
Maja Bogojević
Montenegro
Dave Calhoun
UK
Michel Demopoulos
Greece
Helen DeWitt
UK
Miguel Dias
Portugal
Juan Manuel Domínguez
Argentina
Christophe Dupin
Belgium
Allyson Nadia Field
USA
Pierre Gabaston
France
Ruy Gardnier
Brazil
Arnaud Hée
France
Jan-Christopher Horak
USA
Thierry Jousse
France
Isaac León-Frías
Peru
Dario Llinares
UK
Gonzalo de Lucas
Spain
Blair McClendon
USA
Vikram Murthi
USA
Lynda Myles
UK
Hugo Obregón
Spain
Isabel Orellana Guarello
Chile
Carlos Reviriego
Spain
Nuno Rodrigues
Portugal
Arjun Sajip
UK
Pedro Emilio Segura Bernal
Mexico
Yonca Talu
France
Matthew Taylor
UK
David Thomson
UK/USA
Juan José Vidal
Argentina
Jon Wengström
Sweden
John Wyver
UK

Directors

Ingemo Engström
Germany
Nadav Lapid
Israel
Mariano Llinás
Argentina
Alejo Moguillansky
Argentina
Athina Rachel Tsangari
Greece

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