O Demônio das Onze Horas

Ferdinand is a.k.a. Pierrot, but just to Marianne, as he's her beau, though he starts off with his wife, but cannot take the married strife, so he deserts her, and they form a new combo. Together they evade the OAS, it's not the first time she's been caught in such a mess, heading south to towards the sea, committing crimes, they run and flee, a small island gives them time, for their sad tryst. Marianne puts a dwarf terrorist in his place, the lost loves re-find each other, and a suitcase, it goes to pot, there are some shots, it's a Godard type of plot, and it blows up in Pierrot's sullen face.

Two great actors talking in the directors tongue but not able to communicate as legibly as you might like unless you're prepared to pay multiple visits, and I'm not really sure it's worth the time and energy.

It's hard to classify/describe this unique journey, after just one viewing. But I can say it's absolutely fascinating, one of those experiences that, even though you can't completely fathom on a first viewing, you can tell it's really something special and not artsy-fartsy crap (like David Lynch's or Jonathan Glazer's worst moments).

"Pierrot Le Fou" brings us to a bizarre journey with Ferdinand aka Pierrot (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), who run away together after Ferdinand's wife hires Marianne as a baby-sitter. What comes next is a bizarre chain of events that defies clear analysis: it's like Godard tried to put all his passions, demons and tricky questions in one film, and he surprisingly succeeded. Although not Godard's most complicated feature, "Pierrot Le Fou" can be considered one of his most subtly complex narratives; it's funny and gloomy, gorgeous and dark, absurd and real, all at once. Belmondo and Karina are superb as usual, and, again, display a terrific chemistry. You can see it as Godard's letting go of Karina (his first wife, they'd soon divorce - this was their sixth movie together), you can see it as a declaration of love to film-making (Samuel Fuller's special appearance: "It's about emotions..."), you can see it as cinematic catharsis at its best... but it's its beautiful passion and fury that'll stay in your mind. Thank you again, Monsieur Godard. 10/10.

I was fifteen when I saw this movie for the first time. I didn't knew much about cinema at this time. I didn't knew much about art either, nor music, nor nothing. But I will never forget the shock it was for me to discover that movie. This was pure poetry, it was the first time in my life I ever saw blue color, red and yellow. You don't have to be intellectual to love this movie, just a free child.

About some strange English subtitles I have on my DVD:

At the end of the movie, we can hear in French the first lines of a poem by Arthur Rimbaud (L'Eternité, 1872):

(Here I wanted to write the original french lines, but I'm not allowed. Curious world.)

English subtitles:

It's ours again / what is ? / eternity / No that's just the sea And the Sun

It should have been:

It is found again./ What is ? Eternity/ It is the sea/ Gone with the sun./

Minute 41. Ferdinand and Marianne are watching the man on the moon.

English subtitles:

F: - He thinks your legs and your breasts are very moving/ M: - Be quiet

But I can hear in French:

F: - I find your legs and your breasts very moving/ M: - Fcuk me

We often overlook the flaws of an artist's earlier work and then ignore their later, more perfect and mature pieces because they lack the daring boldness and innovation evident in the first ones. This is especially true in Godard's case. Breathless was new, fresh, fun and stylish; it was and still is considered a classic and his masterpiece. But as great as it is, Breathless is mostly about technical innovation and lacks the thematic depth of its creator's later work. Godard only brushes along subjects such as class division and the nature of film which, among many others, he will devour in films to come, in our case, Pierrot le fou.

I said 'perfect and mature' but those are qualities not typical of Godard. His films are always 'a work in progress' and he's not afraid of taking risks. That's why his work is usually considered ugly, childish, pretentious etc. But one should always be open-minded and never expect the ordinary when going to a Godard film. To begin with, it's impossible to confine Pierrot le fou to a particular genre as it doesn't adhere to a single form or convention but is, instead, a blend of comedy, romance, political thriller, noir, musical and so on. It is a road picture that is able to follow a straight narrative as much as a car is able to follow a straight road with Ferdinand behind the wheel. The director confesses that when he began working on his movie "one week before, I was completely panicked, I didn't know what I should do. Based on the book, we had already established all the locations, we had hired the people... and I was wondering what we were going to do with it all."

Godard has been criticized time and again for the purposeful disorientation of his audience. On top of a discontinuous plot he employs a wide array of 'sensorial techniques that serve to fragment the cinematic narrative.' Some of his trademark stylistic devices, including loud colors, obtrusive voice overs, rapid jump shots, out of sync sound etc. along with the abrupt interchanges between tones (e.g. comic – serious) constitute for a greater alienation of the viewer. The film opens with the voice of Ferdinand reading a passage, "Velázquez, past the age of fifty, no longer painted specific objects. He drifted around things like the air, like twilight, catching unawares in the shimmering shadows the nuances of color that he transformed into the invisible core of his silent symphony". Similarly, Godard is on a quest for another kind of cinematic art, one that isn't concerned with visual presentation of objects and characters as much as with "what lies in between people: space, sound and color."

With Pierrot le fou, Godard wanted to break away from conventional cinema's chains, go beyond any forms and formulas and attain something out of the ordinary clichè. At one point in the movie Ferdinand is at a social gathering and meets an American director. When asked for the definition of cinema, he responds: "A film is like a battleground. It's love, hate, action, violence, and death. In one word: emotions." This explains precisely what Godard sought to achieve. He wanted to transfer emotions directly onto the viewer - not through actors and their characters but by means of style. Abandoning all conventional drama and substituting it with flickering prime colors, godlike voice overs, eerie music etc. in the ultimate search for an instant, sublime surge of feelings was a chance Godard was willing to take. He considered this destruction of old rules and creation of new as something natural and necessary. As he himself asserts, "literary critics often praise works like Ulysses or Endgame because they exhaust a certain genre, they close the doors on it. But in the cinema we are always praising works which open doors."

Godard has created a film in the free form. A film deprived of structure. One that does not make any promises to the viewer but the assertion that love is beyond human control. Just like with love, nothing makes linear sense and every moment is more important than the last. Pierrot le fou is not an easy film to take in. It places great demands on its audience. Some might find them overwhelming, not worth the effort. But others, those that manage to let go and keep going forward into Godard's chaotic but passionate exploration of reality, might just enjoy the ride.

"Film is like a battleground", tells Samuel Fuller Ferdinand in the beginning of this film: "Love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emotion." 'Pierrot le fou' is a 110 minutes film by Godard and his tenth feature. It's roughly based on a crime novel written by Lionel White. Tho, don't expect a linear adaptation. In fact, Godard and his actors mostly improvised and therefore deliver a dodgy 'surrealeperiment'.

The plot summary therefore must be given a little superficially: It's about a wannabe writer, Ferdinand Griffon (Belmondo) who escapes his every day life and runs off with his mistress Marianne (Karina) to the Mediterranean Sea. Far away from his family, he lives for the moment, reads books and tries to work on a diary. Meanwhile, the police and Algerian killers are chasing Marianne because she has committed a murder.

Godard assembles philosophical texts with shots of posters and screens, sets in musical elements and achieves to encode his film in a very inspiring way. Sometimes the imagery is fair and beautiful (i. e. Belmondo and Karina are running along a silhouette like forest which is photographed in front of a white, flat background), sometimes odious and angry (i. e. Belmondo finds an Algerian murdered with scissors and he keeps on raking in the wound), sometimes stirringly artistic (i. e. Karina takes the murder instrument, the scissors holds it in front of a wide-angle-lens and creates an unbelievably coherent effect of distortion).

Those who take the film with a living mind will experience a fascinating, beautifully filmed love story with two protagonists who do everything within the power of their tremendous acting potential. Concerning the contents, it is a cinematic toying with the duality of the characters (Ferdinand and Pierrot or Ferdinand or Marianne) or rather with schizophrenia. Belmondo plays a mad crackpot who first has a pretty martialistic based life as a husband and father whose world view staggers because of upcoming converse feelings - personated by Karina. She, married with Godard at that time, plays the character Marianne with wit, depth and anarchic charme. Her role is the symbolic enlightenment in Ferdinands being. While he strives melancholically for wisdom and always throbs on the importance of the arts, Marianne is a lackadaisical playgirl and swinger who wants to be instead of having. Belmondo as Ferdinand shows in all of his agility a vulnerability that hides behind the same gruffness of 'Une femme est une femme'.

'Pierrot le fou' is a film that dines from various influences, having some sort of private, economic, cultural or political natures. More than every other 'auteur' Godard manifests himself once more as the chronologist of his time.