Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina
Studio: Studio Canal/Criterion Collection (2 DVDs) 421
Video: 2.35:1 anamorphic/enhanced for 16:9 color
Audio: French Dolby mono
Subtitles: English
Extras: New video interview with Anna Karina; A “Pierrot” Primer with filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin; “Godard, l’amour, la poésie” – 50 min. documentary on Godard and his films with Karina; Interview archival excerpts with Godard, Karina, & Belmondo; Theatrical trailer; Illustrated booklet with new essay by critic Richard Brody and 1959 interview with Godard
Length: 110 minutes
Rating: **(**)
People either love or hate this film. I’m of the latter; it’s the only Godard film I haven’t liked. Robert Ebert says he’s the most audacious and experimental of directors, and I must agree. Godard’s joyous contrariness explodes all over this movie and eventually got my goat. One of the commentators in the jam-packed extras with the film points out that Karina – to whom Godard was married – had just divorced him before the film was shot. The film (roughly translated as “Pete the Madman”) is therefore his artistic temper tantrum over losing her. His adaptation of the original novel was to have had a Lolita-like angle, with Richard Burton as the man and an 18-year-old pop singer as the girl, but that didn’t work out and the story was changed into something one critic dubbed “a French Bonnie & Clyde.”
The very sketchy plot is just one of the contrary things Godard serves up. An out-of-work TV producer suddenly leaves his Italian wife and children and runs off with the baby sitter the wife has engaged for the evening as she dragged him to a boring (though topless) party at which everyone mouths TV commercial copy to one another. Marianne turns out to be a former girlfriend of Ferdinand aka Pierrot. They go on a crime-punctuated road trip to the Mediterranean coast. Ferdinand reads stacks of books, quoting passages aloud, and writing in a diary. There is little sense to the crime part of the plot – as though Godard had lost interest in the film noir genre he had honored earlier. And no hints given about how Ferdinand and Marianne are eating or where they are sleeping, since they have no money – having burned a briefcase full of cash earlier along with a stolen car they destroyed on purpose. (One of the car crash scenes looked exactly like those littering the road in Godard’s later Weekend.) Godard became concerned about the war in Vietnam at this time and inserted some very sophmoric protest material about it, including newsreel clips, Belmondo in a uniform jacket playing with a gun and mumbling about killing commies, and Karina made up like a Vietnamese woman.
Another contrary thing – thumbing his nose at most cinema conventions – is that Godard shows not even a brief sex scene between the couple. Things suddenly appear, like a pet parrot and fox, with no explanation. It’s clear Mariane’s character is not at all the sweet girl Karina played in earlier Godard films. One of the commentators in the extras seems to know that her “brother” who they are traveling to see to get money from, is really another lover – though where he picked up that detail in the chaotic plot I haven’t the faintest. She has no compunctions about killing people. And both of them come to une fin mauvaise.
The reason for an entire second DVD of extras seems explained by the lengthy, often fawning commentary on the film by Gorin – it appears to repeat most of the film, but not in the same linear fashion as the actual film. I only watched the beginning and didn’t time it, but it may run as long as the film. However, the new interview with Karina is most interesting, as is the documentary on Godard. The transfer of the excellent cinematography is up to the usual high Criterion standards, and looks almost as good as Blu-ray. Primary colors are stressed in the design of the film, with an emphasis on the red, white and blue of the French flag. The French have long been big on widescreen productions and some of the outdoor vistas are lovely, though another Godard contrariness here is that they mostly go on even longer than the too-long shots in many European movies.
– John Sunier
