Pierrot le Fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard) (Patreon)

76/100

Second viewing, last seen at BAMCinématek in 2002. Sometimes I wonder whether I overvalue early Godard simply because he did so many things with the medium that nobody had ever done before and that nobody has really ever done again. Certainly there's nothing about Pierrot le Fou that's particularly satisfying from the standpoint of a conventional narrative, even though the film was adapted from a popular crime novel and theoretically involves plentiful intrigue; though it's only been about a week since I rewatched it, summarizing what happens, even in light detail, would almost certainly be impossible for me. (Married businessman meets woman, ditches his family for no apparent reason to travel the country with her while she's I guess pursued by gangsters. That's about all I retain in terms of either character psychology or forward motion.) Ordinarily, that would constitute harsh criticism, but Godard's pure experiments in form are so bewitching that the movie's overall shapelessness barely registers. The source novel is titled Obsession, presumably referring to that of its protagonist; onscreen, the obsession is unmistakably Godard's, with the tools of cinema, and I get sucked right in. Adjoining rooms at a dinner party are lit in colors that I've otherwise only seen in explicitly psychedelic contexts (and look markedly different even from those, somehow; I'm curious as to whether that was done with lighting or filters or a combination of the two). Exposition gets delivered as sentence fragments in his/her alternating voiceover narration, deliberately foregrounding the delivery method rather than the information ostensibly being imparted. Lengthy close-ups in a "moving" automobile—one on the driver, one on the passenger—employ some sort of gizmo that creates the abstract impression of others cars' headlights reflecting on the windshield, repeating in a circular pattern that calls attention to its artificiality. (Then Godard has them pull over on an actual highway with actual cars whizzing past.) Major plot developments are introduced without explanation, as stark absurdism, e.g. Marianne walks into the other room and ignores a dead body lying on the bed, regarding which we know nothing for ages. (Do we ever learn who that was or how he got killed? I'm not sure.) How much I dig any Godard movie is almost directly proportional to its degree of pure playfulness, and Pierrot is among his goofiest exercises in Just What Is a "Movie," Anyway? 

Don't think I caught this last time around: A repeated line spoken by Belmondo that the English subtitles translate as "Let's go, daddy-o" is in fact "Allons-y Alonzo," which I don't know whether that's common French slang but it's pretty funny if you know the language a little.