Pierrot le Fou

In the wake of World War II, cinephilia took off in France, attracting intellectuals, creatives, and the youth with film clubs, journals, and screenings.

Alongside this novel passion for film was an increase in accessibility to filmmaking with state-incentives and cheaper methods of making movies, like with handheld cameras and fast shooting schedules with small budgets and crews.

This passion and accessibility fueled the French New Wave film movement, also known as Nouvelle Vague.

At the forefront of this movement were young, inexperienced directors flooding the market under the tutelage of mentors Andre Bazin and Henri Langlois.

Bazin’s teaching emphasized the nature of realism in film, while Langlois exposed students to older films and other art pieces. Two groups of thinkers spawned within Nouvelle Vague: the political Left Bank Group, and the critics-turned-filmmakers associated with the journal Cahiers du Cinema.

Jean-Luc Godard, the director of 1965’s Pierrot le Fou, belonged to the latter camp. Pierrot le Fou shares many hallmarks of Nouvelle Vague such as an attention to realism, a narrative and stylistic centering of reflexivity, and disorienting editing and writing.

The film follows a man, Ferdinand, who has grown tired of his domestic life and thus abandons it with a former fling, Marianne. Godard states in an interview with Cahiers that the subject of Pierrot le Fou is life and adventure, and the movie “reminds us that one must attempt to live” (Godard, 215).

Throughout the film, the nature of life and the ability of mediums to truthfully depict it is repeatedly questioned. This theme is explored through the treatment of realism and reflexivity, as Godard grapples with, under Bazin’s influence and that of past films, how films create reality and as he infuses his story with meta-critiques that draw on his education from Langlois.

Godard’s construction of the at-times nonlinear narrative with disjunctive editing and confusing voiceover contributes to these discussions of reality and reflexivity while also being a stylistic challenge to “mainstream” cinemas. These traits are exemplified by the pivotal scene where Ferdinand is at a party near the beginning of the film.

The most striking feature of the party scene is its vibrant, all-encompassing color that Godard uses to construct reality. Some frames are tinted by dark red, others by yellow, and so on in a very unnatural way.

The coloring serves to establish the artificiality of the party and its attendants, which is further shown by their dialogue composed of commercial taglines, their socialization reduced to spouting off what they see in television ads.

Nothing about this image is realistic; it is an exaggerated version of Godard’s truth that this mindless participation in society and consuming of unartistic media is the antithesis to life. When talking about his use of color in another scene, Godard states that “I wanted to show these elements but without necessarily placing them as they are in reality. Rather as they remain in memory… which leaves us its own image” (Godard, 234 and 214).

Godard subtly manipulates reality, twisting its depiction, to present a stylized, more meaningful version. Being at this party, surrounded by the manifestation of unliving, is what spurs Ferdinand to “attempt to live.” Future scenes are comparatively less vibrant or are nature scenes, differing totally from this initial sequence as they now depict actual life.

Within the party, there is an interaction that is unnaturally bright but with mostly normal colors: Ferdinand’s discussion with an American director, via semi-uninterested translator. The director is a real filmmaker, Samuel Fuller, which adds to the question of manipulated reality. Fuller is “playing” himself, a real person in a fictional setting, speaking lines as himself but presumably written by someone else.

This part is also unique in its attempt at real dialogue as Ferdinand has found a peer and Godard a mouthpiece. The subsequent conversation is an example of reflexivity in Pierrot le Fou as Ferdinand asks him “what cinema is, exactly?” He answers that it is “emotions,” which is in line with the Nouvelle Vague sentiment, held throughout the film, that cinema is life.

Fuller’s mere presence is an act of reflexivity as he is a figure commonly defended by creators in the Nouvelle Vague movement who found value in American B-movies and genre films, which were Fuller’s niche.

There are many other instances throughout Pierrot le Fou where the characters reference artists like authors or the camera lingers on paintings instead of speakers. This referentiality is a trait in Nouvelle Vague creators that harkens to their beginnings as critics in Cahiers or other journals.

Other instances of reflexivity include Ferdinand going to a movie theater, and him writing a book “about life,” just like how cinema is supposed to be, in the Nouvelle Vague movement, about life.

There is also a moment where the “fourth-wall” is broken: Ferdinand turns to the camera to make a remark, and when Marianne asks who he is talking to, he casually replies, “to the audience,” which she takes in stride.

This, like Fuller’s presence, blurs the line between reality and fiction where “the real and the imaginary are clearly distinct and yet are one” (Godard, 214). Godard states that “The Nouvelle Vague may be defined in part by this new relationship between fiction and reality” (Godard, 192).

At the party, after speaking to Fuller and witnessing the artificiality of the other guests, Ferdinand questions his own aliveness and leaves, but first, he walks up to a large cake and begins flinging handfuls of it at other guests. This scene is abruptly cut off and replaced with a dark night sky and the occasional firework. It is entirely spontaneous and short-lived.

The food fight is surprising, albeit a somewhat logical party exit, but the cut away to the sky defies reason. Godard states, “two shots which follow each other do not necessarily follow each other,” and this can certainly be seen here, and in the warped chronology of the scene where the lovers flee Marianne’s apartment (Godard, 215).

The quick shift between the cake and the fireworks, and the short duration of the former part, almost calls into question the reality of the scene – did Ferdinand really throw the cake? Or is this simply what he wishes he could do?

This spontaneity was common among films in the Nouvelle Vague movement. It also speaks to the improvisational nature of Pierrot le Fou and its contemporaries. Although this cake scene in particular may not have been improvised, as it was early on in the movie, it still has the sense of suddenness and lack of strict cohesion.

Improvisation was utilized as a means of realism in these films as they depicted a “truer” form of life than pre-planned scripts. Godard remarked, “life arranges itself. One is never quite sure what one is going to do tomorrow” and brought that energy into his film (Godard, 218).

The disorientation caused by this direction and editing is furthered by Ferdinand’s voiceover as the scene changes, where he lists emotions as vague concepts.

Pierrot le Fou’s voiceovers are consistently confusing as they haphazardly section the film into chapters, sometimes out of order as chapter seven is announced after eight, and repeat phrases or words, or only offer puzzling statements without elaboration.

Sometimes, both Ferdinand and Marianne are part of the voiceover, talking over and around each other, further complicating the narration. In the scene where they flee Marianne’s apartment, the lovers continuously switch between talking in first and third person. The narration itself is another avenue of reflexivity as it utilizes the medium of film to talk to the audience.

The use of realism, reflexivity, and certain editing techniques are indicative of the Nouvelle Vague movement, but they do not exist in historical isolation. Godard’s sense of realism is understandably impacted by Bazin’s view of it, which partially continues the tradition of Italian Neorealism.

An aspect of this realism, shared between movements, is the use of long takes. Godard states that “The only great problem with cinema seems to me, more and more with each film, when and why to start a shot and when and why to end it” (Godard, 214).

In Pierrot le Fou, this can be seen when the camera is stationary for long periods of time, like in the party scene where it would not move until the color-section was done. It can also be seen when there is a lot of camera movement but no cuts, like in the scene where Ferdinand and Marianne kill a man in her apartment.

Another shared aspect of Nouvelle Vague and Italian Neorealism is the commitment to depicting life, even if Pierrot le Fou goes about it in a much more stylish way. This film’s realism also extends into the documentary movement with its use of narration and improvisation. Alain Resnais, director of Holocaust documentary Night and Fog, was even a part of the Left Bank Group of Nouvelle Vague.

The reflexivity of questioning the ability of a medium to truthfully represent life is another common trait of documentaries. There is also a relation to the Surrealism movement with Godard’s lack of cohesion between shots, as surrealists were also unbound by the “tyranny of reason.”

In conclusion, the particular constructing of reality, the reflexivity through artistic references and questioning mediums, and the use of techniques such as unrelated or non-chronological sequential shots are all stylistic developments of Nouvelle Vague that Pierrot le Fou possesses. These elements work together to form a film depicting the eccentricities of life through impossible colors, meta-critiques, and unconventional editing.