Jean-Luc Godard Collection (Vol 2)
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Film Description
More essential Godard. A collection of three films featuring the unmissable 'Pierrot Le Fou', the comic book-influenced crime thriller 'Made in USA' - Godard's homage to the gangster movies of directors Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller, and 'Prenom Carmen', a semi-comic film that combines the operatic story of Carmen with a look at the difficulty of film-making. Godard sends himself up in a role as a burnt out film-maker.
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Review by Pasquale Iannone
on 19th January 2005
Jean-Luc Godard was once asked why there was so much blood in Pierrot le Fou (1965). In typical Godardian fashion, he replied that it was not blood, but red. A statement that is significant in many ways. With red, Godard de-dramatises. He is as cool, as emotionally detached as ever, both celebrating and attempting to dissect all the trappings of Hollywood with a film that remains an undisputed masterpiece of 1960s cinema.
Using a tale about a bourgeois husband eloping with his babysitter across the South of France, Godard takes aim, attacking not only with his usual barrage of cultural references (everyone from James Joyce to Nicholas Ray to Raymond Chandler) but also with a striking, highly expressive use of colour.
Having already experimented with colour in Une femme est une femme (1961) and the stunningly beautiful Le Mepris (1963), Godard and regular cinematographer Raoul Coutard paint Pierrot le Fou in bright, sunny, almost cartoonish tones. In terms of structure too, the film resembles a comic-strip through the director’s singular use of montage and voice-over.
Made before Godard adopted a growing belief in Marxism and even Maoist Communism, Pierrot le Fou certainly does not seem to have dated in a way which cripples many of his later films. Far from being turgid and humourless, Godard even dares to include a blackly comic scene in which the lovers enact a playlet about Vietnam. The film retains a playfulness, epitomised by the sparkling addresses to camera of both Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne (Anna Karina) – ‘So fun is all she wants’ Ferdinand tells the audience.
To irresistible comic effect, Belmondo’s character reminds Marianne each time she refers to him as Pierrot that ‘Je m’appelle Ferdinand’ - in an attempt perhaps to bring her down from her flights of fancy. With the film’s ending – apparently improvised by Godard – the director seems to coolly do the same. After the drama of the film’s climax, a slow pan across the blazing, sun-drenched Mediterranean leads to a fade to white: ‘Eternity..’ whisper our heroes ‘no, it’s just the sun and the sea.’
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Article - "Jean Luc Godard"
by Moviemail
Monday 5th January 2004
For the best part of five decades, Jean-Luc Godard has been producing innovative, challenging and controversial films. The list of his influential titles is peerless. From the nouvelle vague brio of A Bout de Souffle and Bande à Part through to the exquisite beauty o... View article in full
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