Pierrot Le Fou Analysis

The French New Wave movement created a huge shift in filmmaking, a driving factor of it was to separate French Cinema from Hollywood. Jean-Luc Godard is famous for doing precisely this. His 1969 film Pierrot le fou is a prime example of being the complete antithesis of Hollywood filmmaking. Godard himself even describes the it as “an attempt at film.” Pierrot le fou seems to ignore traditional techniques of filmmaking. As Angela Vacche’s essay “Pierrot le fou Cinema as Collage” she states, “Pierrot le fou, is truly a breathless film characterized by a pictorial use of color and disjunctive montage,” (Vacche, 1). Godard creates a feeling of frustration through his use of unconventional camera movement, colors, and soundtrack, these techniques

Hollywood films are formulaic, and audiences have grown to know this, and feel comfortable with—not just regarding narrative but also in film form. Mainly, in conversations, the conventional way of filming would be to have a shot-reverse shot, where the audience sees one person speaking and then the reaction of the other. Shot reverse shots aid in continuity editing which is what mainstream Hollywood utilizes to make a film seem seamless and easy for audiences to become engulfed in the diegesis. However, Godard does not employ this in Pierrot le fou, particularly in the scene where Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne (Anna Karina) have just escaped and are driving with no destination trying to figure out where to go. Marianne is in the driver’s seat, Ferdinand next to her. The camera is static looking at them through the windshield. It is a medium close-up on the two. As they drive and continue to speak the camera does not change position. In a Hollywood narrative, there would be coverage of the two as the conversation continued. It would cut into a close-up and then cut between the two before

These are two colors that are called back upon many time within the film. In this instance, it is peculiar though. There is nothing on the road that would be creating these perfect spheres of light that rhythmically appear on the windshield. They are present in the scene up until Ferdinand begins to drive. The red is always on the left and the blue on the right. Though, the audience does not question much that there seems to be no plausible answer as to what the source of these lights is. In a way, the lights create the sense that the car is moving forward. In that regard, they could be seen as streetlights, though it would then be a very specific choice of Godard to use blue and red lights. Yet, if it is a callback of previous scene it forces the viewer to think about the party sequence, when Godard tints the entire image as single color. It also evokes the thought of the colors of the French flag. However, both the American and French flags share the colors, red, blue and white. By calling upon them so often it is not to think about the American flag as well as the French. In a way, it feels as though Godard is aware that he is disregarding American cinema with these callbacks and wants his viewers to know it as well. Nonetheless, Godard is continuously calling attention to form, in return consciously forcing the viewer to remember they are in