Jean-Luc Godard

Pierrot le fou

Pierrot le fou

Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeoisie behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard's tenth feature in six years is a stylish mash-up of consumerist satire, politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, "the last romantic couple." With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, Pierrot le fou is one of the high points of the French New Wave, and was Godard's last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema.

Share

Film Info

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Raoul Coutard, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • New video interview with actor Anna Karina
  • A "Pierrot" Primer, a new video program with audio commentary by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin
  • Godard, l'amour, la poésie, a fifty-minute French documentary about director Jean-Luc Godard and his work and marriage with Karina
  • Archival interview excerpts with Godard, Karina, and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo
  • Theatrical trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Richard Brody, a 1969 review by Andrew Sarris, and a 1965 interview with Godard
    New cover by Steve Chow

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Raoul Coutard, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • New video interview with actor Anna Karina
  • A "Pierrot" Primer, a new video program with audio commentary by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin
  • Godard, l'amour, la poésie, a fifty-minute French documentary about director Jean-Luc Godard and his work and marriage with Karina
  • Archival interview excerpts with Godard, Karina, and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo
  • Theatrical trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Richard Brody, a 1969 review by Andrew Sarris, and a 1965 interview with Godard
    New cover by Steve Chow
Pierrot le fou
Cast
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Ferdinand Griffon
Anna Karina
Marianne Renoir
Graziella Galvani
Mrs. Griffon
Dirk Sanders
Fred
Raymond Devos
Man on pier
Roger Dutoit
Gangster
Hans Meyer
Gangster
Credits
Screenplay
Jean-Luc Godard
Producer
Georges de Beauregard
Director
Jean-Luc Godard
Cinematography
Raoul Coutard

Related Films

1/7

Edition introduction to Pierrot le fou

2/7
3/7
4/7
5/7
6/7
7/7

From The Current

Godard in Fragments
Godard in Fragments

In the 1960s, pioneering French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard introduced the world to a new cinematic lexicon, generated from his innovative, auteurist style. Between 1960 and 1967 alone, he made fifteen features (beginning with his groundbreaki…

By Kogonada

On Film / Visual Analysis — Feb 10, 2016
Lipp Service

From upstairs at the Brasserie Lipp in Paris, you have a perfect view of the Café de Flore, directly across the boulevard Saint-Germain. Both are famous Left Bank institutions where filmmakers such as Louis Malle, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol,…

By Abbey Lustgarten

Inside Criterion / Production Notes — Jan 14, 2008
Pawel Pawlikowski’s Top 10
Pawel Pawlikowski’s Top 10

The Oscar-winning director of Ida and Cold War walks through key periods in his life that have been shaped by his favorite films, including masterpieces by Godard, Malick, and Tarkovsky.


Dec 31, 2018
Anna Karina’s Closet Picks
Anna Karina’s Closet Picks

The incomparable French icon visited during a rare visit to New York and made a stop in our film closet to reminisce about her groundbreaking work with Jean-Luc Godard, acting for Agnès Varda in Cléo from 5 to 7, her affection for Charlie Chaplin,

…

Inside Criterion / Closet Picks — May 6, 2016
Laura Mulvey’s Top 10
Laura Mulvey’s Top 10

Film theorist Laura Mulvey is one of cinema’s most influential thinkers.


Jan 29, 2016
Criterion’s Fans Show Their Dedication
Criterion’s Fans Show Their Dedication

This week marks the first occasion of the Criterion Blogathon, a massive movie lovefest organized by the film blog Criterion Blues.

On Film / Short Takes
Nov 17, 2015
Annie Baker’s Top 10
Annie Baker’s Top 10

Playwright Annie Baker won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Flick, which is entirely set in a movie theater.


Jun 30, 2015
Godard at Cannes, Part Two
Godard at Cannes, Part Two

The filmmaker’s latest offering at the film festival reaffirms the author’s faith in him.

By Colin MacCabe

On Film / Features — Jun 12, 2014
Sight & Sound Poll 2012: Pierrot le fou
Sight & Sound Poll 2012: Pierrot le fou

Every ten years since 1952, the world-renowned film magazine Sight & Sound has polled a wide international selection of film critics and directors on what they consider to be the ten greatest works of cinema ever made, and then compiled…

On Film / Short Takes
Aug 24, 2012
Oren Moverman’s Top 10
Oren Moverman’s Top 10

Like any top ten list in any discipline by anyone privileged enough to be asked to catalog his professional indulgences for public viewing, the following list is deeply meaningful and truly meaningless.


Feb 22, 2012
Cover Story
Cover Story

This week, Time is all too happy to judge a movie by its cover. Gilbert Cruz, an editor at the magazine, has compiled a list called “Top 10 Cool Criterion Collection Covers.” Cruz’s taste in design tends toward illustration over photography, th…

On Film / Short Takes
Feb 22, 2011
Xavier Dolan’s Top 10
Xavier Dolan’s Top 10

An avowed Criterion addict, Dolan tells us that during his last trip to Cannes, “my luggage was filled with Criterion titles.”


Aug 4, 2010
Anna Karina Goes West
Anna Karina Goes West

Alert all French New Wave–loving Californians: Anna Karina is coming to Los Angeles! The annual L.A. festival of new French cinema, City of Lights, City of Angels, going on now through April 25, is showing a new digital restoration of Godard’s Pi…

On Film / Short Takes
Apr 21, 2010
Michael Atkinson’s Top 10
Michael Atkinson’s Top 10

Michael Atkinson writes film criticism for IFC.com, Sight & Sound, and Moving Image Source. His books include Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood and the novel Hemingway Deadlights.


Feb 17, 2010
Pierrot le fou:
Self-Portrait in a Shattered Lens

In February 1964, while shooting Band of Outsiders, Jean-Luc Godard announced his plans for a film based on a crime novel, Obsession, by the American writer Lionel White (translated into French as Le démon d’onze heures—literally, “The Eleven …

By Richard Brody


Sep 22, 2009

Explore

Anna Karina

Actor

Anna Karina
Anna Karina

Few faces have fluttered the hearts of male cinephiles the way Anna Karina’s has. Karina has written and directed films, taken on prominent stage roles (including in plays directed by Jacques Rivette and Ingmar Bergman), had a successful singing career, and written four novels, but, of course, she is cited most often as Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave muse and first wife. Godard decided he wanted to put her on-screen after seeing her in a sudsy Palmolive ad on television in the late 1950s. Though she turned down a small (nude) role in Breathless, she was soon cast in Godard’s next film, Le petit soldat (1961), at age twenty, and would go on to appear in six more of his films during the sixties, including the iconic Vivre sa vie and Band of Outsiders (she and Godard would also cameo together in Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7). Though their cinematic collaboration seemed harmonious, behind the scenes, their relationship was tumultuous and bitter, made all the more difficult by the fact that it was under constant public scrutiny. Their three-year marriage ended in 1964, though they continued to work together until 1966. Karina stayed with film acting in the coming decades, working with such directors as Rivette, Luchino Visconti, George Cukor, Tony Richardson, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

More Anna Karina View All