The Worst Film Ever

Absolutely the worst movie.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Godard is a pioneer in unstructured French movie-making. Despite the progress of a classical and chronological plot in Pierrot Le Fou, the way the story is told and the movie footage are quite novel. The story is told by two characters, cartoon inserts and literary references are as important as the scenes, Belmondo directly addresses the public, and the party in the beginning of the movie is shot like a moving fresco. The music has an abrupt ending, in such a way that one gets confused with the limits of the movie's reality and the fiction's reality. The result is a poetic movie shot in poetic light, and highlighted by poetic dialogues, but movie-making becomes a technical and intellectual reflection rather than a memorable and moving story.

Director Jean-Luc Godard has always been a baffling and enigmatic figure to yours truly. Considered one of the most important figures in film history, Godard's reputation doesn't help when many a film student sits down to watch Breathless (1960) for the first time. While I have only seen three of his films, each one showcases the talent of an artist, very purposely engaging with his audience in new and interesting ways. While his projects may be alienating to most, you have to admit his imagery sticks with the viewer long after the credits roll. Whether it be the shuttered, moody apartments of Alphaville (1965) or the extended chaos of the "carmageddon" in Weekend (1967), there's just something both literate and literal that immerses the curious mind to play along if only to see where he's going.Pierrot le Fou is said to be one of Godard's last early-career masterpieces, before going off the radical deep-end. It brings to the screen the auteur's wry suspicion towards bourgeois complacency, an eye towards the garish, and an almost giddy sense of humor. French star Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Ferdinand the Pierrot (roughly translated to Ferdinand the sad clown). Unhappy with his trite existence as an obedient husband, doting father and successful ad man, Pierrot runs away with his mistress Marianne (Karina). The two make their way to the south of France, borrowing and stealing their new found life from those absent enough to be taken advantage of. Meanwhile the two are being chased by a duo of mobsters who are hoping to recover money the couple have stolen.The film is very roughly based on the novel "Obsession" by Lionel White. Known for stylized pulp fiction, Lionel White's book is about as American as Pierrot le Fou is French. The book is straight- forward, the film is eclectic; the film is intellectual in nature, the book satisfies baser instincts. We've seen this kind of uneasy cross-cultural pollination in many of Godard's work from Breathless hero Michel sporting a Bogart-esque fedora to the Dick Tracy comic- strip pop permeating through Alphaville. In the case of Pierrot le Fou, Godard's love of American iconography is most obvious with a very brief cameo by American auteur Samuel Fuller.As with all of Godard's work, the specifics of the plot are not important or entirely necessary. It is the mode to which the director makes the themes of his story clear. The first thing that grabs the viewer's attention is the color. Pierrot le Fou is Godard's first feature-length color film. In it, he uses a triadic palette to add a layer of pop art sensibility. Almost everything in the film is drenched in loud pigments of red and blue making the entire film resemble a live-action cartoon. Only instead of inviting the viewer into it's colorful world, it purposely alienates you.Godard increases this alienation with elliptical almost Lynch-ian editing and constant character asides that are often political in nature. In one cringe-worthy scene the young Anna Karina yabbers and tongue-clicks while wearing Vietnamese yellow-face to entertain a group of American sailors. While the scene aptly lampoons the Vietnam conflict, it does so in such an aggressively buffoonish way that even audiences of the time likely would have looked on with puzzlement. Then there's the collage-like structure of the film itself, which often goes on long tangents on mass media, socialism, pop culture, violence and the cinematic art form. It's all quite fascinating and Godard wisely infects his high art concepts with a lowbrow sense of humor. The balance reaches a boisterous crescendo when Marianne and Pierrot ditch their car in a mock wreckage...then the film continues for another hour.Out of all the film's I've seen by the master of the Nouvelle Vague, Pierrot le Fou is the best work I've seen, though I'm not sure it's because Godard is an acquired taste or it's truly a better film. It's certainly filled to the brim with awe-inspiring visual ideas and influential storytelling techniques that have become common among the American film intelligentsia. Godard's imaginative use of wordplay, puns and portmanteaus adds yet another layer of sophistication that upon repeated viewings (and a rudimentary understanding of French) can make anyone smirk with satisfaction. Pierrot le Fou is also the director's most accessible film, though certainly not a movie for novices.

Not only Pierrot (Ferdinand) but the whole movie is crazy. A married man returning home from a boring party meets there with a girl with whom he had a case five years before and is supposedly there to babysit his child (or children). He had not seen her since then. They decide then to leave at once and start a car run through the country getting involved in a series of meaningless peripeteia like stealing cars and money, filling the car tank and running without paying, setting a car on fire, entering with another in the sea on a beach and other minor events no less without an apparent reason and cooked through half-sentimental foolish dialogues during which he girl calls the man Pierrot though he keeps telling her that his name is Ferdinand without any reaction from her. We feel there is some story of arms traffic behind all this which is never clearly told or explained. At a certain point she is kidnapped by traffic rogues, kills one of them with a pair of scissors and runs away. Then it's the man who gets caught by the traffic rogues that torture him in order to know where the girl is. Then he is free again (did he escape or was set free by his captors after revealing where the girl is?). Then we see an old Lebanese countess proposing him to go with her on a boat but then the girl meets him again but suddenly escapes with another man that we don't know who he is and they kiss passionately each other. Our Pierrot Ferdinand chases them to the island where they went by boat and shoots and kills them both. The story(?) ends with Pierrot Ferdinand committing suicide in a way that would be funny if it wasn't tragic. He put 2 or 3 dynamite belts around his head but at a certain point he tried unsuccessfully to put off the fuse and we see the explosion in the horizon in the last scene. I have understood that Godard's movies don't have a sense, a clear story or a message. They are worth for what they are worth and their scenes and images are worth for what we see and nothing more which means very little for me. However since he is considered a great movie director by critics probably this is my fault.

I've been living in French-speaking countries for several years now and speak French quite well, however inevitably when I go to the cinema, 80% of the films are imported from the US or the UK. Unfortunately, now I see why even the French don't watch French cinema, minus the handful of big hits that make it every year or so (Les Intouchables, La Haine, etc).I was hoping for something artistic yet that was also actually a good film, e.g. Fellini or Hitchcock. Unfortunately, this is a load of film school dreck that I would give a student a C- if it was their senior project. Between rambling, self-obsessed characters, a hot female lead who is unfortunately also terribly uninspiring, and an utter lack of plot, I can't really see what people like about this film. I'm glad I've seen it, so I can know not to waste my time on any more Goddard films.If you think that randomly quoting philosophers is a way to show how smart you are, or if you think "omg so random" is hilarious and/or insightful, this film is for you. If you like films that are enjoyable to watch, or films that teach you something, or films that are artistically beautiful, then skip this and instead go watch The Fountain or The Fall or any number of other films.I can't say it's worth watching even to know that you dislike Goddard films. If you don't already know the answer to this, then I can pretty much guarantee you will hate it.