Introduction

PIERROT LE FOU is my favorite Godard film. It functions both as a summation of his career to that point and a preview of the revolutionary nihilism of LA CHINOISE and WEEKEND. Godard, in PIERROT, attempts to assimilate his love of American genre cinema with his increasingly anti-American political ideology. It’s a personal, insular film. As much as it fascinates, I couldn’t honestly recommend it to someone who hadn’t seen BREATHLESS, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, VIVRE SA VIE, CONTEMPT, BAND OF OUTSIDERS, and ALPHAVILLE.

Early in the film, Jean-Paul Belmondo goes to a party where the guests speak only in advertising copy; precursors both generational and in the filmography to MASCULIN-FEMININ’s “children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” There is a singular exception, one guest who speaks of personal experience, Samuel Fuller. Belmondo asks Fuller what his proposed film, FLOWER OF EVIL, is about exactly. Fuller responds by defining cinema itself: “A film is like a battleground. It’s love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word: emotions.”