Pierrot le Fou (Pierrot the madman)
Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
1965
*****
Jean-Luc Godard's somewhat experimental Pierrot le Fou (AKA Crazy Pete) is simple, yet completely exaggerated, such is the diversity and contradicting style of the director's work at this time point. It's one of the cult director's more popular films among his fans and commercially, and you could say it is the quintessential 60's French film. It's completely without structure, switching between reality and fantasy and never once conforming to the constraints of genre or indeed logic. This is the Jean-Luc Godard I love. His films are hit or miss with me, I feel he's at his best when he doesn't have so much of an agenda. Maybe he was guided somewhat by the source material (the film is loosely based on the novel Obsession by Lionel White) but I think after nine feature films his confidence was strong enough to experiment without hesitation. This is a great example of art influencing film, it's pure pop-art, a early and paradigmatic example of postmodernism. It is also the first existential French film that I haven't hated. I find a lot of Godard's later work to be a mere shadow of Pierrot le Fou, with none of his later art pieces coming close to emulating the excitement, importance or flare. I guess you can only break the fourth wall first once.