Godard made "Pierrot Le Fou" in 1965 in widescreen and colour and he wanted it to look like a Hollywood film...except that he didn't really. From "Breathless" on, Godard made films that paid homage to the Hollywood of the Fifties but which subverted both the style and the content of what Hollywood was turning out. "Pierrot Le Fou" looks like it could have been made by Sirk or Minnelli on acid, visually as gorgeous as anything they had made but as crazy as a Samuel Fuller film and in case we miss that reference, who turns up at a boring party but Fuller himself.
Of course, being Godard, don't expect too much in the way of plot. Belmondo, now wearing a suit and living in a fancy bourgeoisie apartment, is Pierrot, (though he keeps insisting his name is Ferdinand), who walks out of that boring party and offers to drive the babysitter home, (she's Anna Karina, who else, and looking more stunning than ever), so they climb into his car and drive off together, (they had been lovers before), but there are guns involved, dead bodies and mysterious gangsters who seem to be after Karina.
None of this so-called plot matters, of course. This is a road-movie, (they drive from Paris to the South of France), that you might dream rather than experience or maybe it's just a parody of a road movie, an American thriller or a romance, (it's source is Lionel White's novel "Obsession"), and even if Belmondo and Karina weren't the lovers at the centre you'd still know you were watching a Godard film. Nobody, but nobody else, made movies like this in the Sixties and probably still don't and in its way this is just as influential as "Bonnie and Clyde", (come to think of it, this would make a great double-bill with Penn's masterpiece). A cineaste's movie to be sure and if it doesn't look quite as fresh today as it did back then, it's still essential.
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