Late in Pierrot Le Fou, Jean-Paul Belmondo will turn around, while driving his freshly stolen Ford Galaxie convertible, and break the fourth wall (the invisible wall that separates the actors from the audience); teasing the audience, with a snide and clever quip about his passenger, the lovely and endlessly watchable Anna Karina. Ms. Karina will ask, Who are you talking to?; Belmondo will reply, The audience.
This scene is not simply a frivolous wink and a nod; it is an invitation; to follow director and provocateur Jean-Luc Godard, wherever he may lead; which invariably will include Godard’s patented digressions (see The Story of Water) on politics, art, philosophy, and whatever else may be simmering in the back of his head.
Godard Breaks The Fourth Wall
Soon after the initial invitation, Anna Karina’s character Marianne will have grown restless, and weary of companion Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Where upon Ferdinand will ask Marianne if she is going to leave (and at this point in the film, it is a very good question to ask, of Marianne, and of the audience). Marianne will answer, first while facing Ferdinand, and then while facing directly into the camera: No.
The audience will second Marianne's desire to stay; as the tone and the pace of Pierrot Le Fou breaks dramatically with the furious and deliriously entertaining first and second acts; rich with visual stimuli, infused with skillfully placed subtext.
For the final act of Pierrot Le Fou plays out cold; stripped of the visual fireworks that propelled the audience to this point; Ferdinand and Marianne are hiding out in the south of France, two criminals on the lam; settled into the kind of domesticity Marianne helped Ferdinand escape from.
The only difference is, in his previous incarnation, Ferdinand was a husband and a father, spinning his wheels in the rat race; his thoughts on art, life, and literature drowned out by people who spoke in commercial slogans and tag lines, literally.
Before the climax, Marianne tries to convince Ferdinand that they must return to The Detective Novel they were living before, because the Jules Verne adventure they’re currently living has been exhausted.
Jean-Luc Godard's Detective Novel
Ferdinand is reading from his art history book at the end of Pierrot Le Fou, in the ocean, to Marianne; in the beginning of the film, he reading the same book, in the bathtub, to his young daughter.
After Ferdinand’s bath, he and his wife take off to a party, leaving their daughter with the babysitter, Ferdinand's former girlfriend, Marianne.
At the party, Ferdinand wanders from one conversation to the next, each scene coolly tinted in a different color; as all the party-goers speak in slogans and catch phrases from commercial advertisements.
The party scene is genius. Godard encapsulates an entire thesis on the corrosive impact of commercialism in a single, dazzlingly edited sequence.
After the party, Ferdinand takes the baby sitter home; and after a bit of reminiscing about their past, the two spend the night together in her flat.
The morning after, Godard presents a scattered, out of sequence series of shots, which will end with Marianne and Ferdinand bolting the scene with a bag full of money; leaving behind a bloody corpse in their wake.
Thus begins the Detective Novel part of the film; a more or less standard Bonnie and Clyde story, spiked with, of course, Godard digressions; and intercut brilliantly with images of comic book frames and works of fine art; which match perfectly the couple’s encounters with cartoonish action and violence.
With the film’s frequent references to the Vietnam War and Pop Art, Jean-Luc Godard further saturated Pierrot Le Fou with the color and tone of the times; resulting in a dizzying display of the film maker’s talent, as an artist, and as a social commentator.
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