Jean-Luc Godard Collection Vol.2 Reviews

Pierrot Le Fou

Jean Luc Godard pushed the boundaries of cinema to new limits with the bold and innovotive Breathless in 1960. Five years later he took it even further with the audacious and bizarre Pierrot Le Fou, a film he claimed to tell the story of the last romantic couple.

The picture is another fine example of Godard's preocupation with politics, American cinema and violence (in this case the looming Vietnam War) which concentrate more on feeling, mood and technique rather than an orderly plot. This approach allows a constant and feverish stream of cameos, gags, bold ideas and stylish set pieces. It's an anarchical film where he tries to do everything but the fact that it holds together and manages to balance the relation between popular and high culture confirms Godard as a true virtuoso of cinema. Belmondo and Anna Karina are as good as ever and the colours look fantastic.

all his best!

excellent choice of goddards best work

Choose 'Le Petit Soldat'

Le Petit Soldat is a real gem. The technique of panning the camera between people talking can be a bit ropey, but otherwise this is beautifully filmed and utterly engaging all the way through.

The pretentious art/philosopy babble, which only France can produce with a straight face, even contains some profound points; ridiculous in many places, certainly, but so well done you won't want to laugh at it too loudly.

Above all, though, this film reminded me that a film can also be a piece of art; it sets a benchmark on this level which is almost never exceeded nowadays.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Needs Poirot to sort it out

Somehow this one didn’t quite gel with me, I wasn’t sure what was going on. Stories don’t necessarily have to start at the beginning and work their way through to the end but this one seemed to jump about all over the place and, however technically perfect or wonderfully contrived, it didn’t do much for me at all. I was very impressed by a very young Julie Delpy and also by Johnny Hallyday, whose performance in L’homme du Train bored me rigid, but other than that – I can think of better things to do than watch this.

[Highly rated reviewer]

interesting

I liked this film, it 's spontaneity and thought provocation...

Pretentious drivel

I'm a big fan of French cinema, but there are few redeeming features in this classic piece of boring nonsense.

The 2 leads are poorly dubbed with the female voice particularly grating.

There a few slightly humorous moments and some nice cinematography, but this in no way compensates for aimless, plotless meandering.

Unless you're a Godard completist, give it a miss.

Pierrot Le Fou - Strange film, strange presentation

My 1st Godard film, possibly my last. Belmondo faces camera and says 'we are made of dreams, and dreams are made of us.' If that kind of thing appeals to you, salut.

Maybe it was way over my head, but I got virtually nothing out of this film.

Initially quite entertaining and off-the-wall, it just drifted into meaninglessness to my mind.

You can select the english overdub, or subtitles, and I notice that often totally different lines are said in each version, which is weird. A couple of times they break into song, and this is not dubbed, so I mainly used subs, which often make no sense. The woman's acting on the dub track is appalling anyway, a real distraction.

The commentary track tops it off. The guy, some professor or summat, says things like 'With Godard there is such harsh realism - talking of love while eating toast.' Eh?

[Highly rated reviewer]

Tedious Godard

After his initial brilliant films Godards films became more and more politicised and gimmicky. I hadnt seen this for 20 years and found it extremely dated, the characters and the motives very dated. When the characters are unsympathetic you just become irritated and bored.

Surreal and pretentious

The director and script-writer were obviously having fun mixing advertisement-like clips and dialogue with unrelated pretentious pseudo-philosophical utterances interspersed with shock-inducing scenes of dead bodies. A mess of a film. It might have seemed clever and ground-breaking in the 60s, but now it's just boring. I gave up after about 40 mins.