Godard le Fou
The apocryphal version of this story goes like this: It was 2012, I was heartbroken, and I suddenly found myself with a lot of spare time on my hands. To distract myself from the break-up, I dove into movies. Not just any movies, but the Criterion Collection in particular. The first Criterion I watched after the break-up was Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 doomed romance/road movie, Pierrot le fou. I immediately fell in love, both with the film and with Criterion. And unlike the relationship with my ex, this one has continued to flourish.
All of the above is more or less true, except for two big exceptions: One, I actually watched Pierrot le fou before the break-up, and two, while my love of Criterion has held strong these past 10 years, my affection for Godard has waned. That’s why when I woke up today to the news that Godard had died at the age of 91, I was sad but not heartbroken.
As with most people, my first experience with Godard was in college. A roommate suggested we watch Breathless, Godard’s 1960 debut film that basically rewrote the rulebook when it came to moviemaking. I have only the haziest memory of specific scenes and shots. Mostly I think I was unimpressed — or, more accurately, I was too ignorant to really understand why what I was seeing was so groundbreaking.
Fast forward another eight or so years to 2012. I had been hearing more and more about this Godard fellow, and I was also starting to get into the Criterion Collection, a boutique home-movie distribution company that focuses largely on arthouse/world cinema. If the average movie-goer is more interested in Hollywood summer blockbusters, the average Criterion aficionado is your run-of-the-mill film school student, for better or for worse.
The thing is, I never went to film school. I never even took a film appreciation class in college. For a long time I was one of those average movie-goers. My idea of movies was limited to American-made films in English, more or less from the ‘90s on. Sure, I had seen a handful of those black and white movies that were supposedly classics, but those never really interested me. (With the exception of Billy Wilder’s 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot — that one I enjoyed a lot the first time I saw it.)
But by 2012 my tastes were subtly changing. I was shifting from Kevin Smith to Wim Wenders, from David Fincher to Andrei Tarkovsky. And one of the biggest directors to help me make that transition was Jean-Luc Godard.
The first time I watched Pierrot le fou was on my computer over the span of two days. It was on YouTube, broken up into something like eight ~12 minute segments. Those breaks didn’t match any kind of narrative structure in the movie, it was more like: 12 minutes have passed, so it’s time to end that segment and start a new one. In hindsight, it was a very Godard way of watching a Godard movie.
Also, I lied: I first watched Pierrot le fou in late 2011, not 2012. (The apocryphal version has already started to replace reality.) I saw half the movie at night and the remaining part of the movie the following afternoon. The two things I remember most from that viewing experience were: One, near the beginning, there’s a party sequence where Pierrot (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is standing with his back against the wall. To his right is a young woman and to his left is the American director Samuel Fuller. The three of them have a conversation, and in the middle of their conversation — for no apparent reason other than that it’s incredibly jarring — the color of the film changes. It goes from having natural tones to being bathed in red. Or a light green. These are more than mere flashes, as they stick around just long enough for you to think, Why is this happening?
The second thing I remember is closer to the end of the film. There’s a short scene that takes place in a bowling alley. I can’t remember now if it’s Pierrot or if it’s Marianne (Anna Karina), but one of them rolls a bowling ball down the lane and the camera tracks back diagonally as it follows the bowling ball’s trajectory. Then, without cutting, we see the ball return on its track and the camera dollies forward to mirror the ball’s motion. It’s a simple effect that blew me away.
Still, by the end of the movie I was left more confused than entertained. I didn’t get what all the fuss was about. So I kept thinking about it. It’s true that the further into the movie I got the easier it was to watch — you grow accustomed to Godard’s film grammar, which is often as disorienting as reading Faulkner for the first time. And I did like it. There were some really great lines of dialogue, some fun scenes. I think I understood the plot, more or less.
It was this process of going over the movie in my head that made me want to give it another try. So maybe a week later — maybe even less — I sat down and rewatched Pierrot le fou, this time in one chunk instead of two. That combined with knowing what I was getting myself into made the second viewing a completely different experience. I appreciated how playful and downright weird Godard’s choices were sometimes. I found myself paying more attention to the dialogue and how it foreshadowed Pierrot and Marianne’s doomed romance.
I walked away loving the movie. From there I went on to see many of Godard’s other films from the ‘60s, including Vivre sa vie (1962), Weekend (1967), A Woman Is a Woman (1961), Contempt (1963), and Masculin féminin (1966). And while I enjoyed elements of each of those movies, they never grabbed me the same way as Pierrot le fou. I think it’s very likely that your first Godard is going to be your favorite Godard, if only because, like a magician, his tricks don’t have quite the same impact the second, third, or fourth time you see them. He finds new ways of remixing, but at the end of the day it’s still the same song.
I think this largely explains why, in the past 10 years or so, I’ve grown a little less enamored with Godard. The thrill and disorientation that comes from his stylistic choices largely lacks any real purpose other than to shock or provoke. And while many other filmmakers try their best to create that suspension of disbelief, to strive for verisimilitude, Godard is so confident/arrogant/self-obsessed that he doesn’t even try. Now, sure, that’s exhilarating in its own way, but it doesn’t feel as satisfying as a viewer — at least for me. Because it isn’t hard to remind the audience that they’re watching a movie. The harder trick is to succeed in making them forget.
Around the same time Godard was making movies in France as part of the French New Wave, Japanese filmmakers like Seijun Suzuki, Hiroshi Teshigahara, and Masahiro Shinoda were part of the Japanese New Wave. Both film movements are notable for their unique use of visuals (be it shots or compositions), music/sound, and overall chaos/meta-ness. At the end of the day I’d take a Suzuki over a Truffaut, a Teshigahara over a Rohmer, a Shinoda over a Godard. Japanese New Wave feels fresher, more fun, and more entertaining than the French New Wave, which, maybe just because it’s French, has always felt more pretentious to me.
I don’t mean to shit all over Godard now that he’s gone. To be fair, he’s been vastly, hugely, astronomically influential in the world of film. I doubt there’s a single filmmaker from the ‘70s onward who wasn’t influenced in some way by Godard. His cultural reach is staggering. I just happen to think that more modern filmmakers have taken his tricks and improved upon them. One example that comes to mind: The silent ballet sequence near the end of Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020). It’s a weird moment that totally takes you out of the film. It’s very different stylistically than anything we have seen before. It lasts maybe a little longer than it should. All of these feel like Godard-esque trademarks, but Kaufman uses them to tell the story in a different way, to enhance the plot rather than detract from it. In short, there’s a purpose and reason behind the choice, and that’s what I think separates it from some of Godard’s flashy shocks.
Still, if it weren’t for Pierrot le fou, I don’t know if I would’ve gone in so deep with Criterion. And if I hadn’t gotten into Criterion, then I would probably have a much narrower scope of film knowledge and appreciation. There are so many amazing movies I’ve seen in the past 10 years all because Godard opened a door to an entirely new world of cinema. It’s a bit like going from a tricycle to a bicycle with training wheels to then riding a bike all on your own — at a certain point you no longer need the training wheels, even if they were an integral part of how you got to where you are now.
There is a fun coda to this story: In May 2016, I went to a screening of Pierrot le fou at the Museum of the Moving Image. Anna Karina was there in person, and she gave an interview on stage after the film. This was a few years before she died. (Somehow — I’m still not sure how — Godard outlived everyone.) I didn’t go to this screening alone — I took my then girlfriend, now wife. Thus, the film that marked the end of one relationship (at least apocryphally) also marked the start of another.