“Pierrot the Fool” A story of reunion and separation that symbolizes Godard in the 1960s

Synopsis of "Pierrot the Fool"

One day, Ferdinand, bored with his life with his wealthy wife, reunites with his old lover Marianne and confirms their love for each other. However, Ferdinand is caught up in an unexpected murder case and flees from Paris to the south of France with Marianne. At first, Marianne is satisfied with their life on the run, but she gradually begins to complain, and the two decide to go in search of Marianne's brother, who is said to be smuggling weapons.

Index

• Based on Lionel White's crime novel "Pierrot the Fool."
• Numerous similarities to the original novel
• The film's uniqueness is due to its faithfulness to the original novel
• A compilation that incorporates elements of Godard's 1960s films
• Reunion and parting with those once loved

Based on Lionel White's crime novel "Pierrot the Fool."

The entire screen is colored with red, blue, and yellow. Jean-Luc Godard's tenth feature film, Pierrot the Fool(1965), is a dark and gloomy film in spite of its vivid colors. The story itself is very similar to Godard's first feature film, Breathless (1960), about the escape of a man and woman who have committed a crime. After a murder occurs, the lovers escape in a car and head to the south of France, committing a series of robberies and faking their crimes. However, in Pierrot the Fool, it is not Jean-Paul Belmondo but Anna Karina who kills someone without hesitation, and the man falls down the road at the woman's invitation. The amount of blood and the number of corpses on screen is far greater than in Breathless , in which Belmondo steals a car and kills a policeman, and there is a sense of death throughout the film.

"Pierrot the Fool" is based on a crime novel. The Japanese translation of " Pierrot the Fool " (original title: Obsession) by American novelist Lionel White was published for the first time in May 2022, a few months before Godard's death. Lionel White is a writer who has written many crime novels, including the original novel for Stanley Kubrick's " PUT YOUR BODY IN CASH " (56), and his novel " Pierrot the Fool " was published in the United States in 1962. Although the film made in 1965 does not credit the original work, if you actually read the novel, you will see that Godard referenced various elements from the novel, even in small details such as the way the story unfolds and the fashion of the characters.

"Pierrot the Fool" Trailer

The protagonist of the novel version of " The Pierrot the Fool " is Conrad Madden. Unemployed, he goes to a party with his wife and drops off the babysitter he hired for their children, Allison (Allie) O'Connor, at her home, but gets caught up in a murder at her apartment. With the large amount of money he made from the murder, the two elope. They move around from place to place under false identities, but are separated when Allie betrays them. When they finally reunite, Allie unashamedly introduces Madden to her "brother," and Madden ends up helping the siblings in a robbery.

In the film, Conrad Madden plays Ferdinand Pierrot (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Alison O'Connor plays Marianne (Anna Karina), and the setting has been moved from America to France. The story is roughly the same as the novel, but the original was a Nabokovian Lolita -esque story about a 38-year-old man's obsession with a teenage girl. Godard originally conceived the protagonists as Richard Burton from England and Sylvie Vartan, who was around 20 years old at the time, but in reality, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina starred, which made the age difference between the protagonists less noticeable.