Pierrot Le Fou

Since the packaging currently available is different from a previous DVD incarnation, could it be possible that the disc represents a newer, improved mastering? This is suggested only because to this viewer, the film looks mostly terrific. The sound is another story: mastered at a low-level, it does not come across as well as might be expected. As for the walkie-talkie scenes, they are surely meant to sound the way they do.

4 stars as a rating, because there are no trailers or extras worth mentioning.

An acceptable, if not ideal, DVD of a one-of-a-kind film experience


pitiful joy   August 25, 2002
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

The five stars go to the movie, not to the dvd edition.This is a joyful, playful, charming movie by Godard, of course. But the dvd edition is simply infamous and shows and amazing contempt for the viewer.The picture quality is poor, the sound is even worse and half of the subtitles can't be read. Although the letterbox format has been respected, no one has bothered to place the subtitles in the lower black fringe. When the white letters happen to be on white and pale colours you can't read a thing. Godard does not seem to be much fancied at Fox/Lorber quarters: they haven't spent a dime on this edition.


Disc 2 documentary   February 21, 2008
Paul Beauparlant (east coast USA)
11 out of 14 found this review helpful

...straight to the current interview with Anna Karina found on disc 2 of this set. Anna now looks like the female equivalent of the way Keith Richards looks nowadays, and talks like him too for that matter..all liquor soaked and head tossing. It's really uncanny. This will almost squash all your passion and longing vision that you have for her. Almost. For, aside from the main feature (disc 1) we are chauferred back in time via several mini-featurettes contained on the 2nd disc. "Godare, L'amour, la Poesie", a fifty minute documentary chronicling Godard's life and films with Karina is worth the price of this set. Here, we learn and understand the man that Godard was, what his films meant to him and how he met and worked with and used and loved and fell out of with the singular Anna Karina.
Her face........her face, her hair, her lips, her tall slender figure clothed in reds and soft blue, and the black and white film clips from the period, restore the magnetic allure that will captivate any man from any decade. There are two black and white interviews with Jean-Luc from the time period (1965)that show him very relaxed and thoughtful to the questions he is given and his answers. Another filmed interview from the period with Belmondo shows him to also be very relaxed and amusing. It's quite a revelation to see how he was in real life away from the brusk gangsters and ne'er-do-wells that he played on the screen. The 2 disc set comes with a thick booklet carrying beautiful color stills, a lengthy interview with J-L.G, a nice review from Andrew Sarris and more.


Potential, but expires upon comparison to historical denial.   April 30, 2001
Everett Green (Seattle, Wa)
10 out of 29 found this review helpful

Godard's unmatched visual direction takes a spin toward a dangerous curve called despair. Like the the works of faience found in Tijuana, Jean-Luc takes a poised aim at the portrait of a young man in need of a colorful existence. I tried to keep steadfast focus on this work, but the unjust harrassment that the "hoodlum" characters expouse on the protagonist ripped me back to a dark day, when I was a Greenpeace member, the day when fascist whalers doused our rowboat with QT lotion. This film illustrates that exact pain, only this is expressed as a cinematic failance I have not seen since "La Hacha Diabolica."

But Godard loses touch by mere theatrical mishandlings. He obviously knows nothing of France's infamous clown, and even misspells the name of Mexico's greatest lucha libre rudo by deleting the "H" in the name. How can any artist call that brilliant? If directed by an artist, like Emilio Charles Jr, the Latin post-impressionist, this would be a work of sheer brilliance. Sadly, he tells one big lie on the silver screen, tarnishing it into a bitter dirty canvas. I weep when I think of the potential.