Ferdinand (aka Pierrot), dissatisfied with his Parisian life and his wife sets off to a picaresque journey across France to the South with Marianne. Along the way, they get involved with her brother and his criminal activities. Godard’s stunning study of personal and global violence uses colour in a dramatic and symbolic manner. In many ways it is a watershed film in which Godard calls his whole work in the cinema into question. It is also a summation of his work to this time, an unclassifiable film of disorientingly abrupt changes of mood combining the diary form with pulp fiction and romantic tragedy, experimentation in narration with filmed essay all heavily laden with cultural and political references. As American director Sam Fuller reflects in the picture, ‘Film is like a battleground, love, hate, action, violence, death … in one word, Emotion.’
Credits: Producer, Georges de Beauregard ; director, Jean-Luc Godard ; writer, Jean-Luc Godard ; photography, Raoul Coutard ; music, Antoine Duhamel.
Cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Dirk Sanders, Hans Meyer, Raymond Devos, Samuel Fuller.
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How to watch
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
X000247
Languages
English
French
Subject category
Foreign language films
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Colour
Holdings
16mm film; Limited Access Print (Section 2)