The Criterion Collection

[Blu-Velvet]

Originally Posted by Fellini912

I was sold when I heard the water splash from the boat at the beginning. It is identical to real life, it was frighteningly realistic.

This is still my go to movie for an audio demonstration (for disbelievers of the blu ray). You have the right idea, play the movie on the Fourth of July.

What other movies do you recommend with outstanding surround sound?

There are quite a few, especially recent (past 30 years) war, sci-fi and action films, but a few of the first Blu-rays that really impressed me with their crisp, wide-range, and immersive mixes were MASTER AND COMMANDER, the remake of 3:10 TO YUMA, and of course BLADE RUNNER and more recently APPALOOSA, BENJAMIN BUTTON, and PROMETHEUS. It's also great to turn up the volume on musicals like ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, CHICAGO, DREAMGIRLS, and CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG. Then there's the GODFATHER TRILOGY, the Indiana Jones films, the Pirates of the Caribbean films, the Lord of the Ring films, and the Harry Potter films, to name a few that can show off your sound system.

Among older films in stereo, I've been especially pleased with the audio quality on THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, BEN-HUR, PICNIC, RIVER OF NO RETURN, WEST SIDE STORY, the 1967 CASINO ROYALE, and PATTON.

[P@t_Mtl]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

Pat, wasn't trying to put you down. Most of the time I am very appreciative of your input, but that post seemed like a pointless rant. After all, haven't you said in the past how much you dislike how everybody calls everything either "best" or "worst ever"? I was just pointing out an inconsistency.

Anyways, I'm very curious to see Queen Margot and I would still like to hear why you disliked it so much. I'm actually genuinely curious it's been on my "queue" for quite some time. If you have nothing to say on the film, we can just leave it at that and continue on with the Criterion Discussion

Oh where do I begin

First problem would be Patrice Chereau. I am not sure how well his other movies are known outside of the Francophone world and I know that he as won Ceasars and prizes for some of them, he's well respected director. That being said I don't enjoy his style of direction and story telling. If I could give an example from the more mainstream movie world it would be Chris Nolan. A well known respected and liked director but I do not enjoy his movies and how he make's them. It's the same for Patrice Chereau. There are certain directors like that that I just don't really understand their style or enjoy the way they make movies.

Second Isabelle Adjani. Yes I know she is the Meryl Streep of the Francophone world with 5 Ceasar as best actress, I know she is well loved by Americans, she as appeared in many beloved movies but I never liked her. There is something about how she act that rub's me to wrong way.

Three, I really like the version from the 50's. Now I will not make a defense here claiming the 50's version is a masterpiece, far from it. Most likely if any of you were to see it now, you would find it cheesy, dated and wonder if anything is well with my sanity It's just one of those things that are hard to explain.

And in the end this being the big one, my expectations were so high that my disapointment could not be anything else but big when it hit. What I mean is Alexandre Dumas is one of my favorite author. You see as a kid my mom never really got me toys but she would give me books. I would get the toys (tons of them) from the extended family. I grew up reading Dumas, Hugo, Verne and the books of Les Aventures De Bob Morane. Les Trois Mousquetaires and Le Comte De Monte Cristo were two of my favorites growing up. I also read la Reine Margot quite a few times. My expection of the movies were just too high. I dislike how Chereau constructed the movie. I felt Adjani was a very wrong choice to play the title role, I did not like the atmosphere of the movie nor how the actors played the roles. The one redeeming thing of the movie for me was Daniel Auteuil as Henry De Bourbon but he wasn't enough to save it in the end. I was sitting there watching the movie and felt so disapointed on how everything was playing out and really got bored. I did give it another chance months later once it was on the french movie channel but just could not enjoy it. I have not tried it since. Now I suppose I could give it another chance, it's been 20 years and I will admit I have change ( everyone does in that much of a period of a time) and who know's what my reaction might be this time?

So here we have it. Truly sorry for the log post.

[P@t_Mtl]

Originally Posted by Fellini912

There is no reason to apologize. You are a very polite individual.

Having someone give a negative review on a film is really a courageous thing to do, especially on this thread. I really appreciate a negative review (sometimes more than a positive review). It makes me cautious in buying a film (especially a blind buy).

Someone that continuously gives positive reviews on all films viewed, makes me wonder if they are truly honest or just being extremely polite.

This month I have been watching Russian films, and with my experience, I would not recommend Tarkovsky's Solaris as the first film to watch from his filmography. I would recommend Ivan's Childhood or Andrei Rublev. Due to Solaris, I put him in the back burner for 10 years.

In general I try to skip talking or posting about movies I don't enjoy cause I can't be bother too much to write why I dislike them in the proper way so yeah it's annoying for others just reading something like

I really dislike it, it's boring

since it does really say much about it.

I would never recommend Solaris as a first watching for anyone unless it's the American version which I find is probably easier to take in than Tarkovsky's. I suppose others could make different arguments but that is how I see it. I discovered Russian cinema (I suppose we used to call in back them Soviet cinema) in college. I really enjoyed it from the start. Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, Dovzhenko, Sokurov. Yes many of the movies are propaganda tools for the ideology of the political party but so many of them are reall gems of story telling. It's too bad that they are not as well known as many of other movie from Europe.

[P@t_Mtl]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

Blade Runner is one of my favorite films. However, when I showed it to my brother a couple months back, I was a bit dispirited when he deemed the soundtrack "cheesy." He said he loved everything else, though.

Two 80's scores that are fantastic aswell: the Last Temptation of Christ & For All Mankind

A lot of the scores from the 80's sound a little dated now. So many of them went with the style of the time, a lot of electronic synth sound. Unless you grew up with the movies or enjoyed them from the start the music feel's strange to people discovering them. It's so different than watching a movie with an orchestral soundtrack.

For Blade Runner I do feel like the way they went for the music match the movie so well. I can't imagine the movie with an ochestral sound.

[rock, stone]

Originally Posted by octagon

The first two things to come to mind are always the opening of Blade Runner and all of Apocalypse Now.

When you think of AN you naturally enough think explosions but everything about that disc is fantastic. I get chills every time I hear the opening chords of The End.

And oddly enough early seasons of Dexter come to mind too. There really isn't all that much surround activity but the soundtrack and music cues are really, really well-mixed and immersive and add a lot to the overall atmosphere.

Yep, totally agree. Honestly, I think the very best thing about Dexter has always been the opening titles and listened to on a nice setup the credits build up enough good will to carry me through 45 minutes of lazy storytelling.

The Mad Men titles also have a lot of subtle surround activity that I always appreciate.

I wish CC (or someone else) would do more near field remixes like they did for The Game. I really don't think much of the movie but am super curious about that mix.

[ravenus]

Originally Posted by octagon

Yeah, I keep going back and forth on a decent pair of wireless headphones.

IMO wireless headphones and decent sound are mutually exclusive. They're OK for TV, but for music or any movie where sound quality is important, I would definitely go for a wired pair in the 100$+ range...but not Bose, which to my ears, is very hyped. My Alessandro music series headphones (Grado Labs) have worked pretty well for my tastes. Apart from music, I mainly use headphones to hear audio commentaries on movies, and for some PC gaming.

[nkumar]

Originally Posted by the sordid sentinel

Watched Army of Shadows yesterday. Worthy of the hype and then some. I've always been a big Mann and Friedkin fan and you can definitely tell they were influenced by Melville. I hope somehow my order of Le Cercle Rogue ships from Amazon. I am fast becoming a Melville fan boy. Currently kicking myself for not ordering these long before I did. Still hard to believe they went OOP so quickly.

When did you order yours in Amazon? I've ordered Le Cercle Rogue and Last year at Marienbad more than a month ago. Amazon still don't have delivery date. I slowly loosing my hope on these. Luckily I was able to get Army of Shadows and Leon Morin, Priest.

[secretsquirrel]

I can only afford one of Le Cercle Rouge and Army of Shadows. Can anyone peek at my collection and make a recommendation? I'm torn. I think I'll like Army of Shadows more but I'm afraid if I don't get Le Cercle Rouge now I'll be priced out of it for the foreseeable future. I have both on hold but can only afford one.

Opinions? Thoughts?

[The Great Owl]

After finding the currently out-of-print Criterion Blu-ray of Pierrot Le Fou from a third-party Amazon dealer last month and watching it last night, I'll now attempt a write-up.



I first saw Pierrot Le Fou in 2008, shortly after the release of the Criterion DVD edition. This was the first Jean-Luc Godard film that I had ever seen, and, in retrospect, I would have benefited from seeing some of Godard's earlier and more accessible films first. Despite having not yet seen Breathless, Vivre Sa Vie, Band of Outsiders, and other such earlier French New Wave landmarks from Godard, I was still strangely riveted by Pierrot Le Fou, and I enjoyed revisiting the DVD several times to unravel the puzzle from different angles. As I watched Pierrot Le Fou on Blu-ray for the first time last night, I found that I am not necessarily any closer to mapping out a coherent analysis of the film, but I was still joyously mesmerized by the sheer power of various images in the film and by the sense of reckless abandon in the roles of the two lead actors, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina.

The basic skeletal plot framework of Pierrot Le Fou is simple enough. Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a disillusioned intellectual who is bored with his marriage, returns alone from a deadeningly shallow bourgeois party and runs off with the family babysitter, Marianne (Anna Karina), with whom he had a relationship years earlier. Ferdinand discovers that Marianne has ties to shady paramilitary gangsters and arms dealers apparently associated with the French-Algerian conflict, but is nonetheless swept up and away into her thrill-seeking lifestyle after the two of them narrowly escape two gangsters while leaving her apartment. Chaos ensues in the form of a road trip that resembles, at turns, a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime spree, a slapstick comedy, and even a Robinson Crusoe-esque life of exclusion.

The simple plot foundation of Pierrot Le Fou is ultimately discombobulated beyond the realm of conventional two-dimensional cinematic stories into a loose patchwork of episodes that often defy logical analysis. Marianne, who constantly refers to Ferdinand as "Pierrot" in a sing-song fashion, lapses into occasional musical performances. Dialogue at a boring party echos commercial ads in an amusing reflection of how consumerism affects interactions. A performance play for American tourists may serve as an apparent scathing criticism of America's involvement in Vietnam or as an observation of the parallels between war documentary footage of that era and conventional entertainment. A brief water torture sequence probably raised a few eyebrows in the wake of France's interrogations of Algerians. The real-life dissolution of Jean-Luc Godard's marriage to Anna Karina seems to echo in the movie in the form of Ferdinand seeing his blissful poetic musings disrupted by Marianne's discontent.

Ferdinand and Marianne both break the fourth wall to address the audience directly, and there is not a single moment in the film when these two people do not seem aware that they are being observed as movie characters. Pierrot Le Fou has a deliberately scrappy improvised feel, as through the characters are constantly debating with one another about how to proceed with the story while the audience is watching them. One character seems content to write poetry on a beach while the other walks the beach wondering aloud what to do, as though she senses that the audience is growing antsy for her to advance the plot of the movie.

Godard's abandonment of cinematic conventions somehow never seems like a chore to watch, and Pierrot Le Fou, in its final result, is an irresistibly fun film for viewers who are open to the idea of experiencing a movie as a collage of images and interactions instead of as a straightforward narrative. Pierrot Le Fou draws heavily from the pop art of its day, and, as such, many scenes gleefully resemble comic book panels or commercial magazine ads. I was born in 1972, and this film landed a few years before my time, but Pierrot Le Fou always challenges me to think back on what life must have been like in the turbulent mid-1960s, then the brutality of daily war footage intersected with the buoyant optimism of space exploration.

Pierrot Le Fou looks wonderful on Blu-ray, and the video transfer gives the Techniscope colors a vibrant prominence. A handful of generous extra features shed light on the movie, even if they do not quite scratch the surface of explaining the film.

My one and only complaint about this particular Criterion Blu-ray presentation is that the white English subtitles are not always readily legible, as they are placed to the bottom of the screen in front of Godard's gloriously bright and sunny images. When watching this movie, especially for the first time, one may have to rewind certain scenes to read these subtitles. This is only a minor flaw in an otherwise outstanding presentation.

[shortmartin]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

After finding the currently out-of-print Criterion Blu-ray of Pierrot Le Fou from a third-party Amazon dealer last month and watching it last night, I'll now attempt a write-up.

[Show spoiler]

I first saw Pierrot Le Fou in 2008, shortly after the release of the Criterion DVD edition. This was the first Jean-Luc Godard film that I had ever seen, and, in retrospect, I would have benefited from seeing some of Godard's earlier and more accessible films first. Despite having not yet seen Breathless, Vivre Sa Vie, Band of Outsiders, and other such earlier French New Wave landmarks from Godard, I was still strangely riveted by Pierrot Le Fou, and I enjoyed revisiting the DVD several times to unravel the puzzle from different angles. As I watched Pierrot Le Fou on Blu-ray for the first time last night, I found that I am not necessarily any closer to mapping out a coherent analysis of the film, but I was still joyously mesmerized by the sheer power of various images in the film and by the sense of reckless abandon in the roles of the two lead actors, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina.

The basic skeletal plot framework of Pierrot Le Fou is simple enough. Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a disillusioned intellectual who is bored with his marriage, returns alone from a deadeningly shallow bourgeois party and runs off with the family babysitter, Marianne (Anna Karina), with whom he had a relationship years earlier. Ferdinand discovers that Marianne has ties to shady paramilitary gangsters and arms dealers apparently associated with the French-Algerian conflict, but is nonetheless swept up and away into her thrill-seeking lifestyle after the two of them narrowly escape two gangsters while leaving her apartment. Chaos ensues in the form of a road trip that resembles, at turns, a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime spree, a slapstick comedy, and even a Robinson Crusoe-esque life of exclusion.

The simple plot foundation of Pierrot Le Fou is ultimately discombobulated beyond the realm of conventional two-dimensional cinematic stories into a loose patchwork of episodes that often defy logical analysis. Marianne, who constantly refers to Ferdinand as "Pierrot" in a sing-song fashion, lapses into occasional musical performances. Dialogue at a boring party echos commercial ads in an amusing reflection of how consumerism affects interactions. A performance play for American tourists may serve as an apparent scathing criticism of America's involvement in Vietnam or as an observation of the parallels between war documentary footage of that era and conventional entertainment. A brief water torture sequence probably raised a few eyebrows in the wake of France's interrogations of Algerians. The real-life dissolution of Jean-Luc Godard's marriage to Anna Karina seems to echo in the movie in the form of Ferdinand seeing his blissful poetic musings disrupted by Marianne's discontent.

Ferdinand and Marianne both break the fourth wall to address the audience directly, and there is not a single moment in the film when these two people do not seem aware that they are being observed as movie characters. Pierrot Le Fou has a deliberately scrappy improvised feel, as through the characters are constantly debating with one another about how to proceed with the story while the audience is watching them. One character seems content to write poetry on a beach while the other walks the beach wondering aloud what to do, as though she senses that the audience is growing antsy for her to advance the plot of the movie.

Godard's abandonment of cinematic conventions somehow never seems like a chore to watch, and Pierrot Le Fou, in its final result, is an irresistibly fun film for viewers who are open to the idea of experiencing a movie as a collage of images and interactions instead of as a straightforward narrative. Pierrot Le Fou draws heavily from the pop art of its day, and, as such, many scenes gleefully resemble comic book panels or commercial magazine ads. I was born in 1972, and this film landed a few years before my time, but Pierrot Le Fou always challenges me to think back on what life must have been like in the turbulent mid-1960s, then the brutality of daily war footage intersected with the buoyant optimism of space exploration.

Pierrot Le Fou looks wonderful on Blu-ray, and the video transfer gives the Techniscope colors a vibrant prominence. A handful of generous extra features shed light on the movie, even if they do not quite scratch the surface of explaining the film.

My one and only complaint about this particular Criterion Blu-ray presentation is that the white English subtitles are not always readily legible, as they are placed to the bottom of the screen in front of Godard's gloriously bright and sunny images. When watching this movie, especially for the first time, one may have to rewind certain scenes to read these subtitles. This is only a minor flaw in an otherwise outstanding presentation.

Cool, many thanks for this excellent review. Pierrot is one of my favorite movies, probably my top Godard film (with Breathless number two) and this review enhances my experience of it.

[shortmartin]

I watched Kid With a Bike last night and, honestly, I was underwhelmed. Perhaps I went into it with too-high expectations due to the praise it's received in nearly all quarters, including here on this forum. Don't get me wrong, it's a high caliber movie that is worth every second of viewing. But a couple of things stand out for me as bothersome.

[Show spoiler]I found the plot cliche and manipulative in places, especially the subplot involving 'the dealer,' which I thought was too one-dimensional. It obviously is means of representing a negative trap into which Cyril could potentially fall, and so giving us some insights into the negative aspects of the small-town social world that Cyril is living in. But I found it rather trite and cliche . . . maybe if the dealer's own life were developed more fully, or if we had gotten to know 'the gang' more. As is, the subplot involving 'the dealer' seems too simple and symbolic to me - he is a negative influence, a temptation, a source of menace and malice, a 'bad side of the tracks' type of story . . . one that to my mind has been handled much better, and in more complex, subtle, and richly informed ways elsewhere. Then again, expanding the scope of this subplot, or digging into it more deeply, would stretch the film beyond the Dardennes' patented ~90-minute frame.

Another issue for me was Cyril's father. Here again I found it flat and too simplistic. In what ways is he ambivalent about abandoning Cyril?, which is only implied, not fully explored. We're left with very little knowledge of the father and his own emotional and moral life.

So my problem with the film doesn't relate to the obvious omission of details related to why the hairdresser would go out of her way to befriend and care for Cyril (her motives aren't fully explained . . . but I was okay with this, the flow of her care in the film felt authentic), but rather the range of emotions and the social realities surrounding Cyril, the town's youth, and his father.

Perhaps these elliptical aspects of the film, with much detail, back-story, and complexity left out, are precisely what the filmmakers were going for. Indeed, the Dardennes obviously know what they are doing and they make beautiful, haunting, and realistic films. But in this one more than their others I've felt hanging and wanting more. Overall, I'm truly glad that I watched it, and that I own the film, and I will likely revisit it in due time . . . probably coming to appreciate it in new and subtler ways. For now, Kid With a Bike is a full notch or two down from where I rank La Promesse, which is very high indeed.

[shortmartin]

Originally Posted by secretsquirrel

I can only afford one of Le Cercle Rouge and Army of Shadows. Can anyone peek at my collection and make a recommendation? I'm torn. I think I'll like Army of Shadows more but I'm afraid if I don't get Le Cercle Rouge now I'll be priced out of it for the foreseeable future. I have both on hold but can only afford one.

Opinions? Thoughts?

Just from looking at your collection, I'd say Le Cercle Rouge . . . you have many more crime movies than war movies, so if that's an indication of your interests . . . on the other hand, Army of Shadows might be a way of rounding out some needs on the more war-related side of things. Just some thoughts, hope they're helpful.

[the sordid sentinel]

Originally Posted by nkumar

When did you order yours in Amazon? I've ordered Le Cercle Rogue and Last year at Marienbad more than a month ago. Amazon still don't have delivery date. I slowly loosing my hope on these. Luckily I was able to get Army of Shadows and Leon Morin, Priest.

Ordered both on 4/12. Received Army of Shadows on 4/27.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by P@t_Mtl

Oh where do I begin

[Show spoiler]
First problem would be Patrice Chereau. I am not sure how well his other movies are known outside of the Francophone world and I know that he as won Ceasars and prizes for some of them, he's well respected director. That being said I don't enjoy his style of direction and story telling. If I could give an example from the more mainstream movie world it would be Chris Nolan. A well known respected and liked director but I do not enjoy his movies and how he make's them. It's the same for Patrice Chereau. There are certain directors like that that I just don't really understand their style or enjoy the way they make movies.

Second Isabelle Adjani. Yes I know she is the Meryl Streep of the Francophone world with 5 Ceasar as best actress, I know she is well loved by Americans, she as appeared in many beloved movies but I never liked her. There is something about how she act that rub's me to wrong way.

Three, I really like the version from the 50's. Now I will not make a defense here claiming the 50's version is a masterpiece, far from it. Most likely if any of you were to see it now, you would find it cheesy, dated and wonder if anything is well with my sanity It's just one of those things that are hard to explain.

And in the end this being the big one, my expectations were so high that my disapointment could not be anything else but big when it hit. What I mean is Alexandre Dumas is one of my favorite author. You see as a kid my mom never really got me toys but she would give me books. I would get the toys (tons of them) from the extended family. I grew up reading Dumas, Hugo, Verne and the books of Les Aventures De Bob Morane. Les Trois Mousquetaires and Le Comte De Monte Cristo were two of my favorites growing up. I also read la Reine Margot quite a few times. My expection of the movies were just too high. I dislike how Chereau constructed the movie. I felt Adjani was a very wrong choice to play the title role, I did not like the atmosphere of the movie nor how the actors played the roles. The one redeeming thing of the movie for me was Daniel Auteuil as Henry De Bourbon but he wasn't enough to save it in the end. I was sitting there watching the movie and felt so disapointed on how everything was playing out and really got bored. I did give it another chance months later once it was on the french movie channel but just could not enjoy it. I have not tried it since. Now I suppose I could give it another chance, it's been 20 years and I will admit I have change ( everyone does in that much of a period of a time) and who know's what my reaction might be this time?

So here we have it. Truly sorry for the log post.

Thanks for the reply. You can't ask much more than seeing a film one disliked twice. That's more than generous.

Who knows, when I finally see the film I just may agree with you about the direction, the performances and the lack of adherence to the source material.

[Abdrewes]

What does everybody make of Filmspotting's Josh Larsen's negative review of 12 Angry Men. He really gives no worthwhile points to support his take:

[Show spoiler]

12 Angry Men beats you into submission – not unlike the whooping of righteous indignation that Peter Fonda gives to his fellow jurors in the movie. I know, I know, we’re supposed to cheer his one-man crusade for justice within the American court system. I just wanted to be let out of the jury room.

Would I feel the same way if I had seen the movie upon its 1957 release? Hard to say. Already a respected teleplay and stage production about a lone dissenting juror who methodically convinces his fellow citizens to acquit, 12 Angry Men was an immediate prestige picture that was nominated for three Academy Awards. But even then it must have felt, to some, like a harangue. Perhaps in 1957 it would have been even harder to admit to such a reaction. Perhaps the then-radical social message – which shouldn’t be dismissed – was valued over all else.

No matter the era, didacticism can often be the enemy of art.

No matter the era, though, didacticism can often be the enemy of art. When a movie insists on hammering a single point home, creativity falls by the wayside. Only volume matters. Everything in 12 Angry Men is loud. Fonda’s white suit, brightly marking him as the picture’s angel. Lee J. Cobb’s frothing racist, barking to the bitter end. The speech that the immigrant watchmaker (George Voskovec) gives about the meaning of democracy. In fact, 12 Angry Men has little dialogue or conversation. It’s mostly made up of exhortation.

Perhaps the stage is this story’s natural home (I haven’t seen it there myself). At least in live theater the drama could have some space, whereas director Sidney Lumet emphasizes the claustrophobia (notice the focus on the broken jury-room fan). Even an eye-rolling moment – like the one in which each juror slowly turns his back as a racist runs at the mouth – would likely work better on the stage, where such choreography is a more common part of the art form.

Mind you, I’m not calling for 12 Angry Men to be “opened up.” That’s hardly a guaranteed path to adaptation success. In fact, one senses that even if it became more cinematic, the movie would likely have been even more overbearing. 12 Angry Men opens with a portentous pan up the grand, exterior columns of the courthouse, and what follows is no less momentous. Watching the movie is like having one of those columns dropped on your head.

[Abdrewes]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

[Show spoiler]After finding the currently out-of-print Criterion Blu-ray of Pierrot Le Fou from a third-party Amazon dealer last month and watching it last night, I'll now attempt a write-up.



I first saw Pierrot Le Fou in 2008, shortly after the release of the Criterion DVD edition. This was the first Jean-Luc Godard film that I had ever seen, and, in retrospect, I would have benefited from seeing some of Godard's earlier and more accessible films first. Despite having not yet seen Breathless, Vivre Sa Vie, Band of Outsiders, and other such earlier French New Wave landmarks from Godard, I was still strangely riveted by Pierrot Le Fou, and I enjoyed revisiting the DVD several times to unravel the puzzle from different angles. As I watched Pierrot Le Fou on Blu-ray for the first time last night, I found that I am not necessarily any closer to mapping out a coherent analysis of the film, but I was still joyously mesmerized by the sheer power of various images in the film and by the sense of reckless abandon in the roles of the two lead actors, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina.

The basic skeletal plot framework of Pierrot Le Fou is simple enough. Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a disillusioned intellectual who is bored with his marriage, returns alone from a deadeningly shallow bourgeois party and runs off with the family babysitter, Marianne (Anna Karina), with whom he had a relationship years earlier. Ferdinand discovers that Marianne has ties to shady paramilitary gangsters and arms dealers apparently associated with the French-Algerian conflict, but is nonetheless swept up and away into her thrill-seeking lifestyle after the two of them narrowly escape two gangsters while leaving her apartment. Chaos ensues in the form of a road trip that resembles, at turns, a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime spree, a slapstick comedy, and even a Robinson Crusoe-esque life of exclusion.

The simple plot foundation of Pierrot Le Fou is ultimately discombobulated beyond the realm of conventional two-dimensional cinematic stories into a loose patchwork of episodes that often defy logical analysis. Marianne, who constantly refers to Ferdinand as "Pierrot" in a sing-song fashion, lapses into occasional musical performances. Dialogue at a boring party echos commercial ads in an amusing reflection of how consumerism affects interactions. A performance play for American tourists may serve as an apparent scathing criticism of America's involvement in Vietnam or as an observation of the parallels between war documentary footage of that era and conventional entertainment. A brief water torture sequence probably raised a few eyebrows in the wake of France's interrogations of Algerians. The real-life dissolution of Jean-Luc Godard's marriage to Anna Karina seems to echo in the movie in the form of Ferdinand seeing his blissful poetic musings disrupted by Marianne's discontent.

Ferdinand and Marianne both break the fourth wall to address the audience directly, and there is not a single moment in the film when these two people do not seem aware that they are being observed as movie characters. Pierrot Le Fou has a deliberately scrappy improvised feel, as through the characters are constantly debating with one another about how to proceed with the story while the audience is watching them. One character seems content to write poetry on a beach while the other walks the beach wondering aloud what to do, as though she senses that the audience is growing antsy for her to advance the plot of the movie.

Godard's abandonment of cinematic conventions somehow never seems like a chore to watch, and Pierrot Le Fou, in its final result, is an irresistibly fun film for viewers who are open to the idea of experiencing a movie as a collage of images and interactions instead of as a straightforward narrative. Pierrot Le Fou draws heavily from the pop art of its day, and, as such, many scenes gleefully resemble comic book panels or commercial magazine ads. I was born in 1972, and this film landed a few years before my time, but Pierrot Le Fou always challenges me to think back on what life must have been like in the turbulent mid-1960s, then the brutality of daily war footage intersected with the buoyant optimism of space exploration.

Pierrot Le Fou looks wonderful on Blu-ray, and the video transfer gives the Techniscope colors a vibrant prominence. A handful of generous extra features shed light on the movie, even if they do not quite scratch the surface of explaining the film.

My one and only complaint about this particular Criterion Blu-ray presentation is that the white English subtitles are not always readily legible, as they are placed to the bottom of the screen in front of Godard's gloriously bright and sunny images. When watching this movie, especially for the first time, one may have to rewind certain scenes to read these subtitles. This is only a minor flaw in an otherwise outstanding presentation.

Thanks for the write up!

It seems like self-conscious protagonists was Godard's preference circa the late 60's. it's fascinating when he employs the same methods (to a further degree) in Weekend.

By the way, two late-70's Godard films will be released by Olive later this summer.

[jrsl76]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

What does everybody make of Filmspotting's Josh Larsen's negative review of 12 Angry Men. He really gives no worthwhile points to support his take

No accounting for taste.

[octagon]

12 Angry Men beats you into submission – not unlike the whooping of righteous indignation that Peter Fonda...

And this is where I stopped reading.

[joie]

Originally Posted by Abdrewes

What does everybody make of Filmspotting's Josh Larsen's negative review of 12 Angry Men. He really gives no worthwhile points to support his take:

I stopped reading in the 1st sentence, where he mistakes Henry Fonda for Peter Fonda.

[shortmartin]

Originally Posted by joie

I stopped reading in the 1st sentence, where he mistakes Henry Fonda for Peter Fonda.

ditto . . . I thought I was missing something. With Peter Fonda that movie would have been really different, lol. 12 Angry (And One Really Trippy) Men.