pierrot le fou

I took the luxury of half-term to go and see Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 film “Pierrot Le Fou” at the Watershed this afternoon. The man in front of me at the box office asked the girl at the desk if the film was any good. The girl replied that she thought it was her favourite film ever. “Blimey” says the bloke in front of me (“blimey” methinks too!). Well, it certainly wasn’t anywhere near to being my favourite film, but I DID enjoy it – maybe it was just the feeling of being on holiday and being able to drop in to watch a film on a Tuesday afternoon? It WAS a pretty amazing (and I had to keep reminding myself that it was nearly 45 years old). Difficult to describe it though – a cross between “The Untouchables”, “Tintin”, “Bonnie and Clyde”, “Comic Strip”, “The Prisoner”, “The Avengers” and “The Wizard of Oz” perhaps?! It was apparently originally conceived as a low budget homage to the American gangster film, but ended up as one of the most important films in French cinema. The Watershed’s blurb speaks of Godard drawing on “his fascination with B-movie noir, spontaneously combining elements of thriller, slapstick, musical and romance into a deeply self-aware and, at times, self-mocking pastiche of cinematic history”. Before I went to see it, I’d read that it was “a film that defies classification” and was “both loved and loathed by film enthusiasts”. As I got up to leave at the end of the film, one rather elderly lady behind me said to her equally elderly friend (ie. even older than yours truly): “what an absolute load of cobblers!”. Obviously, you can’t please everyone.
There, there dear…. it’s only a film!