Pierrot Le Fou, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Be Ok I guess with Godard Sort of Probably

O! Hall hallo there there

I'm gonna have to apologize now, before you go further. The first chunk of this entry's less about Pierrot Le Fou than it is about my reaction to it. Why? Because I can't think of any other way to write about anything by Jean-Luc Godard. Here's one of the directors that forms the backbone of the French New Wave, and he's the only one of the bunch I've seen whose critical praise leaves me scratching my head... up until now.

Some history, to start: the first Godard film I saw was Notre Musique, in a film class, and I honestly cannot recall a thing about it other than it being in color. There's a distinct chance I nodded off during it, since my sleeping patterns get weird in the winter. I bought and watched Alphaville next - as part of some deal on Criterion Collection DVDs at Barnes and Noble. That one left me cold, but it was interesting. Next, Breathless, possibly his most renowned film - I quite liked that one. So going into this movie, Godard was 1 for 3: a track record hardly befitting an acclaimed director. And now I've watched Pierrot Le Fou, which has charmed me more than the rest. Yet, I can't decide if it's because the film's that much better, or if I have gotten used to Godard's directing style.

I'm inclined to think the difference is that I'm getting increasingly used to what he's doing; the last three, at least, are almost entirely built around exemplifying film technique. More consistently than any other major film maker, Godard makes me consciously aware that I am watching a movie. His characters, at least in Breathless and Pierrot, are seemingly conscious that they're in movies, or at least are consciously willing to imitate movie characters. Music and sound cues are conspicuous; the characters break the fourth wall (one character to another: "who are you talking to?" "the audience." "oh."). They don't behave realistically, at any rate, and the plot is a vessel through which one hangs a feeling.

And in this way, while watching Pierrot last night, I realized: my feelings for Godard must be how someone who dislikes Quentin Tarantino's films feels about those. Specifically Pulp Fiction, where the characters exist solely to have highly stylized dialog come out of their mouths. Are you really that worried when Uma Thurman overdoses in that movie? Nah, but it's the shit when Travolta stabs her in the heart with the adrenaline needle. Pierrot Le Fou is the same way: you barely see the gangsters chasing the main characters, or even remember them half the time, but the characters are fun to be around.

Part of the fun is the contrast between the two leads: Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a man of stoic cool, and Marianne (Anna Karina), an almost impishly joyful presence. They play off of each other beautifully, so when a spontaneous musical moment breaks out (the movie's not a musical), it's fun to watch, rather than annoying. Similarly, they're both easygoing about the whole "being chased by gangsters" thing, which gives the film a playful tone. This is helpful: at times with Breathless and Alphaville, I got annoyed by their protagonsts' almost dour nature. It makes the dissolution of their relationship feel more subtle, and I almost did a double-take when I realized they'd split. It also grounds the movie, which is unnatural in its editing and sound choices.

The editing, specifically the pacing of the thing, is what won me over the easiest. Time isn't wasted on fight scenes or action sequences. They're memorable and brief, but more or less beside the point. It's an inversion of most action movies: when an Asian midget is holding Marianne hostage and a scene later is face-down with bloody scissors in his neck, no explanation is necessary. Who cares how Marianne got out of that predicament? It's like a dance they do, splitting and rejoining, so it only makes sense Marianne would be out of Ferdinand's life before they inevitably meet again. The ending is also well-paced. Ferdinand spends lots of time painstakingly painting his face blue and wrapping his head in dynamite. He lights the fuse, then instantly says "this is stupid" and tries to put out the flame. He can't; he explodes. From him lighting the fuse to the explosion is less than 10 seconds, I bet. It's a smart use of timing, since the movie knows that there's little tension to be taken from this predicament. He's gonna die, and the movie's gonna end. And then Ferdinand and Marianne meet in a meta, characteristically pithy way to end the movie, too.

All of this adds up to how self-aware the movie is, which can be grating but generally works well. The verbal dance where Ferdinand and Marianne speak over shots from offscreen, alternating sentences, can be hit or miss. It feels too cute. Same goes for Ferdinand addressing the camera with his angst. But then it adds something when the music clashes with what's going on onscreen, like when dramatic music fades in and out while Ferdinand is looking at a car. Or when Marianne imitates a Lauren and Hardy gag (after stating her source of inspiration) to get out of a tight squeeze. It's these moments that are fun and, most of all, make you consider the construction of a movie without being alienating.

That quality is probably the thing that dawned on me, this time around. There's something very mechanical about the construct of Godard's films (from the few I've seen), and in some ways it clashes with what might be a personal perspective. His interest in how films work is laudable, and understandable given his past as a film critic. It doesn't necessarily make for movies that I'd revisit very often (though I would see Pierrot again if someone wanted to watch it with me), but there's also something necessary and vital to his films from this period. I at least understand why he's "important" now.

Les Diaboliques: The Stranger Details

O 'ello there.

I've greatly enjoyed Henri-Georges Clouzot's work before. Le Courbeau was one of the first pre-New Wave French films to really wow me, and Wages of Fear easily ranks in my top 5 all-time thrillers. So it was a no-brainer that eventually I'd check out ,Les Diaboliques, his most renowned film (according to IMDB, which, I know, isn't saying much). Supposedly, it was an influence on Hitchcock before he made a little film called Psycho. I can definitely see the influence it had in its suspense-building techniques. I'm a bit underwhelmed by the movie overall, but there's a lot of excellence going on throughout and a lot of peculiarities I'd picked out were resolved in the closing minutes. 

Anyway, I think it's only fair that I warn that there will be spoilers here. Normally, I don't care, but this film does end with a warning not to spoil the movie for my friends. Plus, it was nice of the movie to ask that specifically. And I do consider anyone reading this to be a friend.

Les Diaboliques concerns two women, the wife and mistress of a boarding school principal named Michel, and their plot to murder him. The wife owns the school, technically, but the principal's force of will seems to overpower that detail. He's a cruel man, not just to them, but also the schoolchildren and his other employees. He seems to have a short fuse, and the first time we see Nicole (his mistress, played by Simone Signoret), she's got bulky sunglasses on to hide bruises. The guy's painted as a bastard quick and hard, activating my Sword of Vengeance: Sense of Justice rule, as it should. The murder's only the setup, so it makes sense to make the audience understand why these women want this guy dead fast. Michel's murder is wrapped up in the first third of the movie; a less inspired film could've done that as the whole movie.

From the get-go, though, something's off: Nicole is awfully dead-set on killing Michel. Christina, his wife (Vera Clouzot), is nervous about it and backs out a couple of times when it's too late. This is one of the things the movie gets right, since my inclination to think the two women would turn on each other. They don't, which is an interesting surprise. In some ways, that's more surprising than the idea of a wife and mistress working together, but I digress. I was actually more worried about Nicole more than anything for the first third of the movie; she would not take "no" for an answer for the murder. At one point, she says that she's seen a corpse before in her life. Does that imply she's done this before? I was glad at the end that, winds up, she was conspiring with Michel all along to kill Christina via heart attack (she's got a heart condition. It's a movie. She's gonna have a heart attack.) to take ownership of the school. Winds up she wasn't a sociopath. Just your run of the mill... uh... Conspirator-Thief?

Also somewhat run of the mill nowadays: the detective character, a cold investigator, just interested in the facts, ma'am kind of fella. In this instance, he's a fresh presence on screen, mainly because of the added pressure he gives Christina. Odd that he never seems like his investigating Nicole. He asks questions of everybody at the school, and, at one point, shows up in Christina's room in the middle of her sleep. Again, it ratchets up the pressure. He's an odd character that adds to a movie that's already unsettling. I will say this, though: It does seem fishy when Christina admits to murder and he doesn't arrest her or have much of a reaction. Later, you find it's because he'd figured out Michel and Nicole's plot.

But then again, the guy does let them murder Christina. Their plan does come to fruition, and he only comes out of the shadows to arrest them after the deed is done. The ending may imply that she and he came up with their own solution - but how would they do that?

That ending, in and of itself, makes be absolutely glad we got this movie in 1955 rather than 2005. A young boy who'd previously been the only student to see Michel after his "death" mysteriously gets his confiscated slingshot back from Christina after she was already dead (I know! OH SHIT!). It's a final turn of the screw that maybe goes too far, since it doesn't make much sense. Yet, it's the kind of thing that's become standard for horror films. If this movie had come out in 2005, we'd be on our third or fourth direct-to-DVD sequel by now, where the ghost of Christina (or otherwise her ghastly friends) would be haunting the new owners and boarders of the school, slow dread of the original replaced by hilarious, cheap gore. I do appreciate that Clouzot thought it would be necessary to add one more mystery to the movie, though. It's some out of nowhere business to throw off a movie whose real twist is one of those "that makes so much sense, why didn't I think of it?" deals.

Another logical choice the film makes is to explain why the boarding school was so crumbling and shabby: because Michel's a cheap bastard who doesn't even want to run the school (again, Sword of Vengeance rule). That gives the movie the freedom to have the building be functional without ever seeming pleasant. In the black and white photography, it allows the pool to be so dirty it looks like ink. Along those same lines, the setting helps make the climax - where Christina seems to be chasing Michel's ghost - so much more enveloping. The sight of Michel rising from the tub after this chase is easily one of the most memorable images in film. It and the chase preceding it are easily the most virtuoso sequence in the movie; it's the one thing that moves Les Diaboliques from mysterty/thriller to horror movie. Its technique won me over, though, making me truly love the film in that moment.

Much of the middle part of the movie, where Christina and Nicole investigate the strange occurrences around Michel's disappearance, was tense and well-done, but I never bought it. I did get a real shock when I found out Nicole was planning this whole thing with Michel, but I had guessed that Michel was still alive. In some ways that makes me a jaded modern viewer, but I recently watched Psycho and found it effective, still, even knowing every step of the plot. Maybe my opinion of Les Diaboliques will improve with repeated viewings. There is much to love here, though, most of all, the way the movie makes all the little details matter.