Criterion's Pierrot le Fou.

"Seen today, particularly in the crystal-clear, brightly saturated print offered on the Criterion disc, Pierrot le Fou remains a great movie, masterly on a number of levels: the subtle abstraction supplied by the red, white and blue color scheme (the colors of the French flag, of course); the postmodern ease with which it mixes and matches genres, moving from shootouts to improvised musical numbers; its rich network of high and low cultural references, from Louis-Ferdinand Céline to children's comic books; its theme of alienation from a lost, natural world and banishment to a universe of cheap consumer goods and advertising slogans. But Passion (1982) in the Lionsgate set is no less great." In the New York Times, Dave Kehr points out the many changes - geo-political, changes in moviegoing and in Jean-Luc Godard himself - that took place between the release of Pierrot le Fou in 1965 and the period represented by that box set (1982 to 1993).

Update, 2/27.

"My love for Pierrot le fou is so fresh, so passionate, so alive and so completely unabashed that I feel a little like a silly schoolgirl with a terrible crush on the cute new boy in class," confesses Kimberley Lindbergs. Besides great pix and comments (followed by readers' comments), she's got a gallery and a tune.

"Pierrot le Fou is a road movie, a crime fantasy, a cultural satire, a tale of consumerist alienation and bourgeois apathy, and a femme fatale noir in Technicolor and CinemaScope, shot in the bright sunlit canvas of broad daylight," writes Sean Axmaker for TCM.

"It might be a good entry point for Godard neophytes, made at a moment where he could still celebrate American directors like Frank Tashlin, Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller (who makes a cameo) and rage against American foreign policy, maintaining an uneasy balance of experimentation and accessibility," suggests Steve Erickson in ScreenGrab.

"Riotously anarchic, almost casually violent, and technically masterful, this is a great crime picture by any measure, and leaves you, well, breathless over how much Godard accomplished in his early and arguably most fertile period," writes Jon Danziger at digitallyObsessed.

"Where the Criterion vaults ahead [of other editions] are in the 2nd disc of supplements," notes Gary Tooze at DVD Beaver.

Earlier: Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times and Glenn Kenny's "Annotated Bibliography," parts 1, 2 and 3.

Update, 2/27: Ray Pride has a bit of online viewing.

Posted by dwhudson at February 26, 2008 12:45 AM