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Words from Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina on Pierrot le fou

02 septembre 1965
03m 51s
Ref. 00028

Information

Summary :

After a brief presentation of Luis Buñuel's Simon of the Desert, Jean-Luc Godard answers Maurice Seveno's questions on the story of Pierrot le fou, the painting theme brought up in the film and his provocative side. Anna Karina then speaks about her role in the film.

Media type :
Vidéo
Broadcast date :
02 septembre 1965
Source :
ORTF (Collection: JT 20H )
Personnalité(s) :
Luis Buñuel / Jean-Luc Godard / Maurice Seveno / Diego Vélasquez / Anna Karina
Themes :
Places :

Context

In 1965, Jean-Luc Godard, a former critic at Cahiers du Cinéma magazine born in 1930, released his second film of the year and his tenth feature-length film in seven years. Pierrot le fou was shot with Anna Karina, the filmmaker's companion, with whom he already shot five films including Band of Outsiders and Alphaville in 1964 and 1965. The other star is Jean-Paul Belmondo, who Godard brought to the masses in 1959's Breathless and who was re-employed, along with Karina, in 1961's A Woman Is a Woman.

Pierrot le fou remains one of the most dazzling films of the French New Wave. Plots as pretexts, intuitive continuity, provocative quotes, disconcerting soundtrack: the whole thing, wonderfully filmed - in coulour - by chief cinematographer Raoul Coutard, can be seen as poetic Godardian art. The agitated response to the film didn't keep it from reaching the status of cult film over the years.

Godard pursued his career by soon turning to didactic, political and anti-commercial cinema before becoming greatly interested in video and in television at the end of the 1970s.

Thierry Méranger

Transcription

Maurice Seveno
Here in the Lido of Venice. Without a doubt, I would not like to be in the shoes of the jury at this festival because up until now, we haven't seen much. Only two films stand out, but for various reasons, they have little odds of winning the palm. The first one of these films, Bunuel's Simon of the Desert, Simon the stylist, a magnificent poem, a very nice exercise in style where we find all the themes that are dear to Bunuel. However, we're here in Italy, and you know that here in Italy, people don't really like blasphemy. Therefore, Simon of the Desert will probably be excluded. Also, there's Jean-Luc Goddard's film which was just presented, Pierrot the Mad. First of all, Jean-Luc, is Pierrot the Mad the story of the news brief?
Jean-Luc Godard
Oh, the story of Pierre Loutrel. No, no, absolutely not. It's the story of some guy, his name's not even Pierrot, his name is Ferdinand. The girl he's in love with calls him Pierrot to make him mad, and he constantly repeats: "My name is Ferdinand" and she says: "You are crazy". Anyway, it's a nickname.
Maurice Seveno
You make Elie Faure speak with his voice. What does this mean? It's been said that it's the history of art.
Jean-Luc Godard
In the beginning. He reads something about art history, I think it corresponds well with... the beginning of the world... Well, it's a film on painting. Well, not on painting but it's... it's, I think, a film that's more like a painting, I mean, that's more like a landscape like painters would depict, or a portrait that's both a landscape and a portrait. So, in the beginning, I guess, my words were the same as a painter's... I thought he was a tremendous painter, Velasquèz, I am... The comparison is a bit extreme, but it seemed appropriate.
Maurice Seveno
Jean-Luc Godard, do you like to provoke people? And by this, I don't mean this in an insulting manner.
Jean-Luc Godard
Provoking people, that's not...
Maurice Seveno
No. We can just as well seek to provoke admiration, astonishment as much as anger.
Jean-Luc Godard
In the sense of provoking an event, not provoking in the strict sense of the word, I'd say.
Maurice Seveno
Yes, that's right, yes. Well, I mean, you like to surprise people, for example.
Jean-Luc Godard
Well, no, but if it happens to be that people are asleep and things make noise, well, it wakes them up if they were sleeping. If they were already awake, it won't wake them up at all.
Maurice Seveno
Anna, tell us first about your role in Pierrot the Mad.
Anna Karina
It's a rather extraordinary character in the sense that it's a girl that is many different things at once: she's mean, she's vicious, she's romantic, she's sentimental, she kills, in the film and right away afterwards, she lives a life, just like that, spontaneously.
Maurice Seveno
I know that you're quite often the agent of a destiny signed by Godard?
Anna Karina
Yes, but here, I think it's a character that is in all the roles that I've done, that is to say, they're at the same time:
Jean-Luc Godard
A Woman Is a Woman, To Live One's Life, The Little Soldier, Band of Outsiders.
Anna Karina
It's a bit of all that.
Maurice Seveno
In the end, don't you think that you are the femme fatale of 1965?
Anna Karina
Me?
Maurice Seveno
Yes.
Anna Karina
Ha ha! No, I don't think so. No, I don't think so in the sense that what I like to do, I like to change everything, I like... I like living, doing anything, so I don't think that's necessarily fatal. I don't think my head resembles one, anyway.
Maurice Seveno
One never knows.
Anna Karina
Maybe. But I'd love to.
(Silence)