Pierrot le Fou (1965) on Netflix
Ferdinand Griffon, fired from his television job and bored at a Paris party, runs off with Marianne Renoir, a former mistress hunted by hitmen from Algeria. She calls him Pierrot.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.4/1040,584 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ferdinand Griffon is unhappily married to a wealthy Italian woman and has just lost his job at a television station. His wife makes him go to a gathering at her father's house, where the older man plans to put him in front of a possible employer. The guests speak in advertising slogans, and Ferdinand wants out. His brother-in-law has brought along the babysitter, Marianne Renoir, who was Ferdinand's mistress five years earlier and still calls him Pierrot. He offers her a ride home, spends the night with her, and finds out that she is mixed up in weapons smuggling. Gangsters are after her, so the two of them abandon his wife, his children and Paris and head south toward the Mediterranean.
Cast
- Aicha Abadiras Aicha Abadir (uncredited)
- Roger Dutoitas The Gangster (uncredited)
- Pierre Haninas The Third Brother (uncredited)
- Jimmy Karoubias The Dwarf (uncredited)
Show all 20 cast
- Dirk Sandersas Fred (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Pierrot le Fou (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Jean-Luc Godard's first choice to play Ferdinand was Richard Burton, and had Burton accepted, Godard would have cast his wife Anna Karina opposite him and shot the film in English. Godard's second choice, Michel Piccoli, would have been paired with a young actress such as Sylvie Vartan.
- The 1962 Ford Galaxie that is driven into the water and sunk in the film was director Jean-Luc Godard's own car.
- Jean-Luc Godard panicked one week before production was due to begin, when he realised that many of the ideas he had for the film were of little use to him.
- As on many Godard films, no screenplay existed until the day before shooting, and much of the acting, especially in the final acts, was improvised by the cast.
- In the party scene, at the moment Ferdinand throws a cake at a woman, Godard cuts to an exploding firework instead of showing the cake hit her.
