Pierrot le fou (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou is an extraordinary experience that tells the romantic story of a failed TV writer who decides to run off and leave his boring family and society friends with his children's babysitter, who are both played by the two most iconic faces of the French New Wave; Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina. The two of them decide to go on a cross-country road trip toward the Mediterranean Sea, because the woman claims to hold several underworld connections. The two rob, kill and steal to get where they're going and even though this could have easily been the predictable formulaic outlaw road film, Godard makes it his own with a collage of B-movie thriller conventions, social satire, political commentary, and beautiful primary colors. 

Godard underlines Pierrot le fou with several Hollywood genres like the film noir, the gangster film, and the musical and several theoretical references to comic books, literature and even the Vietnam War, which was escalating at the time and greatly infuriating Godard. The artistic vision of the character's love of betrayal and pain became a grim reality for Godard during the shooting of the film because by the time he finished shooting from May through July of 1965, he and his wife Anna Karina had divorced.Pierrot le fou became such an overwhelming collage of spontaneity and creative inventions, Godard became panicked on how the film would come out. He stated shortly after completing Pierrot le fou in his magazine Cahiers du cinema: "In my other films, when I had a problem I asked myself what Hitchcock would have done in my place. While making Pierrot, I had the impression that he wouldn't have known how to answer, other than 'Work it out for yourself.'"