Screening 35mm & 16mm film prints from studio vaults, film archives, and private collections.
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Pierrot Le Fou
Monday, July 14 at 7:00 PM / Music Box Theatre — 3733 N Southport Ave
Tickets: $11 at the door or purchase in advancePIERROT LE FOU
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1966
In French with English subtitles
Given the half-century or so of his career spent bouncing between televisual experiments, incendiary collectivist agitprop, and narrative ruminations on the fractured state of culture, it can be easy to overlook that for a few years in the 1960s Jean-Luc Godard was considered a bankable box office prospect. The director’s 1964 announcement of his forthcoming adaptation of Lionel White’s crime novel Obsession gave little sense for how far afield he was about to stray from the era’s commercial cinema. By the time the cameras were scheduled to roll on Pierrot le fou, Godard still had no concrete plans for the production beyond a handful of scheduled location shoots and a cast which included Jean-Paul Belmondo and Godard’s ex-wife Anna Karina as the leads. Ostensibly guided by the source novel’s plot, in which a middle-class father abandons his family to pursue a relationship with their criminally-connected babysitter, Godard and his collaborators made the film up as they shot it, taking inspiration from the era’s political upheavals, Godard’s own personal and professional crises, and, inevitably, the films and art the director loved. The result is as unconventional as its technique, careening through a series of episodes between the unfortunate lovers Marianne (Karina) and Ferdinand (Belmondo) in which they petulantly argue about romance and philosophy, perform lo-fi musical production numbers, accumulate a menagerie of exotic pets, pantomime the colonial occupation of Vietnam, and, in a climax which inspired a 15-year-old Chantal Akerman to (cinematically) blow up her town, explode. (CW)
110 min • Films Georges de Beauregard • 35mm from Rialto Pictures
Preceded by: “Duck Amuck” (Chuck Jones, 1953) – 7 min – 35mmNEXT UP: TEA AND SYMPATHY on July 24 at the Film Center
Upcoming screenings:
View all upcoming screenings & venue info →
Thu 6/26 at 6:00 PM at Film Center
Lightning • Advance Tickets
Sat 7/5 at 11:30 AM at Music Box
A Story of Floating Weeds • Advance Tickets
Mon 7/14 at 7:00 PM at Music Box
Pierrot le Fou • Advance Tickets
Thu 7/24 at 6:00 PM at Film Center
Tea and Sympathy • Advance Tickets
Sun 8/3 at 7:00 PM at Music Box
Earth • Advance Tickets
Thu 8/7 at 6:00 PM at Film Center
Time and Tide • Advance Tickets
Wed 8/13 at 8:00 PM at Constellation
Music of the Spheres: Films by Jordan Belson
• Advance Tickets
8/22 – 8/24 at Film Center
Technicolor Weekend • Advance Tickets

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