In tribute to Anna Karina (1940-2019), legendary figure of the French New Wave and muse of Jean-Luc Godard, we present Pierrot le Fou, in which she stars as the unforgettable Marianne Renoir.

Godard had already shot five films with Karina including A Woman is a Woman (1961), Band of Outsiders (1964), and Alphaville (1965) before turning to this dazzling masterpiece. Ferdinand/Pierrot (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is an unhappily married man who flees Paris for the south of France with Marianne, his babysitter and ex-girlfriend who is on the run from gangsters.

Filmed in glorious widescreen colour by Raoul Coutard, Godard transforms cinematic conventions with wild editing and breaks in continuity. Pierrot le Fou is free-spirited, impulsive, glib and lyrical. As Samuel Fuller, famously defining cinema, says in a cameo appearance: ‘A film is like a battleground: love, hate, action, violence, death — in one word, emotion.’

Notes by Marie-Pierre Richard.