Pierrot le Fou (1965). A response to the following: ‘Women used automobiles as vehicles of resistance to conventional gender roles and the strictures of a normative femininity’. To what extent do you agree with Sidonie’s reading of what happens to women on the road?

An essay for university from a module on road journeys

Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (1965, France) depicts the character Marianne Renoir as a free-spirited, strong female character. And indeed, as she takes to the road Marianne begins to defy conventional gender roles, and takes on more of a masculine role, using cars as a means of resistance. We can explore the ways in which Godard uses the syntax of the film in order to portray Marianne as an unconventional female character, and whether cars are always needed to resist conventions of gender roles.                                                                                                                                                      

Cars play a major role in the film, even before the road is introduced. Near the beginning of the narrative we enter a party scene, in which a male guest talks about an Alpha Romeo. He parodies an advertisement for the car, pointing out qualities such as the ‘luxurious interior’ and the ‘great traction’. He says this whilst looking at two women either side of him, in what seems to be a display of authority through the paradigm of the powerful car; he appears to suggest that a powerful car equals a powerful man. This idea is exemplified through the mise-en-scène, particularly through the composition of the man standing central in the shot, whilst he is framed by two women either side of him. The fact that he is central and standing compared to the women who sit exerts his dominance. Thus, it appears that power and automobiles correlate with one another before the road is introduced.                                                                                                                                                  

Gender conventions are established within the same scene before we are introduced to Marianne, so these conventions act as a template, to which we can compare Marianne’s resistance to the female role. These conventions are established when the women the man talks to about the car are utterly disinterested and begin talking of beauty products. Already we are injected with the notion that powerful and dangerous products such as cars relate to men, whereas feminine products based around beauty relate to women, establishing the normative gender roles. Therefore, the typical male identity is represented as strong, whereas the conventional female identity is represented as vulnerable and appearance-based.                                                                                                                  

We first acknowledge Marianne’s resistance to the strictures of femininity when we view her through a car windscreen. Viewing Marianne and Ferdinand through a windscreen seems to mimic the act of watching a film itself, and thus brings our attention to the fact that we are watching a fictional event through the use of reflexivity and meta-cinema. Godard uses this throughout and may be commenting on the way female characters can easily break the boundaries of feminine conventions in fictional narratives, whereas in reality this may not be the case.                                                       

When we initially witness the car, each street light that passes over the windscreen alternates from blue to red; colours we come into contact with throughout the film. Red and blue are present in both national flags, and the use of these colours is possibly Godard’s way of blending together American and French culture. Godard was fascinated with American culture and we can see this in the film, which almost certainly derived from the script for Bonnie and Clyde (USA, 1967), which at one point was offered to Godard. Indeed, there are obvious connections between female characters Bonnie and Marianne, both of whom break the boundaries of conventional female roles through the genre of the road narrative.                                                                                                                           

 In the film we certainly see this Americanisation of the French new wave, balancing the American genre of the road journey with the aesthetics of French cinema. When Ferdinand searches for Marianne he asks a bystander if she’s seen a woman looking like a Hollywood star, which links to the idea that Godard creates characters who envision themselves as actors in American films. Portraying Marianne as a Hollywood star places her within the frame of a conventional female, because we imagine Hollywood stars to conform to gender conventions, not able to resist the strictures of femininity as Smith suggests.  

                                                                                                                      

When we first witness Marianne in the car Ferdinand says: ‘Don’t you like American cars?’ to which she replies: ‘Sure’. However, before doing so we receive a close up shot whereby she looks directly into the camera lens, and thus acknowledges the presence of the audience. By acknowledging our presence as America is mentioned, perhaps Godard is commenting on the use of the male gaze in Hollywood cinema. Laura Mulvey indicates a possible way out of the male gaze through alternative representations informed by feminism and avant-garde cinema. It is possible to view new wave cinema, particularly Peirrot le Fou, as avant-garde due to the experimental aesthetics in the film. When Marianne looks into the lens she becomes conscious of the fact that as a female in cinema, she is viewed through a male lens and is therefore breaking the boundaries of gender conventions through the acknowledgement that she is placed there for male gratification, and in looking directly at us she seems to defy the male gaze. Marianne breaks the fourth wall throughout the film. This first instance in which she does so she is inside the car, therefore we may propose that being on the road enables her to resist how women are viewed in cinema.                                                        

Marianne’s power over Ferdinand seems to shift whether she is inside or outside the car. Marianne climbs into the driver’s seat of a car which is lifted for an oil change. The car, and therefore Marianne are physically much higher than Ferdinand, and Godard appears to utilise the shot composition to assert Marianne’s power over Ferdinand through spatial awareness. However, perhaps the film implies that women cannot always dominate men, as when Marianne moves to the passenger seat, the car simultaneously moves down to ground level, and therefore the same level as Ferdinand, indicating the hierarchy of gender is now balanced.   

                                                                   

The film’s syntax shows how Marianne defies the strictures of gender when inside the car, and submits to gender conventions when outside the car. After burning a car they use, Marianne is depicted as infantile and the power shifts onto Ferdinand. Ferdinand leads Marianne through water, and compositionally she is always behind him. Here Godard utilises props, such as a child’s soft toy which Marianne holds, indicating her vulnerability and innocence; traits that denote ‘normative’ femininity, and show women as the weaker sex. Ferdinand lifts Marianne down a hill, and we view them centrally through the shot, framed by nature. Perhaps Godard is suggesting that men are naturally more dominant than females, who are more infantile and need protecting, with the characters displaying their ‘natural’ roles, with the natural setting reflecting their intrinsic gender performances.                                                                                                                                                                                  

On the contrary, Marianne does indeed resist conventional genre roles in natural environments, without a car. The film’s syntagmatic connotation places Marianne in an evolutionary position of the hunter-gather, as we witness a long shot of her catching a fish with a spear she has created. It then cuts to a shot of Ferdinand firing an arrow, yet he does not catch anything, followed by a short cut of Marianne with yet another fish. Thus, framing Ferdinand’s failure with Marianne’s success allows the female to dominate the male as we compare shots. Although she is not in a vehicle at this point, she is still technically ‘on the road’. This particular scene takes place on the beach; another natural setting. Therefore, Godard may in fact be suggesting that gender conventions are actually socially constructed, and so in a natural setting away from society, male and female ‘conventional’ roles become blurred, with females no longer obliged to perform traditional gender roles.                                                                                                                                    

Towards the films denouement Marianne is depicted as a powerful female. A point of view shot from Marianne’s perspective is used as we see the shot through the sniper scope. We do not often see women kill men in films, and the act of physically killing a man is perhaps the ultimate resistance to the strictures of the female role, eradicating the opposite sex so that she has total control. Marianne shoots two men while they are in a car, therefore the car acts as a symbol of female empowerment, yet becomes a symbol of disempowerment for men. A close up of the men is shown through the sniper lens, whilst the rest of the mise-en-scène is completely black, centering our attention onto their panicked faces. In doing so, they are displayed as highly vulnerable; a trait often aligned with normative femininity. The camera is static while we see Marianne driving away, emphasising her freedom; contrasting with the immobility of the dead men and car, exemplifying their powerlessness as opposed to her power.

                 

 Before we are introduced to the road, the film establishes normative gender conventions. However, when Marianne enters an automobile and thus enters the road, she begins to defy them. Marianne resists conventions when she is able to travel away from society in which these conventions are created, and it is the car which enables her to do so, becoming the ultimate, (but not always essential) symbol of female power. Thus, I agree with Smith’s statement, because Marianne resists the strictures of her female role through the road. However, Marianne is killed, ending the film with death, as many road narratives do. She is shot off the road away from liberation, and so by ending the film with her death, this may be suggesting that in reality women cannot flourish whilst resisting conventional gender roles, without being quite literally shot down.