Pierrot Le Fou / Masculine Feminine

PIERROT LE FOU, 1965, Janus Films, 110 min. “The last romantic couple,” as Jean-Paul Belmondo, fed up with wife and Paris, heads for the south of France with old flame Anna Karina, a classic pulp fiction moll of a gang of crooks. Essential ‘60s Godard, with sun-splashed color and ‘Scope photography by Raoul Coutard, a cameo by tough-guy director Sam Fuller and an explosive finale.

MASCULINE FEMININE (MASCULIN FEMININ: 15 FAITS PRECIS), 1966, Rialto, 110 min. “This film could be called ‘The children of Marx and Coca-Cola.’” Literary lion-wannabe Jean-Pierre Léaud chases budding yé yé star Chantal Goya, then gets a job as an unlikely opinion pollster. A portrait of youth and sex, with the story repeatedly interrupted: a woman blows away her husband; a scene in the Metro paraphrasing LeRoi Jones’ DUTCHMAN; Brigitte Bardot rehearsing in a bistro; a Swedish art-film-cum-sex-film-within-a-film, etc., topped by Léaud’s probing off-camera questioning of “Miss Nineteen.”