Despite continual claims that Godard shot the majority of his films without scripts or preparation, actress Anna Karina has subsequently claimed that they were in fact very carefully planned out to the smallest of details, with an almost obsessive level of perfectionism.
Godard originally wanted to shoot the film in English with Richard Burton and Sylvie Vartan as the two main characters.
Godard said of Pierrot Le Fou that "it is not really a film, it's an attempt at cinema. Life is the subject, with CinemaScope and color as its attributes...In short, life filling the screen as a tap fills bathtub that is simultaneously emptying at the same rate."
One of the witnesses who notices Ferdinand and Marianne in Nice is called Lazlo Kovaks. This is the alias of Michel Poiccard in "À bout de soufflé" and also the name of Belmondo's character in Leda.
The film was released in America by Criterion on the Blu-Ray disc format, but was almost immediately discontinued due to Criterion losing the rights to the movie, which then went back to Studio Canal, the previous owners. As such, the Blu-Ray release from Criterion has quickly become a collector's item.
Samuel Fuller:
The American film director in the party scene.