Jean-Luc Godard’s movies are about cinema itself and the audience’s role in the game of viewing. Perhaps his most buoyant film, Pierrot le Fo (1965), is a kind of transition work for the auteur.

Shot without a script, it’s a meandering, fantastical, off-the-cuff film that encapsulates what the New Wave was about. Two lovers (Jean-Paul Belmondo and the then-Mrs. Godard, Anna Karina) elope, hitting the road together.

Along the way they imagine themselves as a kind of Bonnie and Clyde while making stops to philosophize, sometimes breaking into song. Like most of Godard’s films, you kind of just have to go along for the ride.

Extras: new interview with Karina, a 50-minute French documentary on Godard, archival interviews with Godard, Karina and Belmondo.

Grade: A-

Pierrot Le Fou is currently available.