translation of the title?
whats the english translation of the title?
Pierrot le fou = ??
Pierrot Goes Wild, apparently.
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MovieChat Forums > Pierrot le fou (1969) Discussion > translation of the title?
Strictly Pete the madman (Pierrot is just a friendly form of Pierre).
share"Pierrot the crazy"
Where are all the French when you need them?
"Where are all the French when you need them?"
OK, OK, here we are !!
To me "Pete the madman" or "Crazy Pete" are the most accurate translations.
By the way, yes, "fou" can be translated by "clown" but only in a medieval/Renaissance context. For instance, "a clown" in a Shakespearian play can be translated by "un fou" or "un bouffon".
By the way, yes, "fou" can be translated by "clown" but only in a medieval/Renaissance context. For instance, "a clown" in a Shakespearian play can be translated by "un fou" or "un bouffon".
In other words: "fou" can be translated as "clown", but only in contexts where native English speakers would be extremely unlikely to use the word "clown".
The terms that would tend to be used in that context (in English) would be "jester" or "fool". That last one is where you see the similarity to "fou", and is what is used in King Lear for the character that might be described as the "court jester". share
You're quite right. "Fou" (noun), as understood as in "le fou du roi", is the "court (or King's) jester".
I've just look in my bilingual editions of Shakespeare's plays, and it is quite puzzling. In my good old edition of "Romeo and Juliet", "a clown" translates into "un bouffon". In another editon of the same play (which is supposed to be better), "a clown" translates into "un rustre" ("a peasant"!).
And for "King Lear", I can read in the characters' list "Lear's fool" (in French... "Le fou de Lear").
Maybe it's just my perception as an anglophone who understands a bit of French, but to me Pierrot le Fou evokes a reminder of the idiom "l'amour fou" as well. I think that is also an another applicable connotation. It is connected to what leads Ferdinand down the road to his destruction.
There isn't really quite an exact equivalent in English. In English you sometimes hear references to someone being "madly in love" which is more describing a single individual's emotional state, but rarely do you hear anything like "mad love" that is implying a universally separate emotion (a bit like the relationship between "anger" and "rage").
A fair number of titles (arguably among the best, or at least most interesting ones) do actually carry multiple readings / implications / connotations which can be considered to apply and be relevant. That's exactly what makes some titles virtually impossible to translate completely satisfactorily. The other language doesn't have any one phrase that fits into all of those competing cultural references.
In this case, I think that in the original French the title carries echos of all of the following:
Crazy Pierrot
Pierrot the Jester (Marriane's jester / fool, that is)
Pierrot, Madly in Love
I don't think there is any single phrase of English that would carry all of the same meaning. (Of course, that can happen in trying to translate from any language to any other language.)
"Madly in love" would be "fou d'amour", then. "Fou", as it is, doesn't refer at all to love.
However, the word refers to someone who has serious mental troubles and also to someone who behave like a fool. In other words, Pierrot can be regarded as someone who is potentially dangerous or as a scatterbrained person, depending on what definition you give to the word (and consequently to the title of the film).
"Pierrot" is a character in the Commedia dell'Arte; a European pantomime/performance tradition.
"le fou" means, roughly, "the mad".
So, 'Pierrot the Mad'
The title 'Pierrot le fou' is a pun on the nickname of the French criminal Pierre Loutrel, France's first "public enemy number one", and one of the leaders of the Gang des tractions.
For what is a pretty easily-answered question (especially with the internet), I'm surprised there's so much confusion about this.
If my memories of high school French don't deceive me, "fou" can be both adjective and noun, meaning "mad, crazy" and "madman" respectively. Therefore, both "Pete the Madman" and "Pete the Mad/Crazy" would be accurate translations, correct?
Pierre is Pete, pierrot is a character in clown, or mime. A good English title would be The Crazy Clown, except that now with the Insane Clown Posse it would carry unwanted connotations. Also, pierrot is used to refer to more than the clown himself but also the style which is a specific one. So maybe "Peto Goes Crazy"?
shareFou definitely means crazy, or the American English colloquial of "nuts".
We used to call a French teacher in high school "oiseaux fou", meaning crazy bird.