Jacques Rivette

Fuck you - stop the contrarian routine first.

im not trying to be 'iconoclastic', i find the over reverence a bit stultifying. rivettes films are treated as a sort of holy entrance exam for a particular kind of film fan.

which posts on this thread about Jacques Rivette are you actually referring to?

im not trying to be 'iconoclastic', i find the over reverence a bit stultifying. rivettes films are treated as a sort of holy entrance exam for a particular kind of film fan.

― StillAdvance, Tuesday, 2 February 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't fancy your chances when Godard goes over.

I just find JLG more interesting tbh, even at his most indulgent. *shrug* Even something like Un Film comme les autres (which i only saw recently) has a lot going for it, even if visually it isnt exactly riveting to watch, though even then, you have to admire his gall in keeping the camera so still, and never truly revealing his subjects. I should probably try rivette again, but that kind of hip whimsy (combined with the running time!) i saw in celine... makes me not want to. reminds me a little of vera chytilova's daisies, thinking about it now. i might try le pont du nord though, its on mubi at the moment.

Can't you wait at least a couple of fucking weeks to tell us about your tedious contempt for this not-dead-even-a-week artist whose films you haven't seen and who other posters here actually have some affection for?

Un Film comme les autres (which i only saw recently) has a lot going for it, even if visually it isnt exactly riveting to watch, though even then, you have to admire his gall in keeping the camera so still, and never truly revealing his subjects

Saw this too. You can easily all of this about Rivette, i.e. you have to admire Rivette's gall in making a 12.5 hr film/shooting extended takes of rehearsals etc etc.

Morbs is at least willing to re-watch. Just save your bullshit for another time.

sure. hopefully you will have dismounted that rather tall horse of willful offence-taking of yours by then too.

Would someone who knows mind posting a link to the Claire Denis documentary? Somehow I can't find it. Thanks...

My copy of the Arrow box set was delivered on the day he died. RIP.

"... it isnt exactly riveting to watch..."

I see what you did there.

http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/rosie-riveter-1.jpg

sure. hopefully you will have dismounted that rather tall horse of willful offence-taking of yours by then too.

― StillAdvance, Tuesday, 2 February 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't have such a high opinion of yourself - you haven't offended anyone.

i think i will watch 'the nun' this weekend. any thoughts on this one? conventional wisdom seems to suggest it's one of his more conventional.

i am not proud of the fact that i am totally allergic to celine and julie go boating. i saw it for the first time about 15 years ago, and was just bored. i tried it one more time about 8 years ago, and had to walk out after 40 minutes. the relentless tweeness made me want to rip the heads off of kittens or something. and also i just don't think he was much of a visual stylist at that point! i think he got better -- much of "Secret defense" is extremely evocative.

i say "i am not proud" b/c people whose opinions i respect a great deal think it's the bee knees, but i just don't get it.

i am proud. they are wrong.

we're unusually simpatico this evening, morbs.

As someone who is allergic to tweeness I felt the stretching of time deployed by Rivette cut that right off.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/interviews/jacques-rivette-out-1-celine-julie-go-boating?utm_content=bufferfc600&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitterbfi&utm_campaign=buffer

Excellent interview from the S&S archives - lots of tibbits on Bioy (who is of course had a couple of tasty reissues recently). Finds Henry James "unfilmmable".

Imagine reading this in '74 and not being able to see Out 1. Would've made me crazy.

Thank you, love the way Rivette talks about films (his own and other people's)

"Contrary to what people think, I’m not particularly well read."

Checking his filmog I've seen less than I thought I had. Le Pont du Nord is something I want to see as soon-ish as poss. Got a hunch about that one.

do you subscribe to Mubi xyzzzz__because this is on there at the moment. I started watching it yesterday.

I listened to Rosenbaum talking about Out 1 on The Cinephiliacs podcast about a week before Rivette's passing. I'd love to see it sometime.

I don't - was told on twitter last night about the availability of the film on MUBI, where I also found out that the accordion based tune mentioned by Ward is actually a Grace Jones cover.

I'll see whether I can do this or not. Most of the year I tend to watch films at the cinema - mind really wanders off nowdays if I am not inside the dark box.

I noticed the Denis documentary has been taken down from YT. Good thing I saved a copy. It's a great one.

(link in my post, y'all)

i'm sleep deprived as usual on Fridays so there's no way i'm going to make it to Love on the Ground in 3 hours (Rivette make me sleepy to begin with and that's not necessarily a dis).

Morbs, there is a Region 2 DVD of Love on the Ground - however I would prioritise the same company's Gang of Four DVD above it:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Ground-English-subtitles-DVD/dp/B000TQLJU0/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1454717246&sr=1-1&keywords=love+on+the+ground

But if you really want to sample Rivette on home video DVD, there is a Region 1 disc of Va Savoir that might appeal - it's his most Rohmeresque film, except with many of the old obsessions, chiefly the theatre.

i think i will watch 'the nun' this weekend. any thoughts on this one? conventional wisdom seems to suggest it's one of his more conventional.

Saw it once about fifteen years ago. Yes, it has the most conventional mise en scene of any Rivette film, and no obvious moments of improvisation - this might sound more appealing to Rivette-sceptics, but my memory of is that it's a bit of a slog; far inferior to the Joan of Arc movies in terms of a 'period Rivette'.

saw Va Savoir when it was released

Cheers for the Denis, Jay Vee

Atlanta people, Emory Univ. is screening Out 1 for free this weekend.
http://filmstudies.emory.edu/home/events/

Went up to the cemetery in Montmartre this morning to pay respects to Rivette and Truffaut. They are buried pretty much a few feet from each other. Sadly, Rivette's tombstone is a humble concrete slab ( I hope it's a temporary thing?) and Truffaut's is dotted with pigeon shit.
I mentioned to the folks at the conservation office there that Truffaut's stone could use a good cleaning and their response was that it was the family's job to ake care of it.

*take

Out 1 is on netflix wtf

!!!

insane, i never thought the day would come, so stoked

Great to see -- death to 'I hate how everything has become available' bobbins!

I am just stunned tbh bcz Netflix's film offerings have not too great as of late, esp w/r/t obscure foreign cinema

Dare I ask if it's on uk netflix?

Pretty sure it's not. Arrow are the UK rights holders, and they do sometimes licence things to Netflix, but I imagine at the moment they don't want to discourage sales on their recent Rivette box set (you can rent that box set, btw, from Amazon Love Film, or whatever their films-by-post service is called these days - that offers a much better selection of movies than any UK streaming service, fwiw)

Shit, and to think US Netflix just clamped down on Hola usage

Funny Out 1 customer review for that Rivette box set on Amazon:

Unwatchable docu-drama of a small group of actors lying down with their legs bent back toward themselves. Awful beyond belief.

Hahaha! Concise and to the point!

Halfway through Out 1. I'm very happy.

I've seen Out 1! I'm a happy filmfan. Nice ending.

I watched Godard's Le Vent d'Est a few days back, and it's kinda fun to contrast. Much post may ennui, but while Dziga Vertov group seems a bit desperate, Out 1 seems thoughtful, meditative and experimental. And fun.

Doesn't scan as a comparison.

Reading up a bit on the context. At this point I'm pretty sure it's to a significant extent a film about Maoism.

Maoism is def ONE of the things Out 1 is about - or rather, it's about the conflict between the individual and the collective (and the difficulty of maintaining identity within a group, be that a theatrical troupe or a secret society). It's definitely a post-68 film in the same way that The Mother and the Whore is, too. But you could just as easily say that Out 1 is a Marxist film, in that it's haunted by Balzac, who was Marx's favourite author ("Behind every great fortune is a great crime" etc etc)

And another way of saying 'thoughtful, meditative' might be to say 'wasted', whereas Godard's post-68 work is very definitely much more straight-edge (there's a scene in Out 1, at the hippy café/meeting, where Bulle Ogier collapses into fits of giggles, as if the tea she's serving has been spiked. And I remember reading somewhere that the premiere audience for Out 1 were very majorly stoned.)

Well worth watching Out 1: Spectre, Frederik, for a very different ending, and a change of emphasis on certain scenes and characters.

It's more Leaud who is giggling, and feeding Ogier spoonfuls of jam. He's is definitely high as a kite in that scene :)

The film is not about one thing, of course, it's just fun to treat it as a coded statement the way Colin treats Balzac. It is very true that it's about Marx, but being about Marx in France in 70-71 was being about Mao. Even Cahiers was maoist at the time. Le Vent d'Est seems to me a maoist film, whereas Out 1 is a film about maoism. It's so weird to think about that time, that there actually was a period where Mao was thought to be the best, and that that period coincides quite well with the period Mao was most destructive and murderous. Intellectuals can be quite dumb.

There's a previously unpublished '71 interview with Rivette in French film mag "La Septième Obsession" this month. Here's a relevant quote to what you guys are discussing (excuse my bad off-the-cuff translation):

Q: What exactly do the two groups in OUT1 represent?

Rivette: (...)The two groups come out of the traditional (spaces?) of classical theatre - both the Italian and modern ... At the time they were being filmed they were searching for a process outside of the strictures of traditional theatre. It's a process of waiting in any case since the film attempted to describe a period of general crisis, at all levels, notably within the theatrical sphere. The characters all have that feeling of existing within a time of crisis where one could do nothing but wait for a time when, eventually, action would once again be possible. While waiting all they could engage in , for one, were projects that were more or less utopian, through uncertain paths and, on the other hand, trying to maintain a false enthusiasm, a false energy. It's very difficult and the result was a kind of erosion. The film shows this eroding as they wait it out. ... To me it's a very dated film: France - Paris - 1970 - two years after May '68. That's where we are. We wait.

it IS dated but in a good way. the process/waiting was my fave element of out 1. just watched the rules of the game last night for the hell of it. totally not dated at all.