Jacques Rivette

there is definitely a similar film to be made of u.s. artists/activists wanting to burn down the world in 1968 and a couple of years later...not so much. or not knowing how to proceed after the immediacy of the flames/fire. or maybe that is a film already. the bored talk of putting out the newspaper in out 1 was funny. no real hurry.

Yeah, the Cahiers had in turn been taken over by Maoists by 70, so.

Also, of course he doesn't mention it, the true, maoist meaning of the film is only available for the TRUE VIEWERS who can read the TRUE LANGUAGE of the film. Wake up sheeple!

I mean, we could say that it's a film about France 'post-68' but I'm getting kinda tired of that term. It makes it sound as if nothing really happened at that time, in the period ca 68-72 (a period I'm calling 'the years between Red May and Black September.' It sounds better in Danish), as if the revolt failed, and then people sat around a few years and thought about what they wanted to do now. Like Assayas' film Apres Mai, where the whole thing is sort of a blur, and then the hero discovers cheesy filmmaking. But stuff did happen in those years, people were still very much politically engaged. And most of left-wing politics at the time, anti-imperialist, guevarist, nasserist, bound to be disappointed by Mao meeting Nixon; Chile and Argentina collapsing into right-wing autocracy; Mid-east terrorists attacking Munich, regimes attacking Israel on Yom Kippur and then attacking the entire west through rising oil prices; can sorta be grouped together under the term 'maoism'.

So perhaps the film can both be said to be about 'post-68' or about 'maoism'. I think it most productive to say 'maoism'.

Thanks for the link Ward. Rivette was certainly more outwardly political than what I've ever seen in his films - the stuff he was doing during that period is set in Paris, among a small group of young actors and he has them playing games with each other - a very insular paranoid world miles away from Cinema Novo and what was happening in South America and Africa.

Whatever the merits of JLG's Vertov, at least he made an attempt at 'end of cinema': he states that and takes the idea further, sketches it out. The Left Bank were actively engaging with Cuba, Algeria, Chile and Palestine in their actual films.

Can't see any of that in Rivette.

Think this means that three very early Rivette shorts, all well before his first feature, have been been brought back to the light of day:

http://www.cinematheque.fr/article/843.html

https://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201605&id=59510

Nice obit

Somewhat surprisingly, Duelle, Noroît, and Merry-Go-Round are going to be on Mubi in the US over the next couple of weeks; also, the latest issue of Senses of Cinema is mostly devoted to Rivette (as well as Twin Peaks).

https://mubi.com/specials/jacques-rivette-tribute
http://sensesofcinema.com/issues/issue-79/

Why surprising?

Maybe just surprising to me because I'm used to Rivette films seeming unavailable or being distributed poorly. I see from glancing upthread that those three were screened in NYC back in 2006, though, so maybe prints are more easily available than I'd thought.

Think because of the way Mubi works with some sort of limited licensing they can show stuff that might be otherwise unavailable.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Those films were restored for the Rivette box set that came out last year, I'm sure mubi will be using the same source material

Oh, I think I missed that part of the discussion: I wasn't aware of the contents of the Arrow box beyond the release of Out 1.

Arrow is releasing Duelle, Noroît, and Merry-Go-Round in the US in May and all 3 are now streaming on Amazon Prime.
https://www.facebook.com/ArrowAcademy/photos/a.805295076280491.1073741828.804231479720184/1039249329551730/?type=3&permPage=1

The Story of Marie and Julien -- yes?

Yes. Haven't seen in a while but the leads work well off each other and there's a real sense of romantic loss in Jerzy R's performance, if I recall. I may rewatch tonight now that you've mentioned it.

3-film blu is out

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/the-jacques-rivette-collection

Been out in the UK for well over a year

Reminds me, just got an email from Anthology mentioning a film directed by Juliet Berto.

It's an Eduardo de Gregorio box set that's really needed

“It’s the Jacques Rivette movie for people who can’t stand Jacques Rivette movies—and yet no one else could’ve made it.”

that's me, i guess

https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/11/24/la-belle-noiseuse-finds-jacques-rivette-marrying-the-ordinary-and-the-cosmic/

Great that the writer mentioned Quince Tree Sun at the end there - as I was thinking about it as I read it.

i love the QTS so much

I heard a great story about that director, wonder if I’ve posted it already

I'd like to hear a story about Victor Erice.

So he was at the Walter Reade Theater for a festival of his films and told the audience that one of the reasons he cast Ana Torrent in The Spirit of the Beehive is that when he asked her “Do you know who Dr. Frankenstein is?” she replied “Yes I do, but we haven’t been introduced.”

:D

Watched the New Yorker Films (!) DVD of La Belle Noiseuse last weekend and hey, I still don't much like Rivette! At least Michel Piccoli's presence meant I made it through in 2 days. I did like Emmanuelle Beart's insouciance in the second half.

WTF Out 1 (and bunch of other Rivettes) is free to watch on Amazon Prime.

On closer inspection Out 1 (and Le pont du nord) is on a Fandor channel you can do a trial of for free and then subscribe to through Amazon. But there are other ones on Prime.

anyone want to browbeat me into seeing Gang of Four on 35mm tonight?

https://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-gang-of-four/

https://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/2009/03/gang-of-four.html

actually, looking closely it seems to be on DCP... there's no US disc anyhoo.

The Nun is getting a minor re-release over here and I've never seen it. Curious to see what Karina does with it.

There is a North American DVD of Gang of Four. I've had it for 15+ years and I'm shocked to find that it's still available:

https://www.amazon.com/Gang-of-Four/dp/B00005TNF8/

And it's great! See it.

The Nun is his most "conventional" feature and not among my favourites, but still very much worth watching.

In the UK you can currently buy Gang of Four, Wuthering Heights and Love on the Ground on DVD for £3 each.

Gang of Four is indeed very great, but is so quintessentially Rivettian that I can't imagine it pleasing a Rivette sceptic like the good Doctor M.

Agree w/ you about The Nun - a Rivette adaptation of Diderot text starring Anna Karina sounds like the best thing ever, but the actual film is a bit lumpy and dull.

Gang of Four is really good, love that film.

i went to some silent shorts instead

On brand

presumably i will run across either the Go4 disc or a 35mm screening someday

Lots of Rivette films have their double or pair, and the film that I would pair w/ Gang of Four - as its echo inverse etc - is L'amour Fou, the film Rivette made after the disaster of The Nun, also w/ Bulle Ogier and (as I habitually say on this thread) in desperate need of a proper restoration. When I first got into Rivette, investigated his entry in Thomson's Biographical Dictionary, borrowed Jonathan Rosenbaum's scarce BFI mongraph on JR from the old BFI library, I seriously thought I would probably never get to see the complete Out One in my lifetime, and now it is easy to see in high definition, everywhere. So, one day!

"The Nun" is a favorite of mine but it's still a pretty big left turn after "Paris nous appartient", for me, and even though stagey feels the least Rivette of all his films.

All the sapphic habit-diving in the last third of The Nun is borderline risible, but I liked it more than is typical with me and JR. The story of its banning is at least as compelling. (Mme de Gaulle did it)

exciting opportunity to watch out 1 in london

https://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/film_programmes/2019/jacques-rivette-out-1

I'm guessing that this is a screening of the digital version that Arrow and others have released on Blu-Ray in the last few years, possibly timed to coincide w/ a new standalone Out 1 set w/ both versions of the film:

https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/out-1-blu-ray/FCD1886

Still no sign of L'Amour Fou though!

Have a chance to see Duelle for free at a newly opening theater in Seattle in a few weeks.

so watched the full out 1 over the weekend, and still unsure how I feel about it. contrary to what most people’s experience seems to be, I found the extended theatre exercises to be the most captivating; observing the evolutions and magnetism of people, pushing and pulling, growing and deflating — and the moments where what little we learn in the external sequences seem to infect these communities.

i was never bored but frequently frustrated, a feeling that only grew as i realised the whole thing was an improvisational exercise and the total absence of a defined reality, just the world as the individual actors understand it. the sense of lost promise is so strong and I left the cinema on the verge of anger, but living more and more with what it is, am only finding it more fascinating. been thinking of it as a komboloi, something to hold with you, thread through your hands, feel individual moments it as you go about your life, idk looking forward to growing with it

is there an obvious movie to start with this guy? out 1 seems daunting.

just realized his photo is featured a couple times in The Image Book

His most popular is Celine et Julie, after which you can pick others based on whether you like that or not.

Paris Belongs To Us is essential Nouvelle Vague, and shorter than usual for him.

Yeah, Celine et Julie or perhaps La Belle Noiseuse. That one isn't that typical, but it's very easy to watch. Though a lot of the popularity has to do with the very large amounts of nudity in it, I suspect.

Paris Belongs to Us is really mysterious and beautiful and is amazingly confident for a first feature-length film