Jacques Rivette
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Jacques Rivette (1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and Cahiers du Cinéma. He made twenty-eight films, including Le Coup de Berger, Paris Belongs to Us, L'amour fou, Out 1, Celine and Julie Go Boating, Le Pont du Nord, La Belle Noiseuse and Va savoir. Rivette, inspired by Jean Cocteau to become a filmmaker, shot his first short film at age twenty. He moved to Paris to pursue his career, frequenting Henri Langlois' Cinémathèque Française and other ciné-clubs; there, he met François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and other future members of the New Wave. Rivette began writing film criticism, and was hired by André Bazin for Cahiers du Cinéma in 1953. He expressed a critical admiration for American films, especially for those by genre directors such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Nicholas Ray, and was deeply critical of mainstream French cinema. Rivette's articles, admired by his peers, were considered the magazine's most aggressive and best written. He continued making short films, including Le Coup de Berger (often cited as the first New Wave film), and Truffaut credited Rivette with developing the movement.
Although he was the first New Wave director to begin work on a feature film, Paris Belongs to Us was not released until 1961 (after Chabrol, Truffaut, Rohmer and Godard released their own first features and popularized the movement worldwide). Rivette became editor of Cahiers du Cinéma during the early 1960s and publicly fought French censorship of his second feature film, The Nun. He reevaluated his career, developing a unique cinematic style with L'amour fou. Influenced by the political turmoil of May 68, improvisational theater and an in-depth interview with filmmaker Jean Renoir, Rivette began working with large groups of actors on character development and allowing events to unfold on camera. This technique led to the thirteen-hour Out 1 which, although it has rarely been screened, is considered a cinephile's Holy Grail. During the 1970s his films, such as Celine and Julie Go Boating, often incorporated fantasy and were better regarded. After attempting to make four consecutive films, Rivette had a nervous breakdown and his career slowed for several years.
During the early 1980s he began a business partnership with producer Martine Marignac, who produced all his subsequent films. Rivette's output increased, and his 1991 film La Belle Noiseuse received international praise. He retired after completing Around a Small Mountain in 2009, and three years later it was learned that he had Alzheimer's disease. Very private about his personal life, Rivette was briefly married to photographer and screenwriter Marilù Parolini during the early 1960s and later married Véronique Rivette. His films, often improvised, have brief outlines instead of scripts, long running times and loose narratives. They explore themes such as conspiracy theories, fantasy and theatricality in daily life, frequently combining the paranoid, conspiratorial crime stories of films by Louis Feuillade and Fritz Lang with Renoir and Howard Hawks' carefree characters. Rivette, known for his complex female characters, is considered an influence on the female buddy film.
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Filmography
Feature films
Along with Out 1, La Belle noiseuse, and Va savoir, Rivette also at one point cut an alternate version of L'Amour fou, while the current version of L'Amour par terre was cut from a longer and preferred version of the film. Duelle and Noroît were two episodes from an intended four part series "Scenes from a Parallel Life" and Histoire de Marie et Julien was later based on an unfilmed episode. Due to the rare nature of Rivette's works, many DVDs (such as the Region 1 Facets release of Jeanne la pucelle) are from edited or otherwise incomplete versions of his films.
- Paris nous appartient (Paris Belongs to Us) (1960; 140 minutes)
- La Religieuse (The Nun) (1965; 140 minutes)
- L'Amour fou (Mad Love) (1968; 255 minutes)
- Out 1 (Out 1: Noli me tangere/Out 1: Don't Touch Me) (1971; 750 minutes)
- Out 1: Spectre (1972; 260 minutes)
- Céline et Julie vont en bateau: Phantom Ladies Over Paris (Céline and Julie Go Boating: Phantom Ladies Over Paris) (1974; 192 minutes)
- Scènes de la vie parallèle: 2: Duelle (une quarantaine) (1976; 121 minutes)
- Scènes de la vie parallèle: 3: Noroît (une vengeance) (Nor'wester) (1976; 145 minutes)
- Merry-Go-Round (1978; 157 minutes)
- Le Pont du Nord (1981; 131 minutes)
- L’Amour par terre (Love on the Ground) (1984; 127 minutes)
- Hurlevent (from Wuthering Heights) (1985; 130 minutes)
- La Bande des quatre (The Gang of Four) (1988; 140 minutes)
- La Belle noiseuse (The Beautiful Troublemaker) (1991; 240 minutes)
- Divertimento (1991; 120 minutes)
- Jeanne la pucelle: 1. Les batailles (Joan the Maiden, Part 1: The Battles) (1994; 160 minutes)
- Jeanne la pucelle: 2. Les prisons (Joan the Maiden, Part 2: The Prisons) (1994; 176 minutes)
- Haut/bas/fragile (Up/Down/Fragile) (1995; 169 minutes)
- Secret défense (1998; 173 minutes)
- Va savoir (Who Knows?) (2001; 154 minutes)
- Va savoir+ (2002; 225 minutes) - preferred cut
- Histoire de Marie et Julien (Story of Marie and Julien) (2003; 151 minutes)
- Ne touchez pas la hache (Touch Not the Axe) (2007; 137 minutes)
Short films
- Aux quatre coins (At the Four Corners, 1949) - lost
- Le Quadrille (The Quadrille, 1950) - lost
- Le Divertissement (Entertainment / The Diversion, 1952)
- Le Coup du berger (Shepherd's Mate / Scholar's Mate, 1956)
- Paris s'en va (Paris Goes Away, 1980)
- Une aventure de Ninon (One of Ninon's Adventures, 1995; a very short work made for the omnibus film Lumière et compagnie)
Work for television
Episodes from Cinéastes de notre temps
- Jean Renoir, le patron (Jean Renoir, The Boss) (1966; 128 minutes)
- Jean Renoir parle de son art (Jean Renoir Speaks About His Art) (1966; co-directed with Janine Bazin and Jean-Michel Coldefy)