Jacques Rivette

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So the story goes: Having completed only two (Duelle and Noroît) of the proposed four films in his quick-succession series Scenes from a Parallel Life, Jacques Rivette found himself hounded by investors and teetering on the edge of sanity. The result: Merry-Go-Round—a fascinatingly nonsensical ramble through the director’s own inland empire, featuring a scruffy Joe Dallesandro, as American abroad Ben Phillipps, and a sleepy-eyed Maria Schneider, as mystery woman Léo Hoffmann, wandering the French countryside in search of the elusive Elisabeth (Danièle Gegauff), the former’s girlfriend and the latter’s sister. Read More »

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The first years of the new millenium have marked something of a revival for the French New Wave, with Nouvelle Vague directors Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette all releasing major works which achieved both popular success and critical acclaim. Rivette’s offering is a charming romantic comedy which reminds us of the director’s passion for the theatre seen in his earlier works, such as Paris nous appartient (1961).Read More »

Julien lives alone with his cat. He dreams of Marie, and a few minutes later, he sees her on the street and makes a date. He asks her to move in with him, and she does. Her boyfriend is dead, the rest of her past a mystery. Although they quickly seem to fall in love, she sometimes pulls away suddenly from Julien, is distant, and spends the night in a hotel. She also dreads something imminent and warns Julien that if he missteps, he will lose her and all memory of her. Julien responds by digging into her past: what explains her remodeling an upstairs garret room, her nightly dreams, her fears? What can Julien, now desperately in love, do when he learns why? Can either rescue the other?Read More »

Whiling away a summer in Paris, director Jacques Rivette, working in close collaboration with his stars and coconspirators Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier, set out to rewrite the rules of cinema in the spirit of pure play—moviemaking as an anything-goes romp through the labyrinths of imagination. The result is one of the most exuberantly inventive and utterly enchanting films of the French New Wave, in which Julie (Labourier), a daydreaming librarian, meets Céline (Berto), an enigmatic magician, and together they become the heroines of a time-warping adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder-mystery melodrama. Incorporating allusions to everything from Lewis Carroll to Louis Feuillade, Céline and Julie Go Boating is both one of the all-time-great hangout comedies and a totally unique, enveloping cinematic dream space that delights in the endless pleasures and possibilities of stories.Read More »

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Gang of Four (French: La Bande des quatre) is a 1989 French drama film directed by Jacques Rivette. It was entered into the 39th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won an Honourable Mention.

La Bande des Quatre (domestically known as Gang Of Four) is Jacque Rivette’s 1988 film that meanders through the close knit lives of a group of female acting school students in Paris. When I say meander, I REALLY mean meander, because Rivette chooses to let his film gradually unfurl at a hypnotically slow pace that at times borders on the voyeuristic, with it’s long, static shots of breakfast and dinner conversations and the like. At first, this style of filmmaking straddles the line between dull and engaging, but Rivette’s film is saved by a quartet of strong young actresses.Read More »

Before Le Pont du Nord Rivette films Paris s’en va, a short film of approximately 25 minutes. He works with the same actors and the same technical team on both films. Henry Chapier who produced the short: “At the beginning of the ’80s nobody was interested in Rivette’s highly imaginative project Le Pont du Nord. Therefore Rivette came up with a kind of ‘transposition’ of the themes of Le Pont du Nord in the shape of Paris s’en va. Just like a painter in the Renaissance who does a sketch for a future project.”Read More »

‘The Prisons’ continues with Jeanne (Sandrine Bonnaire) leading her countrymen in victorious assaults on the English army. But when she is finally captured and put on trial, she finds both her life and the sanctity of her body at stake.Read More »

A part of Joan of Arc’s life. At the beginning, Jeanne (Joan) has already left Domremy, she is trying to convince a captain to escort her to the Dauphin. It ends during Jeanne’s first battle, at Orleans. Meanwhile, Jeanne is depicted more as a warrior than a saint (all cliches are avoided), with only her faith for strength.Read More »

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It was Rivette’s second feature, after the puzzling ‘Paris Nous Appartient,’ and eschewed the nouvelle vague in favour of something altogether more structured, indeed rigorously so. “This film is a work of imagination,” the opening caption informs us, “not a portrait of religious institutions, 18th century or other. It should be viewed from a double perspective; history and romance.”Read More »