Jacques Rivette obit

Jacques Rivette: 1928-2016

 He was not on the list.

“There

is a moment in Mozart where the music suddenly seems to draw inspiration only

from itself, from an obsession with a pure chord, all the rest being but

approaches, successive explorations, and withdrawals from this supreme position

where time is abolished. All art may perhaps reach fruition only through the

transitory destruction of its means, and the cinema is never more great than in

certain moments that transcend and abruptly suspend the drama.”—Jacques

Rivette, on Roberto Rossellini (1955)

 

For more than five decades we have chased history and shadows to come to terms

and fully catch up to the beauty, mystery and astonishing work of the acute and

transfixing artist, Jacques Rivette. His cinema—mysterious, enveloping and poetic—invited a form of surrender.

Yes, the films were long and diffuse but colored and shaded by a sensual and

tactile urgency, like the jump cuts in “La belle noiseuse” or the

rapturous musical numbers of “Up, Down, Fragile,” that achieved a

lilting buoyancy and possessed a remarkable tenderness and feeling.

 

Now this major figure is gone. His death, at the age of 87 on Friday, was

confirmed by the French Minister of Culture. His loss is a significant one, for

art and for its history. Few major figures devoted so much of their energy and

work to explicating the meaning, texture and complex visions of other great

directors.

 

Of the five

signature figures of the French New Wave—Jacques Rivette, Francois Truffaut,

Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer—Jean-Luc Godard is now the only surviving

filmmaker. At the seminal French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma, Rivette wrote

commanding and brilliant studies of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Nicholas

Ray, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger and Ingmar Bergman. Of the founding members of

the French New Wave who started as critics, Rivette marked the purest

distillation of the movement’s intellectual passions and artistic impulses.

 

He directed 23 features, a couple of documentaries and several shorts. He

worked with his idol, Jean Renoir, as an assistant on the director’s

“French Cancun,” and later made a beautiful multi-part documentary

about the French master.

 

His most

inventive and sustained artistic period encompassed the improvisational flair

and stylistic experimentation of “L’amour fou” (1968), his 13-hour

landmark “Out 1” (1971), “Celine and Julie Go Boating”

(1974) and “Duelle” and “Noirot” (both 1976).

 

His final film, “Around a Small Mountain,” about a circus troupe, was

a serene and melancholy portrait of performance and art. I met this extraordinary

man once, at the Berlin Film festival in 2007 when he premiered “Don’t

Touch the Axe,” his severe and beautiful adaptation of Balzac’s “The

Duchess of Langeais.” Wiry and serious, he projected a soulful

otherworldliness.

 

He was always a director who evaded popular acceptance because of his working

methods and style. He naturally appealed more to other directors and

cinephiles. As his most perceptive and greatest American champion, Jonathan

Rosenbaum pointed out, Rivette never showed much interest or aptitude in

presenting his work to a wider public. He was intensely private about his

personal life.

 

Directors revered him. “Rivette is a unique filmmaker: lonely, personal

and cut off from any kind of trend or fashion,” French director Bertrand Tavernier

told me in an interview for a 2007 profile. Rivette greatly influenced Martin

Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch, Susan Seidelman and Richard Linklater (the names of the

characters played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke in the “Before”

trilogy, Celine and Jesse, are a tribute to Rivette’s masterpiece, “Celine

and Julie Go Boating”).

 

His writing deeply informed the style and themes of his films, evident from his

first feature, “Paris Belongs to Us.” His fascination with doubles,

dreams and labyrinths showed the influence of Hitchcock, his shadowy and

nocturnal plots fixated on confinement and loss suggestive of Lang and his

recurring use of breakdown or instability echoing Orson Welles’s European

projects such as “Mr. Arkadin” or his adaptation of “The Trial.”

 

He was born in Rouen in 1928, the child of a pharmacist. He developed at an

early age a fascination with film and theater. He arrived in Paris in 1949, and

he haunted the cine-clubs and the screenings of the Cinematheque Francais. He

took in everything. “Rivette was more of a cinema nut than any of

us,” Truffaut wrote in his memoir. With Eric Rohmer, he founded a film

magazine, Gazette du cinéma. In 1952, Rivette began his distinguished and

invaluable career at Cahiers du cinema (he served as the editor from 1963-65).

 

The

rehearsal space has been central to Rivette’s body of work. He transforms the

frame, conjuring a triangulated, free-floating desire involving the actors,

their art and their audience. The most sculptural of directors turns his work

into a dance, granting his actors great freedom in shaping the part, adding

pieces of their own lives that acquire an immediacy and spontaneity, even if it

somkehow threatens the verisimilitude, like the way Jane Birkin and Geraldine

Chaplin break off their speech patterns and suddenly switch to speaking English

in “Love on the Ground”

 

In Rivette’s works, actors are frequently active collaborators. He often

credits them for their contributions to the scenario that reflects his innate

humanity and egalitarian spirit that acknowledges the camaraderie and group

portrait. I interviewed Michel Lonsdale about the experiences of making “Out

1″:

 

“Rivette

compared it to Japanese Noh theater, plays that go on for 12 or 15 hours. He

said, ‘Oh, yes, people go to sleep, they go out and have lunch and come back.

It’s beautiful. The [Out 1] script was only a long piece of paper. It’d say,

‘Something meets somebody else and somebody else.’ Rivette was very calm. He

didn’t have much to say to us. He just said, ‘Improvise.’”

 

Even for the

most industrious and committed of Rivette acolytes, finding and discovering his

work has always constituted a kind of forensic investigation. The vast majority

of features he directed have been materially inaccessible. His greatest

achievement, “Out 1,” had its formal American theatrical premiere last

fall, some four and a half decades after Rivette shot the original material in

1970.

 

Following

its long-delayed American theatrical debut, “Out 1” has just been issued in a

Blu-ray and standard box set by Carlotta Films and Kino Lorber. Criterion is

publishing a Blu-ray of “Paris Belongs to Us,” on March 8th. (The film has been

available on the label’s streaming channel at Hulu.) The director’s 1980 film,

“Le pont du nort,” was also just published. At the moment we only know of

Jacques Rivette’s work in fragments and shards. The act of witness and

experience, central to his art, is now the ultimate in memory and reclamation.

Director

Around a Small Mountain (2009)

Around a Small Mountain

6.0

Director

2009

 

Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu in The Duchess of Langeais (2007)

The Duchess of Langeais

6.5

Director

2007

 

The Story of Marie and Julien (2003)

The Story of Marie and Julien

6.8

Director

2003

 

Jeanne Balibar in Who Knows? (2001)

Who Knows?

6.8

Director

2001

 

Secret Defense (1998)

Secret Defense

7.0

Director

1998

 

Lumière and Company (1995)

Lumière and Company

6.9

Director (segment "Jacques Rivette/Paris")

1995

 

Laurence Côte, Marianne Denicourt, Nathalie Richard, and Bruno Todeschini in Up, Down, Fragile (1995)

Up, Down, Fragile

7.2

Director

1995

 

Sandrine Bonnaire in Joan the Maid 2: The Prisons (1994)

Joan the Maid 2: The Prisons

7.4

Director

1994

 

Sandrine Bonnaire in Joan the Maid 1: The Battles (1994)

Joan the Maid 1: The Battles

7.2

Director

1994

 

Divertimento (1992)

Divertimento

7.4

Director

1992

 

La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

La Belle Noiseuse

7.5

Director

1991

 

The Gang of Four (1989)

The Gang of Four

6.8

Director

1989

 

Wuthering Heights (1985)

Wuthering Heights

6.5

Director

1985

 

Jane Birkin, Geraldine Chaplin, and André Dussollier in Love on the Ground (1984)

Love on the Ground

6.8

Director

1984

 

Paris Goes Away (1981)

Paris Goes Away

6.6

Short

Director

1981

 

Bulle Ogier and Pascale Ogier in Le Pont du Nord (1981)

Le Pont du Nord

6.7

Director

1981

 

Merry-Go-Round (1980)

Merry-Go-Round

6.5

Director

1980

 

Noroît (1976)

Noroît

6.7

Director

1976

 

Juliet Berto and Bulle Ogier in Duelle (1976)

Duelle

6.9

Director

1976

 

Birth and Death of Prometheus

Short

Director

1974

 

Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)

Celine and Julie Go Boating

7.2

Director

1974

 

Essai sur l'agression

4.0

Short

Director

1973

 

Out 1: Spectre (1972)

Out 1: Spectre

7.2

Director

1972

 

Out 1 (1971)

Out 1

7.5

Director

1971

 

Jean-Pierre Kalfon and Bulle Ogier in Mad Love (1969)

Mad Love

7.3

Director

1969

 

Cinéastes de notre temps (1964)

Cinéastes de notre temps

8.5

TV Series

Director

1967

4 episodes

 

Liselotte Pulver, Anna Karina, and Micheline Presle in The Nun (1966)

The Nun

7.5

Director

1966

 

Paris Belongs to Us (1961)

Paris Belongs to Us

6.7

Director

1961

 

Fool's Mate (1956)

Fool's Mate

7.0

Short

Director

1956

 

The Diversion (1952)

The Diversion

5.4

Short

Director

1952

 

Jean-Luc Godard in The Quadrille (1950)

The Quadrille

5.7

Short

Director

1950

 

At the Four Corners (1949)

At the Four Corners

6.0

Short

Director

1949

 

Writer

Around a Small Mountain (2009)

Around a Small Mountain

6.0

scenario

2009

 

Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu in The Duchess of Langeais (2007)

The Duchess of Langeais

6.5

Writer

2007

 

The Story of Marie and Julien (2003)

The Story of Marie and Julien

6.8

scenario

2003

 

Jeanne Balibar in Who Knows? (2001)

Who Knows?

6.8

scenario

2001

 

Secret Defense (1998)

Secret Defense

7.0

scenario

1998

 

Laurence Côte, Marianne Denicourt, Nathalie Richard, and Bruno Todeschini in Up, Down, Fragile (1995)

Up, Down, Fragile

7.2

scenario

1995

 

Sandrine Bonnaire in Joan the Maid 1: The Battles (1994)

Joan the Maid 1: The Battles

7.2

Writer

1994

 

Divertimento (1992)

Divertimento

7.4

Writer

1992

 

La Belle Noiseuse (1991)

La Belle Noiseuse

7.5

scenario

1991

 

The Gang of Four (1989)

The Gang of Four

6.8

scenario

1989

 

Wuthering Heights (1985)

Wuthering Heights

6.5

scenario

1985

 

Jane Birkin, Geraldine Chaplin, and André Dussollier in Love on the Ground (1984)

Love on the Ground

6.8

scenario

1984

 

Paris Goes Away (1981)

Paris Goes Away

6.6

Short

scenario

1981

 

Bulle Ogier and Pascale Ogier in Le Pont du Nord (1981)

Le Pont du Nord

6.7

scenario

1981

 

Merry-Go-Round (1980)

Merry-Go-Round

6.5

scenario

1980

 

Noroît (1976)

Noroît

6.7

scenario

1976

 

Juliet Berto and Bulle Ogier in Duelle (1976)

Duelle

6.9

scenario

1976

 

Birth and Death of Prometheus

Short

Writer

1974

 

Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)

Celine and Julie Go Boating

7.2

scenario (as Rivette)

1974

 

Out 1: Spectre (1972)

Out 1: Spectre

7.2

Writer

1972

 

Out 1 (1971)

Out 1

7.5

scenario (uncredited)

1971

 

Jean-Pierre Kalfon and Bulle Ogier in Mad Love (1969)

Mad Love

7.3

scenario

1969

 

Liselotte Pulver, Anna Karina, and Micheline Presle in The Nun (1966)

The Nun

7.5

written by

1966

 

Paris Belongs to Us (1961)

Paris Belongs to Us

6.7

scenario and dialogue

1961

 

Jean Renoir parle de son art (1961)

Jean Renoir parle de son art

TV Mini Series

Writer

1961

3 episodes

 

Fool's Mate (1956)

Fool's Mate

7.0

Short

scenario and dialogue

1956

 

Actor

Laurence Côte, Marianne Denicourt, Nathalie Richard, and Bruno Todeschini in Up, Down, Fragile (1995)

Up, Down, Fragile

7.2

M. Pierre (uncredited)

1995

 

Sandrine Bonnaire in Joan the Maid 1: The Battles (1994)

Joan the Maid 1: The Battles

7.2

Le prêtre (uncredited)

1994

 

Nathalie Baye and Philippe Léotard in Short Memory (1979)

Short Memory

5.8

Marcel Jaucourt (Premier Flashback)

1979

 

Paris Belongs to Us (1961)

Paris Belongs to Us

6.7

Romanian man at the party (uncredited)

1961

 

Fool's Mate (1956)

Fool's Mate

7.0

Short

Narrator (voice, uncredited)

1956

 

Michèle Morgan and Jean Marais in The Glass Castle (1950)

The Glass Castle

6.1

Un voyageur qui sort de la Gare de l'Est (uncredited)

1950