![[b&w goofy grin]](rivette3.jpg)
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Cannes 2001
1928: born 1 March in Rouen, France (family of pharmacists)
assistant to Jean Renoir and Jacques Becker
camera operator for Francois Truffaut and Eric Rohmer
1950-69: critic at Cahiers du Cinema and at Arts
popularised the term 'mise en scene' as substitute for 'direction' [history]
praised mise-en-scene of Stroheim, Rossellini, Murnau, and Lang
Long overview, short bio, German overview
IMDb, filmography, ditto, New Wave history
made between 1959 and 1961 experienced shooting dificulties [bkground]
Cahiers du Cinema top ten list for 1961; Godard's
Banned by the French Minister of Information, but selected to represent France at Cannes by the Minister of Culture, Andre Malraux
French item on the Diderot novel
info, ditto, French blurb w/pic
Cahiers du Cinema top ten list for 1967
Mad Love
a curious meditation on the act of creation, almost wholly improvised
four hours
based on a novel by Honore Balzac
the first version lasts 750 minutes
"Rivette is expanding the compressed time in which movies typically occur to something like real time, allowing us to live with the characters, to be fully conscious of the moments that, in real life, we allow to pass by" [source]
the actresses created their own characters
"...the cinema I'm after ... films which impose themselves on the spectator through a sort of domination of visual and sound 'events', and which require the screen, a big screen, to be effective. In the final analysis, all the films that have impressed me recently are films in which, in very different ways, this fact of a narrative spectacle comes into play: Fellini, Jancs¢, Werner Schroeter's Salome [1971]. (...) These are films that impose themselves visually through their monumentality (...) What I mean is that there is a weight to what is on the screen, and which is there on the screen as a statue might be, or a building or a huge beast. And this weight is perhaps what Barthes would call the weight of the signifier... " [source]
Seen by Rosenbaum as a turningpoint
"...begins by accumulating all sorts of meanings -- meanings related to conspiracy, to theater, to all sorts of human interactions and exchanges (including implicitly the accumulation of meanings that clustered around such dreams as those of the New Wave, those of the counterculture, and those of May '68in short, utopian 60s dreams of collective effort) -- and then remorselessly records the draining away of those meanings and connections, the gradual splintering of the very idea of collectivity into solitude, unsolvable puzzles, paranoia, madness."
Compared by Rosenbaum to Gravity's Rainbow; Rosenbaum passim
Leaud: "It was a very exciting adventure for a young man, but I wouldn't want to repeat it. I guess that the vampiric, sadistic methods that Rivette used to make that film were a part of the moment" [source]
"the most innovative film since Citizen Kane" [source]
the actresses created their own characters
Jonathan Rosenbaum's ten best of 1976 list; J Hoberman's ten best list for 1978
"...a final flowering (or is it last gasp?) of the referential aspect of the New Wave, the aspect where Rivette's previous career as a film critic is most apparent -- an explosion of references to Hollywood musicals, Feuillade serials, Hitchcock thrillers, other films of the New Wave, and so on. All these references are allowed to interact with and enhance particular locations, actresses and actors, everyday moods and details."
the story of the two goddesses -- of the moon and of the sun, who can live only 40 days on Earth, if they do not find the mysterious diamond
Seen by Rosenbaum as a turningpoint
"in Duelle, which may have just as many references to other films (especially Hollywood noirs like The Seventh Victim, The Big Sleep, The Lady from Shanghai, and Kiss Me Deadly, but also fantasies by Cocteau and Franju), the references no longer connect with material reality in the same manner. The world of the characters seems congealed, under glass, disconnected from the natural locations and to some extent from the actresses and actors as well -- a private and more obsessive world populated by the bodies of actors more than their faces or souls."
Cahiers du Cinema top ten list for 1982; Dave Kehr's top ten list for 1982
Cahiers du Cinema top ten list for 1989
IMDb; Amazon; shortened as 'Divertimento', IMDb
info, ditto, shortened version
Jonathan Rosenbaum's ten best of 1992 list; a 100 best list; Dave Kehr's top ten list for 1992, Siskel's
Emmanuelle Beart fanpage, pic, poster
IMDb; Amazon double, just Battles
Long review within review of Besson's recent Joan
"Rivette's focus on specifics, his decision to stick closely to the historical record and the constraints imposed on him by making a film of this scale with a minuscule budget all combine to give "Jeanne la Pucelle" an irreducible actuality. Rivette's film feels as if we are seeing something that actually happened, less "history" than events that occurred in the course of real lives."
review, short review, passim; French blurb; Italian w/pix
Jonathan Rosenbaum's ten best of 1996 list; Cahiers du Cinema top ten list for 1994
French profile of actress
inspired by low-budget MGM musicals of the 50s that were shot in four or five weeks on sets left over from other films; title alludes to the instructions stamped on parcels
the actresses created their own characters
Excellent long Rosenbaum rave; Salon rave
review, short review, ditto, ditto, German, ditto; Italian; Dutch w/different pic
Jonathan Rosenbaum's ten best of 1995 list
Jacques Rivette shows a little girl in a square, surrounded by rollerbladers and strolling newspaper readers
German review, ditto, ditto, blurb; French review
Book of JR's own criticism: Amazon
1989 TV documentary by Claire Denis, "Jacques Rivette, le Veilleur" IMDb; info
Rosenbaum (ed.), Rivette: Texts and Interviews (London: British Film Institute, 1977)
Essay on Rivette's view of Howard Hawks and 'evidence'
JR's blurb for 'Wonder'
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