The culmination of New Wave master Jacques Rivette's legendary middle period (which ranged from L'Amour fou through Out 1, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Duelle, Noroît, and Merry-Go-Round), Le Pont du Nord envisions Paris as a sprawling game-board marked off with tucked-away conspiracies, where imagination and paranoia intermingle; where the hinted-at stakes are sanity, life, and death.
Regular Rivette actress Bulle Ogier stars as Marie, a claustrophobic ex-con who, shortly after wandering into Paris, encounters the wild and potentially troubled young woman Baptiste (Pascale Ogier, Bulle's actual 22-year-old daughter). Baptiste, a knife-wielding, self-proclaimed kung-fu expert with a drive to slash the eyes from faces in adverts (including, in one instance, those on a placard for Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha), accompanies Marie on her quest to solve the mystery behind the contents of her former lover's (Pierre Clémenti's) suitcase: an amalgam of clippings, patterns, and maps of Paris that points to a vastly unsettling labyrinth replete with signs and intimations whose menacing endgame remains all too unclear.
Gorgeously shot by the master cinematographer William Lubtchansky, Le Pont du Nord is a free-wheeling, powerful experience whose hypnotic rhythm and ominous undercurrents resolve into a frightening and exhilarating portrait of post-revolutionary, early-'80s Paris - and in turn form a prime example of Rivette's uncanny, occult cinema. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Jacques Rivette's rare and essential feature Le Pont du Nord on Blu-ray for the first time anywhere in the world.
SPECIAL FEATURES
• Glorious new HD presentation of the film in 1080p
• Newly translated optional English subtitles
• 56-PAGE BOOKLET containing new writing by critics Francisco Valente and Sabrina Marques; a director's statement by Jacques Rivette, and six questions for the director by Jean Narboni, from the film's original press book; a parallel-text translation of the traditional French children's song "Sur le Pont du Nord"; vintage writing on the film by Serge Daney; excerpts from a long interview with Rivette conducted by Serge Daney and Jean Narboni; the complete script for a short-film homage to Rivette by actress and filmmaker Kate Lyn Sheil; and rare archival imagery.
