The Jacques Rivette Collection

[All the Best People]

I polished off the collection with Merry-Go-Round, and I must say that despite its flaws <cough>Joe Dallesandro</cough>, I liked it much more than anticipated, certainly given its reception by the likes of Rosenbaum (who said it was Rivette's weakest film to date) and Rivette's own public expressions of disappointment. Faced with a frayed production, Rivette (and Schiffman and de Gregorio) go back to some wells here, which to me was actually rather appealing as the relative narrative incoherence perfectly provides a narrative coherence with his overall body of work; this is in many ways the missing link between Paris Nous Appartient on one hand and Secret Defense on the other. As such, it appears to provide something of a transitional position in Rivette's career, including the fact that (if I'm not mistaken) this is the last of his films to entertain a notion of mysticism until he rebooted Marie and Julien two decades later, and as the conspiracies and mysterious plots now move to the domestic (there was of course also a sense of this in Celine and Julie Go Boating/Phantom Ladies Over Paris). It can be trying at times, sure, but perhaps my low expectations were a good thing here.

[Satori]

I felt inspired to write a bit about Duelle after rewatching it for class a couple of times over the past week and thought I would share it here.

Douglas Morrey and Alison Smith make a great argument in their book that Rivette’s films are caught in an eternal dialectic between Lang and Rossellini; between the cold logic of conspiracy and warm improvisatory humanness. I’ve been wondering if there isn’t an even deeper cinematic opposition at play: the cinema’s original opposition between the Lumière brothers and Georges Méliès.

The Lumière pole of realism can be found in the mise-en-scene, especially the way his films show Paris throughout the decades, including plenty of documentary-like street scenes. While perhaps more directly attributable to Rivette’s interest in the work of Jean Rouch, this documentary aspect of Rivette’s can be traced all the way back to Lumière. The most overt example in Duelle is during the train station scene in which we meet Viva and her sidekick as they walk through crowds of people going about their daily life. These “extras” clearly have no idea what is going on, often turning to stare at the camera as Rivette tracks by. These scenes pop up frequently in Rivette’s films: the flabbergasted diner patrons in Out 1 when Leaud demands money, or the sidewalk shoppers during the opening chase sequence in Celine and Julie . I’m reminded a bit of the Mitchell & Kenyon film in which the kids run alongside the car, mugging their way into every shot. These improvisatory moments in Rivette’s films temporarily set aside the narrative to bask in the beauty of life itself in all its strange unwieldiness. In Duelle, this also manifests itself in the piano soundtrack improvised by Jean Wiener on the spot, gesturing towards the silent film era while also maintaining a realism by placing the pianist within the frame itself, even in the most unlikely situations (like Viva’s seduction of Perriot).

The other pole of Rivette’s films is not only Lang, but also Méliès. The “control” in Lang’s narratives—Mabuse controlling the fluctuation of stock prices, the Nazi conspiracies in the American films, or even Edward G Robinson’s masochism—allegorize Lang’s own mastery of his mise-en-scene. Similarly, the raw improvisatory humanity of Lumière can be contrasted with the carefully constructed fantasies of Méliès, a magician who knows how to hold his audience’s attention. In this reading, the suspense generated by directors like Lang or Hitchcock is equivalent to the magician’s sleight of hand—a manipulation of the audience to deliver the big payoff.

This opposition becomes literal in Duelle, in which the actual fantasy elements in the narrative create a marked contrast with the documentary-like presentation of reality. Like Méliès, Rivette is not interested in a “realistic” presentation of fantasy that would integrate it into the narrative; the fantasy stuff is delightfully hokey and over the top. The glowing jewel is ridiculous and the shot in which we cut to the gods in their magical outfits elicited more than a few laughs from my students. When Viva is chasing Lucie and Perriot in the subway, Rivette uses a simple cut to show Viva “teleporting,” recalling all those trick films by Méliès. The narrative of Duelle deals with conspiracy: the two gods are tricking the humans to figure out the location of the missing jewel that will allow them to stay on earth. But this conspiracy is fantastic (in the French sense), a presentation of a whimsical other world that probably shares more with the strange other worlds of Méliès than the disturbingly realistic conspiracies in most of Lang’s work.

While Duelle is probably one of the most forthrightly Langian (and Hitchcockian) films in Rivette’s oeuvre, I think it might also be a key text in uncovering Rivette’s links to early cinema, particularly the opposition between the Lumière brothers and Méliès. I’m wondering if this will hold up with other films, or if it is Duelle’s self-conscious invocation of silent film through the improvised piano score that brings it to the forefront.

[Michael Kerpan]

Satori -- very interesting observations. Doesn't one of Rivette's acknowledged (via intertitle styling -- among other things) influences, Feuillade, display the same mix of Melies and Lumiere?

[Satori]

Oh, great point. I totally agree that Feuillade is everywhere in Rivette, from the direct citations (my favorite is the library caper scene in Celine and Julie) to the way his films engage Paris as a space. Feuillade also introduces the problem of narrative structure, something that isn't as apparent in the Lumière/ Méliès opposition. There is Rivette's segmentation of narrative time with intertitles, which corresponds to the parts of a serial, something that reaches its apotheosis in his own serial Out 1. Interestingly, Duelle only has an introductory intertitle; it doesn't use them throughout. Perhaps it returns more fully to the original Lumière/ Méliès opposition rather than mediating it through Feuillade or Lang/Rossellini?

[FrauBlucher]

Arrow Academy tweeted that Out 1 will be put back In stock with a special discounted pre-order price till March 31st.

[Luke M]

£37 seems like a good deal.

[Adam X]

After finally making it through this set while continuing to explore Rivette's filmography, I seem to've found myself on the other team. Paris Nous Appartient I found to be fairly interesting, which convinced me to get this set. While I still found Out 1 difficult, nonetheless there were scenes and characters scattered throughout that kept my interest. I think that Juliet Berto might be one of my new favourite actors. Michael Lonsdale's & (to a lesser extent) Jean-Pierre Léaud's characters though, I really couldn't stand.
Out 1: Spectre, I only partially made it through before putting it on the backburner - from what I saw, I felt it's structure actually ruins what makes the full-length version in any way enjoyable...

On the other hand, Duelle, Noroît & Merry-Go-Round I all loved. Along with Celine et Julie & Le Pont du Nord, probably my two favourites, I'm really glad to've finally seen these films. The mixture of improvised performance & plotting, hints of magick, surrealism, "diegetic" musicians, recurring use of actors, the 1970's locations & fashion, a focus on creativity and creation, of seeing the world different, games & conspiracies, it all adds up to some really wonderful cinema. I'm not sure what I'll think of his films going forward into the 1980's, though I plan to find out.

Does anyone know what's going on with the rest of Cohen's announced titles?

[dda1996a]

Reminds me that I should get to watching his films already, having finished Gidard's 60s output recently. Anyone know a good comprehensive book about Rivette to go with his films?

[rapta]

£37 seems like a good deal.

Yeah pretty good for those that slept on the original set. That said, I paid just under £34 for the limited set back in November (but I was lucky, think it was a random price-drop). Out 1 is the main draw though of course.

[kubelkind]

The Mary M.Wiles book on Rivette is pretty great, as is the chapter in James Monaco's New Wave book (which also has some of the best writing on Godard I've seen). The Monaco book only goes up to the mid-70s or so, though. If you can find the BFI Rivette book cheaply, the interviews in it are really informative, but don't pay £100 plus on Amazon, check your library if you have such a thing. There's some good writing on Rivette (and especially Out 1) online, the Senses Of Cinema website (which is a great thing overall) springs to mind.

[Marwood]

So now that Out 1 is out again on blu in the UK, do you think there’s any possibility that Arrow will re-release the individual discs of Noroît", "Duelle" and "Merry-Go-Round from the OOP Rivette box as single discs here?

Or maybe a three-film amaray like the Makhmalbaf Poetic Trilogy?

[Adam X]

They released the three films as a set in the US.

[Noiretirc]

Oh-kay, I have to be the first one to go here, so feel free to skip this because I won’t sugarcoat any of it. Given Rivette’s own critical hyperbole, I imagine he wouldn’t have minded these effusively negative comments too much anyways!

Early in the thread I joked that Jacques Rivette doesn’t suck. I’m less sure after finally getting through this box. Some of these films are so bad on such a fundamental level that it’s caused me to revise downwards my overall impression and esteem of Rivette as a director. I still think he’s made at least one masterpiece (Celine and Julie Go Boating) and quite a few good or great films. But I now have to reconcile that with the arrogance that could produce Out 1, Noroit, and Merry-Go-Round, films so wrongheaded and devoid of basic cinematic elements that the feverish protestations of those “in the know” in favor of their brilliance is the real peek into an “alternate reality” here.

Out 1 unexpectedly reveals Rivette to be the greatest Hitchcockian of the Young Turks, as no movie has ever made me hate actors more. Rivette’s entire methodology here, confirmed in spades by the accompanying feature-length doc, is one of the most arrogant approaches to filmmaking I have ever witnessed. Rivette has decided that the things he films and includes in his picture matter solely because he filmed them and included them. There is no meaning to anything other than via audience projection, and no pleasure or value inherent in any of his material other than sporadic blips on the overall flatline. The few scant parts that work are a result of the law of averages. There is no plot and no narrative, only vaguely cryptic scraps meted out as an afterthought to the collage of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad acting exercises and listless improv. Rivette shows no evidence of caring about the craft of acting, but is after an abstract notion of its employment and subsequent capture here that never once justifies the attention lavished on it. Juliet Berto and Jean-Pierre Leaud, old hands who did not waste their real lives staging endless acting exercises, fare fine at directing themselves. Others, like Bernadette LaFont and Bulle Ogier, do not. I am not exaggerating when I say you could not pay me any sum of money to watch this film again, because I could not possibly sit through the exhausting and soul-deadening acting class sequences again. They join extended rape scenes on the shortlist of actual worst things I have ever had to sit through in any movie. And that ending! This is what it takes to get people to throw out superlatives like “best final shot of all time 4 ever”? It’s not even the best final shot of the eight segments. It means nothing. This entire film is itself an exercise, not in acting but in filmmaking by committee, only the results are like the Dziga Vertov Group without political impulse or craft or skill or value or worth of any kind. It is a Scared Straight reminder of what could have happened and didn’t to a legitimately provocative collective experimental work like Symbiopsychotaxiplasm. Thirteen hours of my life gone, good lord.

Duelle is at least interesting, and the use of live on-set (and often on-camera!) diagetic piano improv is an actual idea surrounding improvisation and film language, an entire idea in that direction more than Out 1 exhibited. The film’s awfully silly, but the un-ironic playfulness works more often than not, and there are moments of consideration for aesthetic pleasures and a working notion of mise-en-scène that are almost wholly absent from the other films in this set. Duelle is an okay movie. Its sister film Noroit is unbearable. Rivette returns to the well of improvised music but makes sure it’s atonal and unlistenable this time and gives the audience an embarrassing dress rehearsal of a real movie instead of something we might enjoy or follow or have any level of investment in, from intellectual to emotional to conceptual, whatever. Consider the switch to filters in the finale. Why are they there? What possible reason could justify their random employment when any normal shot of a second angle would do? Cahiers doesn’t get to shit all over A Man and a Woman and then ten years later do it worse.

I entertained myself as Noroit dragged on and on without anything of value occurring by making a mental Gallant list to Rivette’s Goofus works in this box, all relatively contemporary to the works themselves. To wit: If I wanted mysterious crypticism executed with style and intelligence, I would watch Raul Ruiz. If I wanted to see insights into actors and their craft, I would watch Ingmar Bergman. If I wanted to see variations on themes of conspiracies, I would watch Alan J Pakula. If I wanted to see a director play with notions of narrative and filmic time and evoke the grace notes of life, I would watch Jacques Rozier. If I wanted to admire a director’s scrappy low-budget spirit and playful shoddiness, I would watch the early films of Luc Moullet. There’s no defense for these films that can’t be answered by someone else’s superior work.

By the time I got to Merry-Go-Round, I was already counting down the clock as soon as it started. At two hours and forty minutes, the film is very long. Needlessly so. Rivette has used time to his advantage before (Celine and Julie Go Boating, Secret Defense, La belle noiseuse), but those films used their 3-4+ hour running times to explore cinematic notions of narrative time, focus, and expanse. This movie’s just long because the filmmakers are winging it at every step of the process and refuse to form it into something. When the most interesting part of the film is a bizarre and unexplained jaunt to a sand dune that makes no sense and has no real connection to anything else in the film, to the point where one of the main actors is recast by an old Rivette favorite, something is already dead and buried with the main feature. Speaking of, while I refute that anyone in any of these films gives a performance worth praising, I will somewhat add to the earlier praise of Hermine Karagheuz by pointing out that she does have a distractingly thick and beautiful head of hair!



I was surprised to hear Rosenbaum compare Rivette to Kubrick with regards to his use of takes, because I got the opposite impression from Merry-Go-Round: everything looks like a first take. If Rivette was indeed filming these scenes over and over, then double shame on him for picking so many awful takes where the actors flub their lines, exchange banal and poorly timed improv, and even look at the fucking camera! At least Rosenbaum cops to these films being unpopular and not well-considered, something you’d never know from reading this forum… Of all the mysteries offered up by the box and its contents, the answer to why these films languished in obscurity for so long is one easily discovered.

So, you didn't like it, huh?

[bearcuborg]

I saw all of these in the theater at MoMI in Queens about 20yrs ago. And at that age, working in the industry/indie and student films...they all landed for me. I have the set, but have only watched the extras, not the movies. Whatever that means... I'll cherish the memories of spending a weekend with them. I became friends with Alex Ross Perry that weekend, before he made anything besides a short film I believe. We might have been the only two who laughed out loud at the final shot of Hermine Karagheuz in Out 1. Of course I will acknowledge these movies aren't going to be for everyone...(I remember the plot for Out 1 doesn't take shape till hour 7) but when you can see them in a theater, there's a chance a whimsical magic will take shape. The one I liked the least was The Nun.

[Noiretirc]

I saw all of these in the theater at MoMI in Queens about 20yrs ago. And at that age, working in the industry/indie and student films...they all landed for me. I have the set, but have only watched the extras, not the movies. Whatever that means... I'll cherish the memories of spending a weekend with them. I became friends with Alex Ross Perry that weekend, before he made anything besides a short film I believe. We might have been the only two who laughed out loud at the final shot of Hermine Karagheuz in Out 1. Of course I will acknowledge these movies aren't going to be for everyone...(I remember the plot for Out 1 doesn't take shape till hour 7) but when you can see them in a theater, there's a chance a whimsical magic will take shape. The one liked the least was The Nun.

Out of curiousity, how did the Out 1 duration get managed in the theatre?

Your "hour 7" comment greatly interests me. I need a rewatch soon. Some people (who love this film!) poke fun at the ending, but the beach breakdown blew (alliteration!) me away, and it was only then that I thought that I finally grasped the "plot" (quotations needed! - it's still all very slippery for me.)

Out 1 just floors me. I might be the only viewer who finds the drama/theater class scenes compelling! I'm completely serious. That first (longest) role-play (or whatever the fuck) had me on the edge of my seat. And on subsequent viewings, I think I'm finally, successfully (perhaps), marrying these scenes to the overall plot.

[bearcuborg]

Out 1 was broken up over 2 days. Each day had two intermissions, which I believe lasted an hour…also, they used soft subtitles, which might have been the only film I’ve seen use the technique of projecting titles onto the screen. It was pretty marvelous act of projection work by the MoMI staff. Much like you, I find Rivette’s films to be highly stimulating.

[Noiretirc]

Wow. I'd never heard of this "soft subtitles" technique before. Fascinating. Thanks.

[GaryC]

In the UK, I think "soft subtitles" (which I have seen in other preservation) were used for the two screenings during the BFI Southbank's Rivette retrospective in the 2010s, when the film only existed as an unsubtitled 16mm print. I saw it in 2015 at what was then only the third UK showing, after it had been restored and it showed as a DCP in the Prince Charles. It was over two days, four episodes a day, with gaps between episodes. At one point during day two, they suggested cutting the intervals down, but we voted to keep them as I'm sure plenty of people would have needed toilet breaks. By my reckoning, about a hundred people were there at the start, but certainly not all lasted the course.

[nowhereisaplace]

Out 1 was broken up over 2 days. Each day had two intermissions, which I believe lasted an hour…also, they used soft subtitles, which might have been the only film I’ve seen use the technique of projecting titles onto the screen. It was pretty marvelous act of projection work by the MoMI staff. Much like you, I find Rivette’s films to be highly stimulating.

Actually, there was an intermission after each episode. After the first episode, there was about a 15 minute intermission. After the 2nd, there was about an hour break for lunch. Then after the 3rd, there was another 15 minute break. The 2nd day repeated this structure. What was great is that the story didn't start to emerge until near the end of the first day, so at that point we all had to go home and then return the next morning. And for sure, the screening thinned out as the day went on. I went with 2 others who left after the first episode. A truly wonderful experience.

Incidentally, almost simultaneously there was also a complete Rossellini retrospective happening at MOMA in Manhattan, 2 blocks from my office at the time, so there was a lot of running from screening to screening and fitting in as much as possible. What a month that was.

[beamish14]

Wow. I'd never heard of this "soft subtitles" technique before. Fascinating. Thanks.

This had to be done with prints of Chantal Akerman’s films that the Cinefamily in Los Angeles screened, too. It went surprisingly well