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Yeah New Yorker's treatment (or whatever you can call it) of that film is just infuriating. This is still great news and I'm excited to see as many of these in theatres as possible, especially Haut Bas Fragile after reading some of the impressions here.

nolanoe wrote:So glad to hear those two/three get a restore!! Crossing my fingers for Bande des Quatre next!!

Good to see my psychic abilities are still working!! So so so SO happy about the news these films are all going to be restored.

Celine et Julie WILL have to come out now - I mean, Rivette seems to bring in the $$$, so...

Watched Kino's release of Le Pont du Nord last night. What was being accomplished with the Composites video essay? In addition to its crude editing and sound, any attempt at actual analysis (and very little screen time was devoted to such an attempt) was shallow prattle delivered in a grating high-rising intonation. Why did anyone decide this was worthy of inclusion?

med wrote:Watched Kino's release of Le Pont du Nord last night. What was being accomplished with the Composites video essay? In addition to its crude editing and sound, any attempt at actual analysis (and very little screen time was devoted to such an attempt) was shallow prattle delivered in a grating high-rising intonation. Why did anyone decide this was worthy of inclusion?

Who made this extra? (I have the MOC version of PdN)

Gina Telaroli, a filmmaker of whom I know nothing beyond what I've Googled.

A generous interpretation of the piece is that it is a tribute to Rivette in general and this film in particular—footage from the movie is superimposed over Telaroli's own footage of two women walking around and talking or sitting around and reading Clarice Lispector—but the end result was so slapdash and slight.

Sounds pretty pointless.

If I remember correctly, Mr. Rivette filmed PDN in areas that were quickly being gentrified. The two ladies were retracing the filming locations, which nowadays look nothing like 1980.

Or am I thinking of an extra from Celine and Julie Go Boating?

I wanted to check out the remnants of the Petite Ceinture (some of which showed up in PdN, I think) on our recent trip to Paris -- but we ran out of time.

Who precisely should we be looking to to release Celine and Julie finally?

New Yorker are still holding onto the US rights. Arrow looked into it in the UK when they did their (first?) Rivette set but apparently felt it was a no-go.

Looks like the rights of L'amour fou may have finally been sorted out, as the CNC have funded TF1 to restore it.

Calvin wrote:Looks like the rights of L'amour fou may have finally been sorted out, as the CNC have funded TF1 to restore it.

Great news! I wonder how long we will have to wait to actually see the restored version (based on previous experience with other 4+ hour black and white films)?

I'm pretty optimistic that this will at least get a TV broadcast on arte or on another French channel. From then on it usually only takes a few days to reach the rest of the world

And I'm extremely glad to see Duvivier's "Le tourbillon de Paris" on that list, too. A truly fine silent starring the wonderful Lil Dagover, and which can currently only be seen as an incomplete 9.5 mm copy. High time that it gets properly restored.

Calvin wrote:Looks like the rights of L'amour fou may have finally been sorted out, as the CNC have funded TF1 to restore it.

So will this go to Cohen then? I could swear that TF1 and Cohen have worked together.

Someone spoke with Rivette's widow, who says that the rights to L'amour fou are with her, it's being restored from the original negative and should be completed next year!

Also, Studio Canal are restoring La Religieuse

swo17 wrote:Is Celine and Julie going to be the last Rivette film to make it on Blu-ray?

Appalled nobody mentioned this in here: BFI BD coming up!!

‘La Belle Noiseuse’ Trailer: Jacques Rivette’s Classic Returns For 25th Anniversary In 4K Restoration

This opens at Quad Cinema on Thanksgiving weekend - I'm guessing a BD from Cohen will follow?

Interesting use of music in the trailer – I'm so used to associating the film with Stravinsky's 'Agon' (which plays over the old UK trailer and of course over the opening and closing credits), but found this kind of a refreshing presentation of the film nonetheless. I just hope that we'll also be getting Divertimento with the Blu-ray/DVD release.

I just watched The Nun, which expires from Filmstruck later this week. I feel like it's rather shunted to the side in Rivette studies, but I found it very good nonetheless. Its mise-en-scene, decoupage, and sound design are largely in line with his style in Paris Belongs to Us and which returned in Scenes from Parallel Lives and forward. I didn't know the particulars of the plot, so was surprised at the direction the second half of the film took, which is actually quite timely. Karina is excellent, a very physical performance.

I was kind of stunned how good The Nun was. Hearing the way it's usually described in the Rivette canon – as this kind of brief embrace of conventional narrative form by the director before he veered off in his own radical direction – I expected some really boring and artistically safe period piece. While it's true that there was a quantum leap between this and L'Amour Fou (a masterpiece), I still find The Nun much, much more interesting than most other European period dramas (including Rivette's own later Don't Touch the Axe).

"Provocative" is misspelled.

I just watched Le Pont du Nord for the first time, the twelfth Rivette feature I've seen (counting both manifestations of Out 1 separately).

My initial reaction is that I liked it the least of any I've seen. Yes, so many of his recurring themes are present: conspiracy, paranoia, games, roleplaying, mythmaking, etc. In fact, the themes are almost too present, like what would result if someone sat down to make a Rivette parody (the Pascale Ogier character would have to be supernatural or spectral to truly complete the parody, though); one could even consider it a third part of a trilogy following Paris Belongs to Us and Out 1 (I read the section on the film in the Mary Wiles monograph on Rivette after watching this and she made the same argument, actually). There were moments I liked, but I never quite got on its wavelength. A quick online survey (driven by my Letterboxd account) seems to find that other Rivette fans are far more enthusiastic than I am, so I wonder if I was missing something, or if maybe this one just isn't quite for me.

Rivette's mid-80s work is one of my gaps, so I further wonder if this film isn't primarily a summary of his career and ambitions up to the point of its making, from which he could branch out in different directions. Of course, by the time you get to Gang of Four at the end of the decade, the theatrical obsessions are still in full force ...

All the Best People wrote:one could even consider it a third part of a trilogy following Paris Belongs to Us and Out 1 (I read the section on the film in the Mary Wiles monograph on Rivette after watching this and she made the same argument, actually).

I don't know why everything always has to resolve into trilogies. Rivette has made a number of films revolving around the same concerns (basically: vague conspiracies + theatre), so why not include La Bande des Quatres and Va Savoir? Those two films actually fit more closely with the earlier pair than Le Pont du Nord does.

One thing I love about Rivette's cinema is that he has these very consistent strands running all the way through his career, which get mixed and matched in all sorts of ways. Sometimes the same handful of elements come into play in a similar combination as before; sometimes there's a fresh and delightful confluence; sometimes there's a messy pile-up - but it's all Rivette. Artificially demarcating small conceptual gulags among the works seems counter to his actual film practice.

zedz wrote:

All the Best People wrote:one could even consider it a third part of a trilogy following Paris Belongs to Us and Out 1 (I read the section on the film in the Mary Wiles monograph on Rivette after watching this and she made the same argument, actually).

I don't know why everything always has to resolve into trilogies. Rivette has made a number of films revolving around the same concerns (basically: vague conspiracies + theatre), so why not include La Bande des Quatres and Va Savoir? Those two films actually fit more closely with the earlier pair than Le Pont du Nord does.

One thing I love about Rivette's cinema is that he has these very consistent strands running all the way through his career, which get mixed and matched in all sorts of ways. Sometimes the same handful of elements come into play in a similar combination as before; sometimes there's a fresh and delightful confluence; sometimes there's a messy pile-up - but it's all Rivette. Artificially demarcating small conceptual gulags among the works seems counter to his actual film practice.

I think what unites these three is that they are all specifically about Paris at a certain time politically and culturally to a greater extent than some of the others. It's obviously unofficial and just a way to think about the films.