Running the Rivette Marathon

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Better late than never. And given the subject’s affinity for making movies of exceptional duration, perhaps the long wait is somehow, poetically, appropriate. Jacques Rivette, old master of the nouvelle vague, is finally getting his first complete American retrospective. The 22-film spree, beginning tonight at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, is the sort of thing cinephile dreams are made of — and is even more notable for wrangling some of the most elusive of Mr. Rivette’s singular works.

Now 78, Mr. Rivette is still busy shooting, so busy that he won’t be attending any of the screenings, which lead off with his 1961 debut, “Paris Belongs to Us.” Though it’s been five years since his most commercial outing, “Va Savoir,” and more than a decade since the popular success of 1991’s four-hour “La Belle Noiseuse” and its two-hour remix, “Divertimento,” the filmmaker commands extremely high regard. Perhaps this has something to do with the slippery nature of his films, as well as their physical rarity.

Few directors make films as perfectly suited for DVD, as Mr. Rivette prefers three-, four-, and even 12-hour running times, and loves to recut existing titles into new alternate versions — investigating the narrative process even as he questions the reliability of the stories his characters tell. Yet, one of his best, and best-loved, films, 1974’s “Celine and Julie Go Boating,” isn’t even available on DVD.

All the more reason to go see it this weekend. Richly allusive and marvelously carefree, the film offers everything that makes Mr. Rivette’s films magical and compelling. Its lead actresses, Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier, play a magician and a librarian, respectively, each improvising and wandering through their own and each other’s realities. Like so many French films of the period, its frames luxuriate in looselimbed scenes that follow the actors across the streets, cafes, and parks of Paris, into modest flats cluttered with bric-a-brac and mattresses on the floor.

The young women, who will swap identities back and forth, engage in an open-ended mystery that they chase as they chase each other. Through the agency of a piece of candy, they both enter a haunted abode that the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum once dubbed “the House of Fiction,”where they find themselves involved in an aristocratic melodrama adapted from Henry James, with nods to Lewis Carroll’s looking-glass, Jorge Luis Borges’s love of phantom doubles and arcane texts, and Louis Feuillade’s silent-era serials. Even the movie’s French title, “Céline et Julie vont en bateau,” is a pun, a winking reference to Renoir’s “Boudu sauvé des eaux” (“Boudu Saved From Drowning”).

The movie revels in its love of women — a trademark of Mr. Rivette’s work — and a multi-dimensional theatricality in which every moment appears to be both “acted” and made up on the spot. The cast, which also includes Bulle Ogier, Marie-France Pisier, and an unmistakable Barbet Schroeder, indulges Mr. Rivette’s process as the cerebral form of play that it is, essentially inviting the audience to participate in the game rather than sit passively.

“He believes in making the audience work,” David Schwartz, the chief curator of the museum, said. “They are intellectual, but they have real entertainment value.” Mr. Rivette also believes in making curators work. The retrospective only came into being earlier this year after the National Film Theatre in London tracked down hard-to-find prints and created subtitles. Though Mr. Schwartz and his associates subsequently found a few additional prints circulating in America, they were particularly fortunate to get the NFT’s subtitled version of “Out 1,” a film so mythical it very nearly is a cinematic unicorn.

The 743-minute film makes its American premiere December 9 and 10 in two six-hour screenings. Originally shot for French television, the episodic 1971 production was rejected for its length. Subsequently, it has only been shown a few times at film festivals, and most of those just in the past year. Mr. Rivette later recut the marathon, which was never really intended for movie houses, into the somewhat more succinct (4 1/2 hours) “Out 1: Spectre.”

The improvised story follows two groups of actors rehearsing different plays by Aeschylus but quickly detours into other offstage enigmas involving a secret society, conspiracies, and Balzac. Mr. Rivette has always kept clues close to his vest. He has said he called the movie “Out 1” “because we didn’t succeed in finding a title. It’s without meaning. It’s only a label. “As with most of his films, he leaves it to the audience to sort things out. He also makes the investment more than worthwhile. Like the most enduring and indelible mysteries, his movies hum in your head long after they unspool.

Through December 31 (35th Avenue at 36th Street, Astoria, 718-784-0077).


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use