Emotional Whispers Drama Life In Memory of Jacques Riviette
Author | Saul Austerilitz
Translate | Stevie (Wuhan) Wanqi Wang (London)
Proofreading | Jiahan Xu (Paris)
Edit | Silvia (Chengdu)
http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/rivette/
Jacques Pierre Louis Rivitt
March 1, 1928 - January 29, 2016
Jacques Rivette, who rose to prominence in the 1950s, was regarded as the founder of the French New Wave along with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, but he received the least attention in this legendary group. One of the most underrated, his works are rarely screened. Levitte's deliberately obstructed, extraordinarily long films are destined to be different, requiring unusual attention and understanding from audiences, even when compared to the work of his colleagues. But in addition to being obscure, Levitte's work is undoubtedly the richest film of the New Wave period, containing both the appeal to knowledge and the exploration of human nature, which is unmatched by other contemporaries. From Paris nous appartient (1961) to 36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup (2009), In the nearly 50 years since Paris nous appartient (1961), Riviert has never stopped making compelling films.
Poster of "Paris Belongs to Us"
Rivitt made his debut in the frenzied environment of cinema in post-war Paris. As a young film lover, he joined the ranks of critics who would later become a legendary film magazine, Cahiers du cinema. Early in his career, Riverett struggled between film criticism and filmmaking, eventually creating a highly conscious form of filmmaking and critically seeing his place in film history. Although most of Rivitt's work is not shown to the public, he has created some of the most magnificent works in the French New Wave generation during his 55-year film career.
Rivitt was born in Rouen in 1928. In 1950 he joined the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin and wrote for the Gazette du Cinem, a newspaper edited by Eric Houmai. During this time, he directed for the first time a series of short films Aux Quatre Coins (1950), Four Pairs of Dancers Le Quadrille (1950) and Entertain Le Divertissement (1952). Because of his friendship with Houmai, Rivitt participated in the film magazine Handbook, hosted by Andre Bazin and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze. Between 1952 and 1953, the collective core of the Handbook of Cinema, with Rivit, Houmai, Godard, Truffaut and Chabrol as the main body, was formed. In the Film Handbook, Levitte focuses primarily on American cinema in the 1940s and 1950s, opposing sedentary French cinema production in favor of vibrant, unfettered American cinema. He had particular respect for Howard Hawks, John Ford, Nicholas Ray and Fritz Lang as representatives of American dynamism. The Critics of the Film Handbook are aspiring filmmakers, eager to put their understanding of cinema into their own films. Levitte had been an assistant to Jean Renoir and Jacques Becker, and had also been their cinematographer when Truffaut and Houmai were working on their first short films.
Levitte and Jane Birkin
In 1958, before Truffaut, Godard and Houmai, and after Chabrol, Riviette began making his feature film debut. In short supply, he used borrowed cameras, film and free time from actors to make Paris Belongs to Us in just two years. The film is about a group of artists rehearsing Shakespeare's play Pericles, and a true depiction of life in bohemian Paris in the late 1950s. Paris Belongs to Us expresses a frightening modernist view that anything in the world is either part of a great conspiracy or completely unrelated to it. There is no explicit statement about which possibility is more frightening, but its unfettered paranoia pays homage to the modernist predecessors Kafka and Borges, and at the same time looks ahead to the paranoid film that will soon dominate contemporary Hollywood blockbusters.
Many of the recurring themes in Levitte's films stand out in his first films. His films are often filled with paranoia, trickery, and "secrets elsewhere", and focus on the relationship between dramatic representation and improvised everyday life. In several films, including L'Amour fou (1968), Celine et Julie vont en bateau (1974), The Story of Four Women (La Bande des quatre, 1989), Secret défense (1998) and Six (Va savoir, 2001), Levitte expresses his reflections on the nature of cinema and life in the form of drama. Like Shakespeare, Levitte saw the world as a stage and hinted at the inherent drama of human emotions and language through the dramatizations that frequently appeared in his work. This theme runs through all of Rivitt's work like an undercurrent and helps organize and structure the narrative structure. Still, Riverett often returns to the creative souls, driven by love, jealousy, or fear of the world's intrigues, working with them and feeling them together. His films often explore the obscure relationships of different individuals that exist in complexity with life. Life outside the realm of social and interpersonal communication is like the life of an actor off stage, too sparse and short to be snooped on.
Crazy Love 1969
Between 1963 and 1965, Rivitt replaced Houmai as editor-in-chief of the Film Handbook. During his tenure, he guided the Film Handbook to raise awareness of political implications in contemporary culture. From the period of depoliticization in the 1950s to the period of Marxism after May 1968, Rivette was in the middle of two periods of the Film Handbook. His september 1963 interview with the famous semiotician Roland Barthes was the best exposition of the new position of the Film Handbook, defining the political role of cinematic art without abandoning its most primitive and generous love of cinema.
Levitte's second film, La Religieuse, made in 1965, was based on Diderot's Enlightenment novel of the same name. Levitte let Godard's wife (also Muse) Anna Karina play the main character, Suzanne Simonin. The original book tells the story of a girl who was thrown into a French convent by her father, living a miserable life, but relentlessly pursuing freedom. The film is faithful to the original, has a lot of powerful moments, and Carina's performance is impeccable. Unlike Levitte's other works, the film is so ingeniously conceived that it is slightly mannerist. In a sense, The Cultwoman is a return to the "high-quality films" of the 1940s that were fully stylized, mostly expected, and pleasing to the masses. These films are completely devoid of the fiery brilliance that Rivitt exhibits in his excellent works. Even so, the film remained "infamous" after screening because of its relentless portrayal of the angry rule of the Catholic Church banned for two years (and then de Gaulle's government came to power).
The Women Believers, 1966
Levitte's next two films were not released on a large scale, and it was still almost impossible for audiences to enjoy them, but these two films continued and deepened the subversion and complexity of the film's narrative that began with Paris Belongs to Us. Crazy Love tells the story of a couple, producer and actress, who are rehearsing Jean Racine's play Andromache and are also the subject of a television documentary. To reflect the different themes, Levitte's films switch back and forth between 35mm and 16mm film. As a manifestation of Riverett's fanatical pursuit of realism, he hired a real film crew to shoot documentaries and let the actors really rehearse the play. In the film, the difficulties on the stage set cause the actress to part ways with her husband. The fragility of human relationships – one of Rivette's favorite themes , and the fragile relationship between reality and illusion – form the central theme of the film. These reflections formed the core of Levitte's later works, such as the latter being the foundation of Celine and Julie's Voyage, and the former being the key to Six. His fifth film was the near-legendary Out One: Noli me tangere (1971). The film, which lasted nearly 13 hours and was only shown once in its entirety, was essentially a lost work. It was replaced by a later 225-minute version, Out One: Spectre (1972). Based on the novel by Honore de Balzac, the film tells the story of 13 seemingly unrelated people living in Paris who are made up (or not? A secret society. Two loners, played by Juliet Berto and Jean-Pierre Leaud, work with them in an attempt to understand the nature of the conspiracy, but ultimately fail. Out: Ghost is a prophecy about narrative and the unified plot that humanity needs in the face of seemingly complete disconnection. This difficult and obscure film occupies a considerable place in Levitte's career. It presents unsolvable mysteries, unequal fears, and endless nothingness. Jonathan Rosenbaum said of the film: "Rivette's self-subversion of the narrative approach surpasses all the directors before him, and he completely does it all over again. Although Levitte seems to have reached his peak after Out, he once again broke through himself to create Celine and Julie's Voyage, one of the most astonishing works of the post-New Wave era.
Celine and Julie's Voyage(1975).
His first two films were made according to a written script, which disappointed him a little, but L'Amour fou (Crazy Love), which was only partially scripted, was more successful. This encouraged Rivit to abandon the script during celine et Julie vont en bateau and instead work on the details with two heroines, Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier. Celine (Juliet Bedo) and Julie (Dominic Labrière) meet over a cat-and-mouse game in Montmartre in the summer, and soon they become inseparable and inadvertently crash into a magical story house where the same story is repeated every day. In this room, two women engage in a fierce struggle to pursue the same man, which eventually leads to the tragic death of the man's young daughter. Celine and Julie take turns playing the little girl's nurse every day and running out of the house at night to return to their own apartment. They share a magic candy that they can eat and can fully recall everything about the day. The two eventually save the little girl from her endless cycle of tragic fate, but several brilliant shots from the film call into question the difference between reality in the story house and their own real lives (via candy). Regarding this difficult framework that Levitte constructed, David Thomson said: "This is the most innovative film since Citizen Kane... Citizen Kane is the first film to show that the imagined world can be as shocking as the real world, while Celine and Julie creates everything." ”
"Celine and Julie's Voyage"
Levitte's films reshape the audience's perception of cinema in many ways. Through the study of the immutable forms of the past, "Celine and Julie" gradually infiltrates the audience with the results of imaging the possibilities. During the filming process, he started with the length of the film and the respect for the audience. Levitte refuses to follow what he calls a "democratic theory": Directors are encouraged to continue making empty-minded, inconsequential entertainment films simply because audiences like to go into the cinema and pay for them. The traditional film framework of 90 minutes to 2 hours, sifted out by market mechanisms, was ruthlessly overturned by Rivette. As a director, Rivette refuses to be bound by mandatory film lengths, or by more overbearing unwritten rules about what subjects to shoot, how to design scenes for long films, and so on. Instead, Levitte extends cinema to an unnecessary length, which in itself is understood as a declaration of his own film system and the traditional system he rebelled against. This opposition to late capitalism is directly related to feminist ideals, in which the feminine temperament of women is fully demonstrated in "Celine and Julie" as a source of inspiration for the film. Levitte's expansion of the opening chase scene beyond its own narrative task seems like a waste of the first 20 minutes of the film, but it's actually a further interpretation of female beauty. Levitte has always believed that the ideal film should be an ordeal, and should be able to challenge the audience to break through the mainstream, mediocre narrative and shooting techniques, so as to gain a broader understanding of the film's themes. Based on this premise, the narrative component of the opening of "Celine and Julie's Voyage" is quite rare, which is a challenge for the audience, but it is to prepare the audience for the breakthrough of the narrative in the second half of the film, so as to enjoy the wonderful and whimsical narrative process.
Thomson aptly compared it to Citizen Kane, both of which reshaped the narrative of the film and changed the standard framework for the film's illustrativeness. Orson Welles's masterpiece Citizen Kane presents a world in which everyone is divided and no one is more reliable, while Celine and Julie depicts a world of story in itself. Celine and Julie are the typical audience — from standing by to being there. At the end of the film, Rivitt removes these differences, casting doubt on the foothold of everything that can be viewed from a distance. What Levitte seems to be trying to convey is that narrative has always been a participatory process that creates entanglements and implications that cannot be easily escaped. The completely objective viewer is just an illusion, it doesn't exist at all.
Citizen Kane, Orson Wells
The next phase of Levitte's career, between "Celine and Julie" and his successful "La Bande des quatre" (1988) and "La Belle Noiseuse" (1991), was mostly disappointing. Although Duelle (1976) is beautifully illustrated, La Pont du nord (1982) and L'Amour par terre (1984) continue his reflections on the relationship between art and reality, compared to Those of Rivit's peak, these films (which also include Noroit (1976), Merry Go Round (1980) and "Merry Go Round" (1980) and "The Merry Go Round" (1980) are compared to Those at The Height of Levitte's prime. Wuthering Heights (Hurlevent, 1985) is insignificant.
After the release of Four Women's Tales in 1988, Levitte's directing career reached its second climax. The film revolves around a group of theater students who meet the same mysterious man who tells everyone a story about a friend in distress, but the story is different. The natural drama in the theater students creates an unresolved and dangerous atmosphere for the film, a huge conspiracy that is not explained through their public contact with the drama teacher (Bulle Ogier), and is largely inspired by "Out One" and "Paris Belongs to Us". The end result is a similar two-sided answer, in Thomson's words, "hinting at the endless chaos and confusion of real life, and the responsibility of human beings to find meaning in this chaos, obsession, despair, comicality, and even misery." "The Tale of Four Women deliberately creates a lot of mysteries that it can't explain, making people excited about the forces that can't be understood. On this level, Levitte's films are directly linked to American paranoia literature represented by Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo. The conspiracy is so ubiquitous that you barely notice its presence.
The Story of Four Women, 1989
A Tale of Four Women features sporadic comments about the painter Franchoff and his masterpiece The Unruly Beauty, which led to the 1991 film of the same name. This led Levitte's fans to explore the conspiracies that existed between the masters' different films. This 4-hour small-scale masterpiece is concise and amazing. New Wave idol Michel Piccoli plays the painter, with Emmanuelle Beart and Jane Birkin playing the two women in his life. The painter Franchov faced the dilemma of running out of inspiration, and the model played by Emmanuel Bea rekindled the painter's passion. Frankhoff's wife (Jane Birkin) is jealous of the relationship that broke into their world, and the boyfriend of the "unruly beauty" is also jealous of her relationship with her idol, Frankhov. The film digs deep into the subject matter, and each time it will spend a few minutes focusing on the process of shooting the painter's painting. No film of similar genre has been able to record the small failures and progress of the creative process so intently, and sometimes only the rustle of pencils on paper can be heard in a few minutes of segments. "Unruly Beauty" is the director's deep reflection on the artist's relationship with the surrounding environment, and the complexity of artistic inspiration. Never content to express only one idea in a film, Levitte also clearly and completely depicts the collision between the two couples and the two lifestyles they represent, and how its unexpected consequences can change their lives. "Unruly Beauty" is the first relatively complete work of Levitte's mature stage, which inherits the director's passion and more peacefully and deeply outlines the social atmosphere that appeared in his early films. The dominant force of his films changed from intellect to experience and continued after Unruly Beauty. If you think of Unruly Beauty as a semi-autobiographical film, you can see In Fraunhofer a shadow of Rivette himself: an old artist desperately grasping in the darkness of a long-lost fountain of inspiration and using the subtle joy of creation itself as a new creative magic weapon.
Levitte also released a two-hour version called La Belle noiseuse: divertimento. This version was edited from alternate footage from the time the film was shot, and it appears to have been deliberately cut beyond recognition by himself. But the cut version of how to cut a film of a lot of contemplation in half its length without losing its rhyme has not given a satisfactory answer. Of course, the main interest in this question is the loyal lovers of "Unruly Beauty" and the avid followers who want to collect all the Levitte works (what to do with "Out of the Game"... ）。 His next work was the two-part Jeanne la Pucelle (1994). In retelling joan of Arc's life, he deliberately avoided previous directors who had filmed Joan of Arc's life, such as Carl Theodor Dreyer, Robert Bresson, and Otto Preminger, and refused to use their contrived approach. Starring Sandrine Bonnaire, this version of Joan of Arc is a metaphysical reference to Joan of Arc's legendary achievements, focusing instead on the political intrigue and social traditions between the characters. Joan of Arc didn't end up being spectacular, but as a ripleyback to the Dreyette-Bresson film genre, the film remains intriguing. Levitte's interest is always in this world, not in the next. Even when he tells stories of spiritually noble people like Joan of Arc (which he seems to think in the film), he is still firmly rooted in the poetry of our ordinary lives.
Joan of Arc, 1994
Next, Rivitt filmed the film Haut/bas/fragile between high, low and fragile. It's a cabaret film set in Paris, a Rivette-style romantic comedy adventure. Looking back now, the film and the next Secret défense are more like his rehearsals for his 2001 masterpiece, Va savoir. Rivitt borrows the gorgeous and cheerful tone of Between High, Low and Fragile and blends it with the mysterious and tense atmosphere of The Secret Conspiracy to create a unique hybrid, yet another unclassifiable masterpiece. An actor couple who have been together for many years encounter some emotional problems, and during the time they are separated, they each find a confusing but seductive world around them. Ugo (Sergio Castellito) and Camille (Jeanne Balibar) are looking for the dual stimuli of love and reason, but accompanied by an irreparable ugliness that can even appear in their fantasies that they cannot accept. From Ballibal's escape to freedom on the roof of Paris to the film's exquisitely designed ending, Levitte's talent for figuring things remains natural and fluid. "Six" also continues his infatuation with theatre— the couples are directors and actresses, interspersed with footage of Luigi Pirandello's As You Desire Me. (Rivitt also released a 220-minute version of the film in France called Va savoir+, which included more footage of Pirandello's plays, which is his true style.) "Six People Don't Work" is indeed a wonderful movie, and it is another culmination in Levitte's illustrious career.
Six People Can't Do It, 2001
As a director, Levitte has been able to energetically make great films for the past fifty-five years thanks to his remarkable ability to change innovation and discover new models of self-expression and thinking. Like many New Wave-era works, Levitte's films seem to be completely circumvented from the aging process, as interesting and exciting as ever. Looking at all the films he has shot in his lifetime, it will be amazing. In hindsight, this is perhaps the most memorable work of the New Wave period of French cinema. As for "Celine and Julie's Voyage"... Well, in my opinion, it's the best film that came out in the post-New Wave era, and one of the best (and most interesting) films in film history.
Chronology of the works of Jacques Rivitt
Aux Quatre Coins (1950) shorts
Le Quadrille (1950) shorts
The Entertainment (1952) shorts
Le Coup du Berger (1956) shorts
Paris nous appartient (Paris Belongs to Us) (1960)
La Religieuse (The Nun) (1965)
Jean Renoir, le Patron (1966) television documentary
L'Amour fou (1968)
Out One: Noli me Tangere (1971)
Out One: Spectre (1972)
Celine et Julie vont en bateau (Celine and Julie Go Boating) (1974)
Duelle (1976)
Noroit (1977)
Merry-Go-Round (1980)
Paris s'en va (1981)
North Bridge (1982)
L’Amour par terre (Love on the Ground) (1984)
Hurlevent (Wuthering Heights) (1985)
Gang of Four (1988)
La Belle noiseuse (1991)
La Belle noiseuse: divertimento (1992)
Jeanne la Pucelle (1994)
Up/Down/Fragile (1995)
Secret Defense (1998)
Va savoir (2001)
Histoire de Marie et Julien (Story of Marie and Julien) (2003)
Don't Touch the Axe (2007)
36 views of Pic Saint Loup (2009)