Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. He made twenty-nine films, including L'Amour fou, Out 1, Celine and Julie Go Boating, and La Belle Noiseuse. His work is noted for its improvisation, loose narratives, and lengthy running times.
Inspired by Jean Cocteau to become a filmmaker, Rivette shot his first short film at age twenty. He moved to Paris to pursue his career, frequenting Henri Langlois' Cinémathèque Française and other ciné-clubs; there, he met François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and other future members of the New Wave. Rivette began writing film criticism, and was hired by André Bazin for Cahiers du Cinéma in 1953. In his criticism, he expressed an admiration for American films – especially those of genre directors such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Nicholas Ray – and was deeply critical of mainstream French cinema. Rivette's articles, admired by his peers, were considered the magazine's best and most aggressive writings, particularly his 1961 article "On Abjection" and his influential series of interviews with film directors co-written with Truffaut. He continued making short films, including Le Coup de Berger, which is often cited as the first New Wave film. Truffaut later credited Rivette with developing the movement.
Although he was the first New Wave director to begin work on a feature film, Paris Belongs to Us was not released until 1961, by which time Chabrol, Truffaut and Godard released their own first features and popularised the movement worldwide. Rivette became editor of Cahiers du Cinéma during the early 1960s and publicly fought French censorship of his second feature film, The Nun. He then re-evaluated his career, developing a unique cinematic style with L'amour fou. Influenced by the political turmoil of May 68, improvisational theatre and an in-depth interview with filmmaker Jean Renoir, Rivette began working with large groups of actors on character development and allowing events to unfold on camera. This technique led to the thirteen-hour Out 1 which, although rarely screened, is considered a Holy Grail of cinephiles. His films of the 1970s, such as Celine and Julie Go Boating, often incorporated fantasy and were better-regarded. After attempting to make four consecutive films, however, Rivette had a nervous breakdown and his career slowed for several years.
During the early 1980s, he began a business partnership with producer Martine Marignac, who produced all his subsequent films. Rivette's output increased from then on, and his film La Belle Noiseuse received international praise. He retired after completing Around a Small Mountain, and it was revealed three years later that he had Alzheimer's disease. Very private about his personal life, Rivette was briefly married to photographer and screenwriter Marilù Parolini during the early 1960s and later married Véronique Manniez.
Biography
1928–1950: Early life and move to Paris
Jacques Pierre Louis Rivette was born in Rouen, Seine-Maritime, France, to André Rivette and Andrée Amiard, into a family "where everyone is a pharmacist". According to childhood friend André Ruellan, Rivette's father was a skilled painter who loved opera. His younger sister said that their home in Rouen was next to a cinema theatre, where she remembered watching Pathé Baby's Felix le Chat cartoons with Rivette and their grandparents. Rivette, educated at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille, said that he briefly studied literature at the university "just to keep myself occupied". Inspired by Jean Cocteau's book about the filming of Beauty and the Beast, Rivette decided to pursue filmmaking and began frequenting ciné-clubs. In 1948, he shot his first short film, Aux Quatre Coins, in Rouen's Côte Sainte-Catherine section. The following year, he moved to Paris with friend, Francis Bouchet, because "if you wanted to make films it was the only way". On the day of his arrival, he met future collaborator Jean Gruault, who invited him to see Les dames du Bois de Boulogne at the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin. Éric Rohmer, whose film criticism Rivette admired, gave a talk at the screening.Although Rivette submitted his film to the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques because it "was the kind of thing that would have pleased my parents", he was not accepted by the school. He took courses at the Sorbonne, but began frequenting screenings at Henri Langlois's Cinémathèque Française with Bouchet instead of attending classes. At the Cinémathèque, Rivette, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Suzanne Schiffman, Gruault and Bouchet were immersed in films from the silent and early "talkie" eras that they were previously unfamiliar with. He and this group of young cinephiles became acquainted as they customarily sat in the Cinématographique's front row for screenings; Rivette met Truffaut at a screening of The Rules of the Game, and often sat next to Godard for several months without ever speaking to him before the latter introduced himself. Rivette was active in post-screening debates, and Rohmer said that, in film-quiz competitions at the Studio Parnasse he was "unbeatable". Rivette credited Langlois's screenings and lectures for helping him persevere during his early impoverishment in Paris: "A word from you saved me and opened the doors of the temple". Unlike his contemporaries, Rivette attended screenings at the Cinémathèque well into the 1970s.
He and his friends also attended screenings at the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin, which was run by Rohmer. Although Rivette began to write film criticism in 1950 for the Gazette du Cinéma, founded by Rohmer with Bouchet as his assistant, the magazine ceased publication after five issues; Rivette said that being a critic was never his aim, but called it "a good exercise". That year he made his second short film, Le Quadrille, produced by and starring Godard, who raised the money by stealing and selling his grandfather's collection of rare Paul Valéry first editions. Rivette described Le Quadrille as a film in which "absolutely nothing happens. It's just four people sitting around a table, looking at each other." According to film critic Tom Milne, it had "a certain hypnotic, obsessional quality as, for 40 minutes, it attempted to show what happens when nothing happens". When the film was screened at the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin, Rivette recalled, "After ten minutes, people started to leave, and at the end, the only ones who stayed were Jean-Luc and a girl." Later calling it Lettrist, he said that Isidore Isou, the founder of Lettrism, considered the film "ingenious".
1950–1956: Film criticism and ''Le Coup du berger''
After casual acquaintanceship and collaboration, Rivette and his fellow cinephiles became close friends in September 1950 at the Festival Indépendant du Film Maudit, a film festival in Biarritz produced by film critics Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, André Bazin and members of Objectif 49. Rivette, Godard, Truffaut and future cinematographer Charles Bitsch, arriving at the gala event in casual dress, were refused entrance by the doorman until Cocteau allowed them to enter. Openly antagonistic to members of Objectif 49, they loudly criticised the festival. The evening cemented the group's friendship, earning them a reputation of bohemian "young Turks" and troublemakers. Chabrol, Grualult, Rohmer, and Jean Douchet also attended and roomed together at the Biarritz Lycée dormitory for the festival. Rivette criticised the festival in the November issue of Gazette du cinéma, calling Objectif 49 arrogant and claiming a victory over them. He was quickly considered the leader of the group, whom Bazin called the "Hitchcocko-Hawksians." Rivette and his new friends bonded by spending whole days watching repeated screenings of a film and walking home together talking about what they had seen.In 1951, Bazin founded a film magazine, Cahiers du Cinéma, and hired most of the "Hitchcocko–Hawksians"; Rivette began writing for the magazine in February 1953. Rivette championed Hollywood directors such as Howard Hawks and Fritz Lang and international directors such as Roberto Rossellini and Kenji Mizoguchi. He was highly critical of established qualité française directors, writing that they were afraid to take risks and were corrupted by money. According to Cahiers writer Fereydoun Hoveyda, early contributors to the magazine were politically right-wing except for Pierre Kast and Rivette. In early 1954, Rivette and Truffaut began a series of interviews with film directors whom they admired. The interviews, influential on film criticism, were recorded on a Grundig portable tape recorder weighing over which was never used by journalists. Although most entertainment reporting was limited to sound bites or anecdotes from film actors, Rivette and Truffaut became acquainted with the directors they interviewed and published their in-depth interviews verbatim. From 1954 to 1957, Cahiers du Cinéma published a series of interviews with noted film directors including Jacques Becker, Abel Gance, Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini and Orson Welles.
While he wrote criticism, Rivette continued his filmmaking career; during the summer of 1952, he made his third short film, Le Divertissement. Charles Bitsch called it "a Rohmer-esque Marivaudage between young men and women." Rivette, an assistant to Jacques Becker and Jean Renoir, was a cinematographer on Truffaut's short film Une Visite and Rohmer's short Bérénice. Eager to make a feature film, he talked about elaborate adaptions of works by André Gide, Raymond Radiguet and Ernst Jünger. With financial support from Chabrol and producer Pierre Braunberger, Rivette made the 35mm short film Le Coup du Berger. Written by Rivette, Chabrol and Bitsch, the film is about a young girl who receives a mink coat from her lover and must hide it from her husband; spoken commentary by Rivette describes the action like moves in a chess game. Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Jean-Claude Brialy appeared in the film, with Godard, Truffaut, Bitsch and Robert Lachenay as extras. Shot in two weeks in Chabrol's apartment, the budget went entirely to purchasing film stock. It was distributed by Braunberger in 1957. Truffaut called Le Coup du berger the inspiration for him, Chabrol, Alain Resnais and Georges Franju to make their first films: "It had begun. And it had begun thanks to Jacques Rivette. Of all of us, he was the most fiercely determined to move." Rohmer praised the film's mise-en-scene and wrote that it had "more truth and good cinema than in all the other French films released in the past year."