Search results
Jacques Rivette remains undoubtedly the least well known of all the major figures in French cinema associated with the New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s. This is demonstrated by the fact that, although retrospectives of Rivette's films have been held in London, Paris and New York in recent years, the first book-length monograph on Rivette's work was only published in 2001 and, until now, none has been published in English. In the 1970s, Rivette directed his best loved and most enduring film, the inexhaustible, irrepressible
Pour lui [Rivette], chaque plan est comme un film, avec un début, un milieu et une fin, un déroulement, une tension. ( Nicole Lubtchansky ) 10 La Belle noiseuse is four hours long. Most of the action takes place in the studio of the painter Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) painting his model Marianne (Emmanuelle
four characters – two men and two women – plus an absent fifth; in La Belle Noiseuse (1991) too there are four characters all of whose jealousy ultimately centres around the fifth, and most important character, a painting; while, in Va savoir (2001), the network of jealousies and infidelities is woven between six characters. This chapter will investigate, then, the manifestations and meanings of love and jealousy in these
also suggest a rough progression through Rivette’s œuvre , the earlier chapters referring at more length to the early films ( Paris nous appartient , Out 1 , Céline et Julie etc.) while the later chapters give more space to the 1980s and beyond ( L’Amour par terre , La Belle Noiseuse (1991), Secret Défense (1998) and so on). Our book begins with a consideration of Rivette’s work as a film critic
La Religieuse . Rivette’s tendency to re-use the same actors further complicates this play of echoes. Jerzy Radziwilowicz comes to Histoire de Marie et Julien with his already rather menacing persona from Secret Défense (1998), while Nicole Garcia, in a minor role, is a survivor from the time of Duelle . Emmanuelle Béart, meanwhile, is a revenant from La Belle Noiseuse (1991), her body appearing disconcertingly the
Gogh inevitably tempted Pialat to test the 10 ‘I was looking at my finger the other day, and I said to myself: what is a work of art in comparison with a finger … and yet it isn’t anything: some tissue, a very simple and very complex network of vessels.’ Warehime_07_ch6 152 12/21/05, 9:42 AM the saint and the artist: men apart 153 limits of his medium, measuring the art of the filmmaker against that of the expressionist painter. Afterward Pialat’s Van Gogh, and Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse, also about a painter, if a fictional one (Balzac’s Frenhofer in
in the director’s filmic history as is Paris. Appearing significantly first in Out 1 – where it acts as an explicit alternative to the city – the house recurs as a principal location in Céline et Julie, Merry-Go-Round, La Bande des quatre, L’Amour par terre, Secret Défense, La Belle Noiseuse, Haut bas fragile, L’Histoire de Marie et Julien and Ne touchez pas la hache , thereby establishing itself as the essential
Religieuse, Hurlevent, La Belle Noiseuse, Jeanne la Pucelle, Secret Défense, L’Histoire de Marie et Julien, Ne touchez pas la hache ); and, between the two hands as it were, an ambiguous third group (it will be observed that a case might be made for including several of the previously mentioned films within it), in which the whole filmic space becomes a theatre and the action entirely performance, ‘un monde de pur
extensive exploration of the creative process in Jacques Rivette’s La Belle Noiseuse ( The Beautiful Troublemaker , 1991). As one might expect from a cinematographer turned director, Nuytten shoots Camille Claudel effectively in brooding nocturnal colours and with intricate camerawork. But although Rodin’s visit to the Claudels’ house in the country is the cue for an impressionist-inspired mise en scène , the compositions are
