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justeleblanc wrote:On another note, are the shorter versions of his films worth seeing once you've seen the longer versions? That's a vague statement, and of course they are probably worth seeing, but should they be a high priority?

I guess you're right. Criterion would have lept at the opportunity to release one of his films had there been quality prints available -- regardless of whether or not it would sell.

But of course, I guess quality prints don't exist if there's no demand for them. Though surely with this influx of Rivette festivals across the continent (and I'm guessing this doesn't happen too often), one can no longer say there is a commercial disinterest.

I'm not so sure about this. The most obvious candidates for release are all unfortunately controlled by New Yorker, even where they lack circulating prints. After that they get more obscure and difficult. I doubt Criterion is chomping at the bit waiting to put out my dream release of Le Pont du Nord (with Paris s'en va as a bonus) just because there's a restored 35mm print (there is).

justeleblanc wrote:And on a completely unrelated note: what is Paris s'en va?

In 1980, Rivette embarked upon a remake of Out 1 but with much of the original cast unavailable, it became Pont du Nord, (The Northern Bridge, 1982), an adventure story improvised by Bulle Ogier, her actress daughter Pascale, and Rivette's screenwriting partner Suzanne Schiffman. Before shooting began, they made a thirty-minute short, Paris s'en va (Paris Goes Away).

Jacques Rivette: Mysterious ways of a master filmmaker
By Joan Dupont
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
PARIS: Jacques Rivette's movies, like the legendary 12- hour "Out 1" (1971), have heroes who seem to belong to secret societies, characters as enigmatic as their quests: they skate out of control and bump each other in play, or treachery.

Rivette is a masterful troublemaker who creates extra-long and short versions of the same movie, and sometimes spins original historical and political thrillers out of classics. "La Religieuse" (1965), his adaptation of Diderot's novel on the abuses of an innocent nun, starring Anna Karina, was banned by the Catholic Church. His latest film, "Ne touchez pas la hache," (Don't Touch the Axe), which was in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, starts and ends in a convent.

His adaptation of Balzac's "La Duchesse de Langeais" crackles with menace. The story, set during the Restoration period, when Napoleon's generals roamed Parisian drawing rooms and duchesses wore those fetching empire dresses, stars Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu.

By some magical transformation, the actors inhabit this other world. "It's as if Balzac wrote the story for them," the director said.

The film — a mere two hours and 15 minutes — takes place mostly in Parisian drawing rooms of the Saint-Germain neighborhood. General de Montriveau (Depardieu), a hero of Napoleon's wars, meets the duchess (Balibar) in one such salon.

She tempts the brooding general with her dazzling scarlet gown and brio, invites him to call on her, and then rejects him. She manages to repeat this maddening dance of seduction.

"The duchess shows one side when she refuses him, and another when she wants him," the director said. "But we never know what she thinks of him secretly, and perhaps, she herself doesn't know. Whereas, the general is a pretty straightforward character — once he judges her, that's that."

Rivette, who can turn a salon into a battlefield, turns this pas de deux into a ferocious duel. "Well, you have Balzac to thank," he said.

"With my writing partners, Christine [Laurent] and Pascal [Bonitzer], we were as true to him as possible. We tried to recreate the closed world of royalists and extremists as it was then, in that small pocket of Paris."

The story of the elusive duchess makes up the second book of Balzac's "Histoire des Treize" trilogy — between "Ferragus" and "La Fille aux yeux d'or" — about a secret society, a gang of 13 conspirators. This theme has always appealed to the director of the tantalizing "Bande des quatre" (Gang of Four, 1988).

At 78, the filmmaker looks much like a mischievous, somewhat rumpled, elf. His short film, "Le Coup du berger" (Fool's Mate, 1956), is considered to be the first film of the New Wave. "We don't see much of each other any more," he says of his old accomplices Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer.

Yet, he is true to many New Wave ways, shooting on a shoestring, faithful to his actors. "I like working with the same team — writers, actors, editors — it's almost a necessity. It's all about trust, even more than friendship."

His team has seen him through thick and thin. He has changed pace and era, from a venture such as the historic and dramatic "Jeanne la Pucelle I et II" (Joan of Arc, 1994) to the contemporary comedy "Haut bas fragile" (Up, Down, Fragile, 1995).

He recalls that it was Rohmer who told him that he must read Balzac. "This was in the 1950s, even before the New Wave. Rohmer said, 'If you are interested in cinema and in dialogue, you must read Balzac and Dostoevsky.' I started reading Balzac and have been reading him ever since," Rivette said.

In 1991, Rivette transposed Balzac to the screen with "La Belle Noiseuse" (The Beautiful Troublemaker) starring Michel Piccoli as a painter and Emmanuelle Béart as his model. It was Piccoli at his most intense, Béart at her most nude, a seductive film on an artist's obsessive search that captivated audiences at Cannes (Jury Prize).

Piccoli has a small part in "Don't Touch the Axe," alongside Bulle Ogier. Ogier, a genuine Rivette star, has made seven movies with him. In "Pont du Nord" (1981), she played alongside her daughter Pascale, who made a brilliant debut, and died in 1984.

Rivette had worked with Balibar before, but not with Depardieu. "We had a project, a movie with both Jeanne and Guillaume, called 'Paris l'année prochaine.' It was the sort of abracadabra tall tale that I like, but it fell through — nobody wanted it. Then, I realized how good those two would be together. So we had to find another script fast."

He reread Balzac and found just what he wanted in the "La Duchesse" — enigmatic characters, sharp dialogue, human comedy with storm warnings. "It shows Balzac's violent feelings about the royalists, his disdain for the milieu."

The very literary and imaginative Rivette — he is also a fan of Henry James — says that he was never really tempted to become a writer. He found his vocation when he came across Jean Cocteau's diary. "It was a diary he kept during filming 'La Belle et La Bête' (Beauty and the Beast). It was fascinating. You could see that when you make a movie, you are not alone, you have a team, and it became clear to me that's what I wanted to do."

Over the years, the filmmaker's works have survived ups and downs. Every time he makes a short version of a film, it comes out as a fresh, almost separate creation. Rivette has his own, mysterious way with time, and each movie has its own secret tempo.

Last year, "Out 1" was shown at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York to warm response. Both the short version of "Out 1" (Spectre) and "Céline et Julie vont en bateau" (Celine and Julie Go Boating) were shown in the early days of the Lincoln Center Film Festival. "It was a great era for film. We live in another world now," Rivette said. The last time he was in New York, it was to show "Va Savoir" (Who Knows). "It was right after Sept. 11," he said. "I stayed only two days."

Starting March 21, the Pompidou Center plans a Rivette retrospective, with short and long versions of his films, timed to the release of "Don't Touch the Axe." Paris is the scene for his greatest puzzles, and dashing heroines, played by Balibar, Béart, Ogier (mother and daughter); also, Juliet Berto, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jane Birkin and Nathalie Richard.

The prospect of the tribute doesn't seem to give him that much pleasure. His mind is on the new movie. "It may be difficult today for people to grasp that little world of royalists, living in a tiny pocket of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was a state of mind, which explains something of what goes on — and what goes amiss — between that lady and that general."

tavernier wrote:As a reminder, the complete "Out 1" is having an encore showing at the Museum of the Moving Image March 3 and 4.

The final episode is the richest in terms of action and revelation. Can this all-consuming spectacle really be ending? Rivette's last shot is an extraordinary throwaway that provoked spontaneous applause for being at once completely ordinary, totally unexpected, and positively diabolical in shifting the meaning of the entire previous 12 1/2 hours.

kekid wrote:Is Out 1 possible Eclipse material?

Barmy wrote:Unfortunately, at the March 3/4 encore screening at MMI of the only extant print, it was apparent that the soundtrack is severely damaged in spots. I do not remember this from the December screening. So I don't think this print has much life left in it.

Barmy wrote:I'm not sure the snapping was connected to reel changes. I have a high tolerance for flawed film projection but the snapping was awful.

In the Colin/Sarah scene, some of Sarah's dialogue (and one of Colin's lines) is run backwards (one of the coolest moments in the film). That's why those lines weren't translated.

From flirtation to catastrophe: Jacques Rivette's "Don't Touch the Axe" (Competition)

Behind "Don't Touch the Axe," hides a film destined never to be shot. The title of this film is – or would have been – "Next Year in Paris." But Jacques Rivette and his producer weren't able to find funding for the film, in which Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu were to play the leads. It's hard to believe, but true: in film-land France, the almost octogenarian Jacques Rivette, veteran of the Nouvelle Vague and one of the greatest living filmmakers, can't raise money for an ambitious project that would have followed up on his major works from the 1970s.

Rivette can hardly conceal his disappointment as he tells this story at the press conference. Of course there's hardly anyone here, unlike just a few minutes ago when people flocked to hear Jennifer Lopez discuss her film "Bordertown". Every single question is an insult to the director. Depardieu is brazenly asked twice about his father, as if he owed his acting career to his father's success and influence.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as his fabulous acting in "Don't Touch the Axe" amply proves. When the financing for the larger project fell through, Rivette went looking for a smaller production for the same actors. The result was a chamber piece, based very closely on Honore de Balzac's "La Duchesse de Langeais." The story originally bore the title "Ne touchez pas la hache" before it was incorporated into Balzac's "La Comedie humaine." In it, Balzac tells the story of a love affair that passes rapidly from flirt to catastrophe."

Montriveau, a hero in Napoleon's army, (Depardieu) meets the Duchesse de Langeais (Balibar), who belongs to the cream of Parisian society. She is married, but her husband never appears. Montriveau comes back to Paris full of exotic stories of the desert, and seduces the duchess with his lore. They come closer, but what at first glance looks like a reasonably uncomplicated love affair soon turns into a game of love and passion that transgresses every rule known to Parisian society. Very quickly, however, society is left out of things altogether. Instead of a love affair, Montriveau and the duchess become caught up in a war: a battle for love. Sharp words clash like swords, siege is laid, the two dig trenches and lie in ambush, retreat and attack, they show no mercy and toss counsel to the wind. The battle is fought in boudoirs, hallways and sofas, in front of doors and inside salons. No blood flows, and yet no less than life and happiness are at stake.

The film is utterly concentrated on its main characters. Everything becomes a question of timing. Every gesture counts, every last glance has weight, the trembling of Balibar's upper lip is an expression of inner turmoil and Depardieu's brooding heralds untold disasters. Rivette's cameraman William Lubtschansky transforms words and movement into installations of light and darkness, which seem to freeze periodically like paintings. Fires crackle incessantly in the salons' fireplaces, yet their calming effect is misleading. The passing of time is shown with titles, and Balzac's words accompany the development of events. Rivette dramatises nothing, he observes Balibar and Depardieu using words that are sharper than foils and rapiers, and watches them – merciless as Balzac – as they hope and suffer, fear and fight.

There could be no greater a clash than between this exquisitely wrought tale and the film which preceded it, Gregory Nava's human rights pornography "Bordertown". Programming the one before the other is sheer barbarity, and yet standard festival fare. That's no reproach, after all it can hardly be avoided. But it must be said.

justeleblanc wrote:And can anyone answer the question of available prints. The print that I just saw this weekend is the only print made available to the public, is that correct? And it's the same print that was discovered in 1989? What about other copies of the film, or a negative that a new copy could be printed from? Surely Rivette has a copy, and this version itself (which is slowly dying) can not be THE ONLY surviving copy of the film. Am I wrong?