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 (1969), Out 1 (1971), Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), and La Belle Noiseuse (1991). His work is noted for its improvisation, loose narratives, and lengthy running times.
Background
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 movie theater, where she remembered watching Pathé Baby's Felix le Chat cartoons with Rivette and their grandparents.
Education
Rivette, educated at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille, said that he briefly studied literature at university "just to keep myself occupied". Inspired by Jean Cocteau's book about the filming of La Belle et la Bête, 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.
Career
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 sat next to Godard for several months 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.
After casual acquaintanceship and collaboration, Rivette and his fellow cinephiles became close friends in September 1950 at the Festival Indépendant du Film Maudit (Independent Festival of Accursed Film), a film festival in Biarritz produced by film critics Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, André Bazin and members of Objectif 49 (a group of avant-garde artists). 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 criticized the festival. The evening cemented the group's friendship, earning them a reputation of bohemian "young Turks" and troublemakers. Charbrol, Grualult, Rohmer, and Jean Douchet also attended and roomed together at the Biarritz Lycée dormitory for the festival. Rivette criticized the festival in the November issue of Gazette du cinéma, calling Objectif 49 arrogant and claiming a victory over them.
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 American 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 (nicknamed "Truffette and Rivaut") 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 9 pounds (4.1 kg) which was never used by journalists. Although most entertainment reporting was limited to sound bites or anecdotes from movie stars, 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, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini and Orson Welles.
Rivette and Gruault revised their story based on Rossellini's critique, and wrote Paris Belongs to Us. Its title is a play on Charles Péguy's quote, "Paris belongs to no one." With borrowed equipment, a loan of ₣80,000 from Cahiers du Cinéma and short film-reel ends provided by Chabrol, the silent film was shot in the summer of 1958 and sound added the following year. Among Rivette's filming locations were the roof of the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, the Rue des Cannettes, the Place Sorbonne and the Arts bridge. He struggled to finish the film and find distributors.
After the financial failure of Paris Belongs to Us, Rivette unsuccessfully pitched a film adaptation of Denis Diderot's novel La Religieuse to producer Georges de Beauregard. Undaunted, Rivette and co-writer Gruault began writing the script; in 1962, Rivette suggested that Godard's wife, Anna Karina, would be perfect in the lead role. Godard agreed, but de Beauregard and producer Eric Schulmberger rejected the idea after a Commission de Controle (the French censorship board) review said that it would be banned.
Godard and Karina received funding from theatrical producer Antoine Bourseiller to produce a stage version of La Religieuse. Rivette directed and Godard produced the three-hour play, which opened at the Studio des Champs-Élysées on 6 February 1963 and closed on 5 March. Although the production was a financial failure, it received good reviews and Karina won several awards for her performance; Lotte Eisner called it "the most beautiful theatre I have seen since Bertolt Brecht". Rivette's staging, in the classical style of Marivaux, was intentionally simple. He and Gruault continued reworking the film script (which was finally passed by the censorship board), but Bourseiller could not afford to produce a film version, so the project was shelved.
In February 1968, Henri Langlois was ousted from the Cinémathèque Francaise by Malraux and Minister of Cultural Affairs Pierre Moinot; a government-appointed board of directors assumed control, and Rivette and his old friends reunited to fight for Langlois' reinstatement. With the Cahiers du Cinéma office as their headquarters, current and former staff members (including Rivette, Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer and Chabrol) began mass letter-writing and telephone campaigns to recruit support. Within days, filmmakers from around the world announced that they would halt screenings of their films unless Langlois was reinstated. Journalists from Le Monde and Combat expressed support, and on 12 February several hundred members of the film industry protested outside the Cinémathèque. Two days later, a protest by over 3,000 people was met by club-wielding police. Rivette spoke at a press conference and led a charge past a police barricade, briefly entering the Cinémathèque with Anne Wiazemsky. In March, Rivette was appointed to an advisory committee, and the following month Langlois was reinstated in the Cinémathèque.
During the summer of 1973, Rivette attempted to make Phénix, a film about the early-1900s Paris theatrical world which would have starred Jeanne Moreau. Due to budgetary constraints, he was forced to abandon the project.[84] Rivette then made his most critically acclaimed film, Céline and Julie Go Boating. "Aller en bateau" ("go boating") is French slang for "caught up in fiction" or "taken for a ride". Rivette met with friends, actresses Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier, to develop two characters and created a plot and script with collaborator Eduardo de Gregorio. He later said that during this pre-production period, he "never had as much fun. I don’t believe I ever laughed as much". Unlike his previous two films, Rivette did not use improvisation during the filming and said that the plot was carefully constructed in advance.
Rivette then made a two-part film about the life of Joan of Arc entitled Joan the Maiden: Joan the Maiden, Part 1: The Battles and Joan the Maiden, Part 2: The Prisons. Rivette's film differed from well-known interpretations of Joan by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Robert Bresson, focusing on her popularity in France rather than her suffering and martyrdom. Loosely based on Rivette's memories of Charles Péguy's books on Joan, the film was partially shot in his hometown of Rouen. Joan the Maiden, starring Sandrine Bonnaire, was released in 1994.
Rivette died on 29 January 2016 from complications of Alzheimer's disease at the age of 87, in his home in Paris. He was memorialized by President Francois Hollande as "one of the greatest filmmakers" and praised by Minister of Culture Fleur Pellerin. Members of the French film industry eulogized him; Serge Toubiana said "Rivette was undoubtly the most reflective, thoughtful, the most intellectual figure of the New Wave." Bulle Ogier wrote that Rivette's "body of work was inventive, researched and well structured. Nothing but making films interested him." Isabelle Regnier wrote about Rivette's secretive nature, observing that the mystery about his life "prevails in his grave." Cinémathèque française director Frédéric Bonnaud called Rivette influential and said that he always tried to invent a new kind of cinema with every film he made. Longtime collaborator Pascale Bonitzer said that "he was a bit of an outsider in the Nouvelle Vague and, at the same time, he was its soul, one of the most radical ones, and the most confidential." Jean-Michel Frodon said that he incarnated "the spirit of the New Wave." Hélène Frappat praise his use of mise en scène in regards to his portrayal of women. Martin Scorsese called him a fascinating artist who was "the most experimental of the French New Wave directors."
Personality
Rivette's early years in Paris were impoverished and he was known to live ascetically on minimal resources; Chabrol said that he was very thin and hardly ate, comparing his smile to that of the Cheshire Cat. Gruault described Rivette as "slight, dark-haired and had very lively dark eyes in an emaciated visage of a waxy pallor…add to that a forced, nervous smile of someone who has to make constant efforts to win acceptance by a society that he seemed to regard as irremediably hostile." His opinions were highly regarded among his peers and according to Douchet, "Rivette was the great talker. He was the group's secret soul, the occult thinker, a bit of a censor." Godard said, "I might like a film very much, but if Rivette said 'It's no good' then I would agree with him ... it was as though he had a privileged access to cinematographic truth." Truffaut considered Rivette his best friend, and they were frequently seen at screenings. Truffaut said that in the 1950s, Rivette was the only member of the group already capable of directing a feature film.
Rivette's friendship with Rohmer was complex due to Rivette's direct role in getting Rohmer fired from Cahiers du Cinéma. Rivette and Rohmer respected each other, but fought over Cahiers' political and aesthetical positions and financial issues. They became close friends again after Rohmer became interested in Rivette's improvisational films, praising L'amour fou and acting in Out 1. Rohmer later called Out 1 "a capitol monument in the history of modern cinema, an essential part of the cinematic heritage." Rivette also admired Rohmer's films and called Les Rendez-vous de Paris a "film of absolute grace." Several Cahiers writers during the Rohmer-era disliked him, such as Douchet, Jean Domarchi, Fereydoun Hoveyda, Phillippe Demonsablon, Claude Beylie and Phillippe d’Hugues, who said that Rivette "had a Saint-Just side, he was an intransigent Jacobin who considered you a moron if you didn’t agree with him. He determined what was moral and right, like a hall monitor." Antoine de Baecque wrote that these writers respected Rivette, but considered him "brusque, arrogant and dogmatic" and that he "did not hesitate to excommunicate adversaries or mediocrities." However Cahiers writers André Labarthe and Michel Delahaye praised him; Delahaye said that he "was the most brilliant, with a peerless charisma."
Quotes from others about the person
According to David Thomson, Rivette was "famous for having little or no home life, certainly not a private life that overlaps with his work. On his own, he would rather sit in the dark with another movie"; in 1956, he was described as "too aloof and forbiddingly intellectual". Bulle Ogier described Rivette as very secretive about his life: "I've no idea what he does. I only see him when we're filming" or when she bumped into him in public, although she felt close to him. According to Ogier, he had neuroses and anxiety which often prevented him from answering the phone, and talking about his personal life would be indiscreet and a betrayal. Laurence Côte said that joining Rivette's inner circle of trusted friends was difficult and required "a number of hurdles to overcome and to respect codes." Martine Marignac said that Rivette was very modest and shy, and that his circle of close friends grew used to not hearing from him for prolonged periods of time. Marignac also said that "He spends his life going to the movies, but also reading, listening to music. It is clear that the world of reality assaults him." Jonathan Romney reported that in the 1970s "Rivette sometimes went AWOL from his own shoots, he would invariably be found watching some rarity in one of the Left Bank art cinemas." Jean-Pierre Léaud, who described Rivette as a close friend, said that he "was the only person who saw everything in a film. And he transmitted everything he saw to us, setting in march our own aesthetic ideas". The director was the subject of a 1990 documentary, Jacques Rivette, the Night Watchman, directed by Claire Denis and Serge Daney. Travis Mackenzie Hoover wrote that the documentary portrays Rivette with "lonerish tendencies" and as "a sort of transient with no home or country, wandering about or loitering in public space instead of staking out some personal terra firma."