Overview

This first comprehensive English collection of the interviews of Jacques Rivette (19282016) documents his career through chronology, filmography, bibliography, and image stills. A comprehensive introduction places this work in the wider context of twentieth-century social change. Rivettes films, like many of the works of the French New Wave, seem to have avoided the aging process entirely, remaining as playful, fresh, and quietly spectacular as the day they were made. Indeed, his body of work may be the most impressive of the French New Wave. Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) has been recognized as possibly the best film to emerge from the post-New Wave era, even as Paris Belongs to Us (1961) is one of the best pictures to emerge from the New Wave itself. Rivette was hardly the most prolific director, however, and the length of his films has often counted against him. Nonetheless, his clinical, self-reflexive essays in film form reveal him as a cinematic purist whose commitment to the celluloid muse hardly diminished from the heady days of the early 1950s to the end of his career in 2009. Beyond inspiring the New Wave movement and continuing to reflect, and reflect on, its central tenets, Rivettes enduring contribution to the history of film is unquestionably evident in his sensitive treatment of the histories and destinies of women, especially through strong roles for actresses. During the six decades of his career, nonetheless, he struck a subtle balance not only between female and male characters, but also between political and personal obsession, between myth and fiction, between theater and cinema, in films that, in addition to having influenced such contemporary filmmakers as Claire Denis, Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Assayas, and David Lynch, continue to redefine the art of cinema around the world.

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9781789761863

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Reviews

‘Rivette’s refusal to compromise with popular or commercial dictates, his determination to explore untrodden directorial paths, will perhaps always consign the bulk of his work to marginality; but as these interviews suggest, anyone with the patience to explore his output will discover creative angles and perceptions few other filmmakers can offer.’ Philip Kemp, Sight & Sound

Author Information

James R. Russo was an independent researcher who holds graduate degrees from Louisiana State University and the University of Richmond. He has taught at those schools as well as Tulane. Russos primary scholarly interests are the cinema and comparative literature. He has recently published The Bookman: William Troy on Literature and Criticism, 1927-1950; Film Nation: William Troy on the Cinema, 1933-1935; and Analyzing Drama: A Student Casebook.

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