From September 1985 to July 1990, Serge Daney hosted a weekly radio show called Microfilms. Ted Fendt just gifted this blog the translated transcription of the two episodes with Jacques Rivette recorded in 1989 for the release of La bande de quatre (you can listen to them here: 1 and 2). A fascinating discussion.
Microfilms: Jacques Rivette
Part 1 / March 5, 1989
SD: Microfilms, good evening! After countless adventures, Rivettian in themselves, the meeting at the summit with Jacques Rivette is now taking place. This is especially nice since people are going to see the film in question, La bande des quatre. And we are really glad that a film that started off modestly gained in its second and then its third week. Which proves that it really is a movie.
JR: It’s a two hour, forty-minute film released in four small theaters, with only three screenings a day.
SD: So, these are the very concrete details. So, I’ve decided with Jacques Rivette – who already visited Microfilms once to talk about Hurlevent – to do two episodes. The second will be broadcast next week. The second will be free form. We’ll talk about movies as such, as we experience them, as we want to talk about them. The first will of course be dedicated to the film in theaters, which is in my opinion Jacques Rivette’s best film since Le pont du nord, which is a film that I liked a lot. Then I had some reservations about the following two.
I think this one kind of brings us up to date and I’ll say a bit of why as we go along. It’s a kind of very, very rigorous return to square one. And the fact that people are interested in it is a real treat. Jacques, thanks for finally coming to Microfilms, because we aren’t going to tell the story of our missed encounter, though it is itself very, very Rivettian.
Now that the film is already in theaters and has its own life, I’ll start with a perhaps slightly unusual question for you, which is: how do you live with the fact that people are interested in it? You make films in a very personal manner in your own corner, etc. You’ve never bribed or seduced audiences, who have only encountered you a little through misunderstanding or chance. That doesn’t stop one from working. But something clicked here.
I should add that it is the story of four young women in a theater class and who are both mixed up in a vaguely criminal story and are learning about theater and life. For the moment, we can’t say more. It’s a universal subject. And at the same time, I’d say, seeing a few films at random at the moment, good and bad, nevertheless the topic of learning about life through theater keeps returning. Are you aware of this in your own films and other people’s?
JR: I’m aware of the fact that there are many films coming out right now that are about learning. There are others about learning about music, for example, Coup sur coup, which have been released. Le maître de musique was released two weeks ago and the film by Schlesinger with Shirley MacLaine, which comes out this week.
SD: We could add Miéville’s film.
JR: Miéville’s film, which in my opinion is infinitely better than Le maître de musique both as a film and in general. First of all, because it was shot with direct sound. And then because it’s a real singer singing in front of a real professor. So, a magnificent film whereas Le maître de musique is a nice subject that, in my opinion, remained television, that did not become cinema.
SD: So, there is learning and there is theater.
JR: And I haven’t seen the film with Shirley MacLaine yet, which it seems is cliched, but which I’m going to go see because I like Shirley MacLaine and I want to see her as a pianist. Even if she sometimes hits the wrong keys.
SD: Do you see anything collective here? With you in sync with it?
JR: I’ve been thinking about this subject for a long time. It may have come after Le pont du nord. I can’t remember if it was before or after Le pont du nord. That was also a film about two generations with Bulle and Pascale Ogier. The initial idea for Le pont du nord used the principle of the western: an experienced character and a tenderfoot. And with Bulle and Pascale, we really spent a while looking at how we would concretize – in Paris and in a contemporary manner in France; Parisian because as we were poor the film had to remain Parisian – this principle of the western, the older one and the younger one, the experienced one and the inexperienced one, etc.
I don’t know. Maybe that is what unconsciously led me afterwards to think back to the old film by Allégret and Jeanson, Entrée des artistes, which, let’s admit it, isn’t great. There is Jouvet who looks the part and who always looks the part, even if the sequences that I re-watched – all I re-watched were the sequences of Jouvet’s conservatory class – it’s a shame that this was the only thing recorded of Jouvet giving his class at the conservatory, because it is really a caricature of Jouvet’s real course, which we know of through the two fantastic books published by Gallimard and the equally fantastic play by Brigitte Jacques, Elvire Jouvet 40.
So, it was just an idea we had in our heads for a few years. Very quickly, I’d thought of an actress and not an actor for the professor character. Very quickly, I thought of Jeanne Moreau to play this experienced and prestigious actress giving classes to young students. I thought of Jeanne so quickly because I had had a project ten years earlier, in ’72 or ’73, called Phénix – that was the working title – which was a film that we tried to do for over a year with Jeanne and which we could not do because the film was... Well, it was with Jeanne, Juliette Berto, Michael Lonsdale, and Pierre Clémenti. The lead roles were especially focused on the relationship between Jeanne and Juliette. And that film couldn’t be made for purely financial reasons. It was a costume film based on the myth of Sarah Bernhardt. Not on the reality of Sarah Bernhardt, but on the myth of Sarah Bernhardt, which we mixed with Phantom of the Opera. It was pretty funny, but it was a costume film set in 1895 and we would have needed to build a set. The rest could be filmed between the backstage of the Opéra Comique, the Odéon... We could cut them together. But there was still a main set that needed to be built, which was supposed to be the actress’s apartment built within the theater. The way Sarah Bernhardt had her real apartment in the old, real Sarah Bernhardt Theater, which was unfortunately torn down later. They kept the facade and did something else with the interior. An absolute abomination, but moving on...
In short, we didn’t manage to find the budget because it was a film that would have cost 4 million in ’73. And we’d found one million between the “avance sur recettes” and a co-production with TF1. It wasn’t called TF1 back then, but Channel One. Even combining everything, it wasn’t enough. So, that was that. We abandoned the project. That’s when I said to Jeanne... We were both very sad, but we parted ways saying we’d try to find another project later. And the next day I called Juliette to say, “Well, we can’t do the film, but we’re going to try to do another very poor one and let’s try to figure out an idea quickly to shoot something this summer.” That’s how, two months later, we did Céline and Julie. After Le pont du nord, in ’81, ’82, I worked with Suzanne Schiffman and Marilù Parolini, meeting each weekend, every Saturday afternoon at Suzanne’s place, and I had two ideas at once. That’s always a bad sign. The idea of the theater professor with Jeanne and another idea for another actress, which was supposed to take place in New York. And the other actress agreed to the idea, but I dropped it very fast because I quickly realized that in making a film about a French woman lost in New York, I would have fallen into cliches because I was lost myself after fifteen minutes. We had the first fifteen minutes, which were funny, and after that we fell completely into cliches. In any case, that was my feeling. So, I abandoned that and I also abandoned the theater professor project with Jeanne, because we had gone in a different, very dramatic, very melodramatic direction. We were headed in a direction that I didn’t like. Especially after Le pont du nord, making a very dramatic, very morbid – frankly a morbid – film would not have pleased me and that’s when I decided I needed to try making a comedy. I thought of Jeanne again, with whom I had wanted to make a film for a long time. Then Jeanne and Géraldine, and we moved on to the project of L’amour par terre – almost a backlash against Le pont du nordand this project. Time passed, L’amour par terre led for reasons we won’t go into now to the project of Hurlevent. That may sound strange, but that’s how it is.
And the fact of making Hurlevent, which was done fast, with issues during and at the end of production, but the project itself got started pretty fast... And for Hurlevent, I did what I had never done before. It was the starting idea of Hurlevent, and in fact the principle idea, what interested me, was to do it against what Wyler and Buñuel had done before me. Well, I don’t put Wyler’s film and Buñuel’s film on the same level, but that goes without saying. Once again, it was not an adaptation, but a transposition of Emily Brontë’s book into another era, another framework, doing it with actors who were around the same age as the characters in Emily Brontë’s novel. I mean, not quite as young since when Catherine – the first Catherine – dies in Brontë, she’s 19. And Heathcliff is one year older than her. But still, I looked for very young actors and actresses, 19, 20 years old, for the lead roles.
And I did find them, because Alice de Poncheville, who plays Isabel... A very important role, completely missing in the other versions as far as I remember. It was also the idea of keeping the characters who are not secondary very important. I mean Catherine’s brother, Edgar’s sister, an essential character in Emily Brontë story, which is in fact a polyphonic story. In no way is it a story where the Catherine/Heathcliff love story is the arc. It’s a novel that is itself very polyphonic and that takes places over thirty years and even more, forty years, two generations, etc. We didn’t keep everything, but I wanted to keep the fact that there are six or seven important characters, including Catherine and Heathcliff, re-named Roch.
In fact, Alice de Poncheville – who, at the time, had not shot anything at all, she was only 15 years old when we shot the film – was the same age as Isabella at the beginning of Emily Brontë’s story. And Fabienne and Lucas, with three or two years more than the real characters. But, in short, Isabella is 21, 22 years old at most.
I had made a number of videos, which I had never in my life done and it made me want to dive back into the project with the young actresses and young actors. So, when we had gotten over the difficulties with Hurlevent, with that film’s failure – because it was a major failure, though I don’t disown it, even if I consider it far from successful. But it has things in it that I’m happy to have done. The film overall? I can’t judge it.
With Pascal Bonitzer, I dived back into this project. And we found another solution to tell the story so that it would be a story about a neighboring concept, but still less morbid, etc. We developed a story, we worked on it for more than a year. When I saw that it was starting to take shape, I talked to Jeanne about it, who agreed to do it.
We saw each other several times, not that often. I kept Jeanne up to date on the evolution of the project and what we had decided on. We were set to shoot on a certain date, in April 1987 to be very precise. And then there were financial reasons that made things difficult in April. In short, budget issues. Jeanne herself had just shot another film in Brittany with lots of problems. She was completely in the success of Zerline, the reprisal of Zerline and everything. She asked for us to delay three months. I wasn’t so happy about delaying three months, but the producers and Jeanne agreed, saying it would be better in three months. I said, “Okay, let’s do it in three months.”
And in those three months, Jeanne vanished into thin air. She really vanished into thin air. I had no news from her. Her agent called up Martine [Marignac] one day to say she was not going to do the film. No explanation. That’s how we found out. I don’t know. This made it so there was no reason to ask for an explanation. Anyway, let’s move on.
After briefly hesitating, after offering the role to a single actress who would have pushed everything back... But in fact, when I offered it to her, I knew in advance that she wouldn't do it because she is very different. It was Hanna Schygulla. I knew in advance she would refuse for a very simple reason, she told me right away herself. A film that was supposed to be about an actress teaching her students Racine, Marivaux, Corneille, etc. was very distant from her. And even if it had been a film in German by a young German director with, instead of Marivaux and Racine, Schiller and Kleist and, I don’t know, Goethe, etc., she would have turned it down because she herself had never done that when she had met Fassbinder. In fact, she met Fassbinder in the restaurant where he, Schmidt and the whole gang met, she was also in the restaurant, etc. And that’s how she got cast in the first plays in the back of the restaurant. And later, there was a period when Fassbinder told her, “Maybe we’ll send you to a class.” And then she found herself learning [Kleist’s] Penthesilea and she fled. And she said, “Now I’d be interested in working on those ideas,” which she is doing, but...
It was very nice, I spent three days with Hanna Schygulla in Budapest while she was shooting a film with Mastroianni. It was very nice and I understood her reasons right away. In fact, I had anticipated them in advance, saying it was okay. Hanna Schygulla’s refusal was a good way to put a stop to the project, clearly and definitively. We won’t try to find a sub-Jeanne Moreau because, ultimately, that doesn’t exist. I’d already thought of this film for Jeanne vaguely for several years and concretely for more than a year.
On the other hand, what happened is that while we were quite far along in planning the film, we decided to delay ten days before shooting. That was very hard. The whole crew was hired and everyone was ready. It was a decision I really tried to resist as much as I could. I couldn’t because I wasn’t alone. Everyone was hired, including the young actresses for the class, and the young actresses either with important roles, secondary roles, or less important ones.
Okay, it was the same idea as for La bande des quatre. I don’t know how many my assistant saw, she went to lots of classes. She saw 300 or 500. I saw 150 in Martine’s office and I made videos of most of them. I must have made 80 videos, some of which were very short. I told all of them to stand in front of the camera – all the ones who seemed interesting, nice, curious to me. I don’t know, I wasn’t going to waste time talking in the office with them. I said, “Come in front of the video camera,” taking a short tirade by Racine and a short tirade by Musset. I already knew that the play being rehearsed would be La double inconstance. But there are no tirades in Marivaux, or very few. In fact, there are some in other plays by Marivaux, for instance, the gigantic tirade in scene one of Prince travesti, which I know now because we’ve been working on it for the past four months among ourselves, to stage it too, we’re not sure when. But there are none in La double inconstance.
So, I said Racine and Musset. Well, with some of the actresses who came, after the Racine, sometimes I said it’s not even worth bothering with the Musset. Sometimes I did both. And then I’d say, “Okay, thank you, miss.” And then to others who were very interesting, “Take a seat.” I started talking to them about the five or six roles in the film. Well, the roles that at the time were the lead role with regards to Jeanne and the secondary roles, a bit cliched, around her and who spoke with her. And that’s how I met the ones who seemed most interesting to me and three months later when Jeanne moved into another space, another time, another universe, we met again.
But still, there was some money from the “avance sur recettes,” a bit actually. A bit more money from La Sept, who joined as co-producer. It was stupid. And on the other hand, there was this film project that I’d had for years, a film about a theater class. And above all, it was the ten or fifteen women I’d chosen for the former project. I wanted to begin again with four or five, the four or five who... There had been six or seven, but I knew one would be unavailable at the time. I asked my assistant, “Find out which ones will be available in October.” She told me this one we really liked will be involved in a big project, so we didn’t even have her because of the big project, but the others were available, and we met.
I did what I usually do in these cases. I called them up. We said, “Let’s get together.” Inês [de Medeiros], who was in Lisbon, came back to Paris for a week, and we met for a week in Martine’s office or at Pascal’s to start looking for the main idea, the characters and everything. “You’re each going to make your character.”
SD: What you haven’t said is how Bulle Ogier got Jeanne Moreau’s role.
JR: That happened very late! The decision I made at that moment – the first scenario focused entirely on the character of the prestigious and experienced actress who gives classes. The film took place almost entirely in two spaces. On the one hand, the little theater where she gives her classes and on the other, the apartment upstairs where she lives. The first decision that was made, obviously, was never to go into that apartment upstairs, to see the actress only in the classroom space, in the theater where she gives her lessons. And to the contrary, that the second interior set would be the apartment where – very quickly, I wanted it to be, instead of an apartment in Paris, a house in the suburbs – four or five of them live.
I started with the young women and I waited a rather long time before asking myself who would be the professor. I hesitated between two or three actresses – all actresses with whom I’d already filmed, moreover. And in the end, since I was asking an actress with whom I’d already filmed, I wanted it to be Bulle, for it to be our sixth film.
SD: I like the “since I was...,” because there is still a kind of objective logic that winds up coming to light. The fact that you chose again...
JR: I knew that Bulle would be very reticent. She was very reticent and I was obliged to see her several times to convince her. And she showed up on set in a great panic, very afraid. Bulle is someone who is always very worried, very anxious, but she shows it more or less. Here, the panic and anxiety were more than shown. They were on display. But it was good because it forced us to give her a completely ready-to-use character, if I dare say, about which we had of course spoken beforehand. She shared her ideas with us about what she liked and what she didn’t like about what we were going to do with Constance. We didn’t give her dialogue on the first day of shooting that didn’t correspond to anything. It corresponded to what we had discussed with Pascal and Christine during the few weeks prior to shooting.
Christine Laurent, that is. I wanted her to join Pascal [Bonitzer] and I because at one point the role of theater became very important and at the point when we decided to make a film about young women among themselves, it seemed essential in order to avoid the major mistakes we ran the risk of making... A feminine viewpoint on the matter. And moreover, that it be Christine, who is very familiar with theater because she has worked in costume and set departments, etc. With lots of theater directors – all of them, be it Chéreau or Vincent...
SD: It is possible, obviously, to lament the film that you could have made with Jeanne Moreau because that would have been...
JR: It’s another film, another film.
SD: And at the same time, re-casting Bulle Ogier – who you’ve filmed with since L’amour fou, unforgettable and already rather old – in fact, you were dealing with a new Bulle Ogier because things have happened, because, as you said, she was afraid. And secondly – and I think it’s one of the film’s great qualities – Bulle Ogier, for the first time in my opinion, plays the role of a woman her own age who is a generation older than the young women and who performs it with a violence at once frightened and terrifying. Both at once: she is afraid and she frightens. Very impressive. And finally, taking one of the pieces of your usual game – because Bulle Ogier is part of your usual universe – you discover a new Bulle Ogier, you discover her and allow her to discover herself too, and she has an absolutely impressive role. She isn’t the only person in the film, but she is one of the film’s absolute poles.
JR: And the fact is that, in terms of the film’s length, Bulle’s role is not long. This is very important because, first, I think that each of her scenes is very strong.
SD: It’s true. We have to say it!
JR: I’m far from being the only one responsible. To the contrary! And it’s above all a character who is spoken about throughout the film, but in fact when we talk about her, when we say Constance Dumas this, Constance Dumas that, I think that was essential for the story. It corresponds to someone and she fits the legend.
It’s the sixth film I’ve made with Bulle and, nonetheless, I think that the six characters we’ve created in the six films are all different. Perhaps this one marked her more by the role of Constance Dumas than others, but whether it was Out, Céline, Duelle, Le pont du nord, or this one, and of course in L’amour fou, these six very different characters – well, each time we used different hair styles, costumes, even very different manners of speaking, of language... And already in Le pont du nord, it was a character as marked by her real age as Constance Dumas, but still, voluntarily... Moreover – because this was the principle of the shoot – it was the only time in all the films I’ve made with her – I even think of all the films Bulle has made – where she had no make-up or hair stylist, wigs or hairpieces added to her real hair. Because since we were shooting outside in the wind and possibly in rain... It didn’t rain, but we didn’t know in advance. We did have a lot of wind, however. So, she was in sunlight the whole time and rigorously without make-up. City make-up.
SD: What I wanted to say was that... To back up a little... The New Wave filmmakers were always lumped together with the idea of youth. Youth in comparison to disgusting old age in the 1950s. But of course, 30 years later, they themselves are older and there’s something extraordinarily...
JR: Sorry, just to make a small parenthetical: I’ll point out that among the New Wave filmmakers was Franju, who was far from a young man.
SD: That wasn’t really the New Wave. You’re exaggerating. He was kind of an uncle, a pioneer.
JR: Yes, yes.
SD: And besides, he was wasn’t interested in actors. So it wasn’t at all the problem that Truffaut, Godard, you, or Rohmer dealt with. Not only did you start, rather logically, telling stories about young people, but over the years, even if you have all grown older – and this is shared by all for of you, even if Truffaut is dead – you’ve remained interested in young people. Now, there’s a moment when something is unavoidable, which is that you have to include people in your stories to whom you feel closer since you’ve aged. So those are older people. What really strikes me is that for the four, or rather the three surviving ones, there’s a real reluctance, a real fear, I think, of filming older people or people who are older than the others. And I thought... It’s very personal but we’re talking openly here... It bothered me in Hurlevent, it bothered me in L’amour par terre where there was a moment when it was no longer possible to continue celebrating in the film a generation, whether it was 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds. And that it was necessary – you who are a major Renoirian, as you know – to tie back into something which was the strength of classical cinema, which was to put three generations in one story, something filmmakers today have a lot of trouble doing.
And one reason I like La bande des quatre is that for the first time, there is a woman with an important role, who gives these theater classes, who is her own age, over 40 and who is very impressive, who is frightening in any case, who has a kind of charisma over these young lodgers.
There is also a man about whom we’ll talk later, Benoît Regent, a man who is a great character.
And I think that for the first time in a long time in what you do in the movies, there is the consideration, I’d say – to be a bit vulgar and provocative – of biology. That is to say, the passage of time. And in my opinion, the film’s strength and perhaps one of the reasons audiences like it more than your previous films is that people can recognize themselves or situate themselves in it. People can find themselves as individuals in a story where there is obviously twenty years of age difference. And La bande des quatre no longer draws its most beautiful effects from companionship, sympathetic camaraderie, leftist gangs, theater gangs, which today is obviously no longer as clear as before.
That’s not a question, but don’t you think that you resolved something that you ultimately needed to pass through? To say to yourself: a man and a woman. Two adults, five young people, and some others. And then, reality, social issues, terrorism, politics, which you’ve always kept up on. But let’s say, taking a close look, is there not a kind of putting things right?
JR: Yes, no doubt. But I mean, it’s not as if I woke up one day...
SD: Of course!
JR: But it’s true that... I agree with you about the somewhat artificial side of L’amour par terre. It was about artifice in every sense, in mirrors, the face to face. In any case, I’d be happy if someday they showed the real version of L’amour par terre, which was three hours long – in fact, the version that was released is two hours long – that would give a different sense of the whole thing. It’s a film that is less systematic in the three-hour version. But that doesn’t change what you’re talking about because there is indeed a somewhat younger character who plays an important role in the three-hour version, but that we didn’t quite manage... Okay, it’s true that it was a film based entirely around artifice, from start to finish. It was almost, I wouldn’t say the subject, but in any case...
SD: Oh yes, it was the film’s subject.
JR: Yes. And what interested me in Hurlevent was –
SD: Everyone’s very young.
JR: Very young. In so far as we only kept the first third of Emily Brontë’s novel. Not that the second part is not very beautiful, but then we would have had to plan on a six-hour long film. That wasn’t financially possible. It would have caused problems. Problems, moreover, that are almost always impossible to solve. How do you show a person first at twenty and then at forty without awful make-up or using a different actor who doesn’t quite look like the first one? Things like that. We had that problem with the character of Heathcliff/Roch, who is the main character after all. Not with the others. They die or we see less of them. Well, no, Edgar is in both parts and also ages. So, the very principle of Hurleventwas to try to be faithful to this aspect of Emily Brontë’s novel.
Here I felt like I was reconnecting, as I said earlier, with the principle... Approached in a different way, of course, in a more systematic, more concrete, more everyday manner, but still within an extremely limited context. Since you could say that the theater course is a microsociety. We tried to make it a metaphor for society at large. And by the way, that’s why in the theater course... Since in the meantime what had made me want to go back into this project was seeing the play by Brigitte Jacques Elvire Jouvet 40. Not that we were trying for one second in our film to do a sub-Elvire Jouvet 40. So as soon as I started talking with Pascal and Christine, we said we would skip over the technical side of theater, because we’re not going to do a sub-Jouvet. That wouldn’t be realistic. The only slightly technical, theatrical moment, if I dare say, when we did a gag on purpose was the gaze scene. And for the rest, we said, in what we see of the class, Constance Dumas will only talk to her students about moral issues. To tell them three or four very simple, very precise things. Very useful things, moreover, not for doing an audition six months later in front of a director, but instead for leading the real life of an actress for thirty or forty years, that is, how to live your life with the theater and what that represents. Three or four things that I believe are true for having, in effect, the life of an actress. But since these are very general things, I think they can also – and this is also what interested me about these three or four maxims, practically speaking, since they are almost Cornelian or in any case classical maxims – reverberate in the lives of people who have very different private lives, who work in an office or who sell shoes or I don’t know what. I don’t think there are a million formulas. There are a few. I’m not saying Constance says everything about life or how to live and how to survive. But she says two or three things, like Jean-Luc said. Two or three things that are good to know.
SD: Now, I have a theory about the film... It’s not really a theory, it’s that there are two things in this film that are beautiful. First, in its concrete duration, viewers see the film as it unfolds, one is never being totally taken in and, at the same time, one cannot not want to see the next sequence. So, it’s a film whose subject is curiosity. They say that’s a nasty flaw... To the contrary, it is the very basis of any intellectual process. So, we watch the film to the end, sensing along the way that there will be no final word.
JR: There is!
SD: Sure, but it is very emblematic, let’s say.
JR: It’s not new. It’s also one of the basic formulas. We didn’t invent it, it’s “the show must go on.”
SD: Right. We didn’t invent it, neither did Cecil B. DeMille nor Renoir. It was invented before us. Secondly, there is something I think is great. It is still part of what I would call your film’s “topo-biology.” We talked a bit about the young actresses, we talked a bit about Constance. There is another character in the film who is an absolute success, who is played by Benoît Régent. I won’t say which role he plays because he has such a first name – well, I think it’s Thomas...
JR: The real name is Thomas. In any case, it’s the one he has on the police ID card he shows to Joyce. But since he tells us before that he is very good with fake IDs, we may think that this police ID is also fake.
SD: If there is a cliché about you and the films you make, it is “cinema and theater.” Well, sure, I know you like theater a lot and that you’re mad about movies, but I think it’s more complicated than that. That is, in the film, there is someone who doesn’t just represent theater, but who incarnates theater. That’s the woman. What characterizes theater? Contrary to what one might believe, it is not really a space of performance and a space of doubles and a space of masks. It’s absolute seriousness, it’s morality. And then there is another space, which is the space belonging to cinema, on the other side of the barrier, which is represented by Benoît Régent, who plays all the tricks of cinema. That is to say, he is metamorphic, he changes identities. He is a seducer, but not a very phallic character. He is both strong and weak. He ends up receiving terrible blows. And he is the cinema from the masculine side, colliding with theater as a force of total resistance, emblematized by Bulle Ogier. And in the middle are the young women, who hesitate between cinema and theater. What’s beautiful in the film is that hesitation is the only truth. That is, there is no more truth on one side or the other. There is no scene between Benoît Régent and Bulle Ogier. There are simply these women who hesitate since they are successively seduced, restricted, solicited, etc. by this guy who is a real chameleon. And I thought it was a wonderful way of saying: theater, cinema, okay, but after all, Welles said cinema’s only subject is theater. So, it isn’t an entirely new idea. But under what conditions today, in 1989? I, Jacques Rivette, am telling a story with two poles, two adults – and you don’t really like adults, you tend to flee from them – responsible adults. One performs her profession, the other plays with his profession, and the young women hesitate between them. And I found that this kind of topology completely works. I don’t know if you can recognize yourself in what I’m saying, that is, cinema is a performance in a ludic sense and theater is really serious.
JR: I can only agree with your summary of the film, because it was in fact the basic framework. When I talk about a film, it’s known that I don’t write a scenario. For the past twenty years or even longer, since L’amour fou, I’m horrified by what they typically call the scenario. In fact, what the Americans call more precisely the “screenplay.” To the contrary, I am very much a partisan of the scenario, but in the commedia dell’arte sense. That is, a list, a catalogue, an enumeration of scenes, which have to take place in their logical order. That’s what I try to have at the start of a film. Even for Out, which is the most improvised of all my films, the one that used savage improv, we had this framework at the start, that is, the list of sequences to shoot. We didn’t quite know the order we would put them in later.
Therefore, at the beginning of a film, I know that I can head into production, rightly or wrongly, when I have this framework. On the one hand, the list of sequences, but also a kind of mental outline. And in this case, the mental outline was the two poles that never met, because the one is positive and the other is negative. We don’t know which, each of them has positive and negative sides, there’s an exchange of electricity.
SD: It’s a magnetic field.
JR: It’s a magnetic field and, to re-use a Bazinian metaphor, between the two come the five lead women, especially the four, because Nathalie/Cécile is outside Thomas’ game. She is what is at stake. And the others are those famous iron filings that are in the field. Because the metaphor of the magnetic fields is one of the metaphors that Bazin used the most and always quite correctly. In effect, cinema functions via magnetic fields. I think that when we make films, what we try to have at the start... Yes, the metaphor works because a film is electricity, too.
SD: I think we need to end this first episode with Jacques Rivette on this admirable line. There are magnetic fields. A film is electricity, too.
JR: Too!
SD: Comma, too. I think we’ll talk about that again next week, because we are really starting to talk about cinema now. Thank you, Jacques Rivette. See you next week.
Part 2 / March 12, 1989
SD: Microfilms, good evening! As promised, the sequel to our conversation with Jacques Rivette. We started with La bande des quatre and we arrived at rather interesting things on theater, which continues eternally, and the generations it passes by. I’d like to ask you a question, Jacques, which is, among the members of the New Wave, you are, to my knowledge, the first one to say “yes” to theater. In general, it’s an aesthetic movement that comes as much from Bresson as from Renoir. And I think Bresson’s influence was more immediate than Renoir’s influence. But you did make a film about Renoir and you were the first one, with La religieuse, to move to the stage. So, theater has always excited you. At the same time, I think the word “theater” is too general. Theater is also Visconti, Oliveira, Bergman, Renoir, and Rivette.
What I think is that you’re very interested in that which in theater is transformation, that is to say, theatricality, that is, someone who is learning and not so much the final performance. Not so much the backstage either, with all its gossip. It’s not at all, “Look how someone confuses life with the stage or theater with the city.” It’s much flatter, in the good sense of the term. That is, it’s a profession. And what really strikes me is that in all your films, when there is theater, it is a major French classic. We’ve never seen people in your films rehearsing Brecht or Strindberg or Harold Pinter. Is that a deliberate and conscious decision? That when it comes down to it, theater is the classics?
JR: When it comes down to it, I don’t know if theater is the classics even if, deep down, I tend to think so. If I’ve always used a classic, it is for two very simple reasons. First, it’s to avoid annoying rights issues with the inheritors of Pirandello or Claudel, to name two 20th century authors, both major playwrights. In Out, it’s Aeschylus and of course very transposed. On the one hand because Lonsdale rehearsed and really worked on it, using Prometheus Bound as a pretext, and on the other hand, Michel Moretti and his troupe used Seven Against Thebes. And for L’amour fou it was Andromaque and in La bande des quatre it’s La double inconstance. I used these plays because they are very well-known. Andromaque more so than La double inconstance. La double inconstance is still one of the two or three best known Marivaux. This way we could show excerpts taken from here and there without worrying too much about or feeling like we needed to tell the audience the whole plot. I thought 99% of people who would want to see L’amour fou would already know Andromaque, not by heart, but the idea of Andromaque: Orestes who loves Hermione who loves Pyrrhus who loves Andromaque who loves Hector who is dead. Everyone knows that. You learn it in high school and forget the rest. That’s not quite the case for La double inconstance. It’s not a play you can sum up in one line. But we were still able to take... We mainly took lines from the first and last acts, the start and the end of the play, without feeling like we needed to tell the story of La double inconstance, which is unrelated – unlike what some critics may think – to the rest of the plot. Just as we chose Andromaque without looking for a connection to the plot of L’amour fou, with what happens between Bulle Ogier and Jean-Pierre Kalfon’s characters. And in the editing, it turned out there were plenty of connections and we spent all our time while editing, well part of our time while editing, trying to remove the connections between the rehearsals for Andromaque and the actual plot of L’amour fou.
That doesn’t really answer your question. I don’t go to theater often enough to be able to say much about what is going on nowadays. I went often in the 1960s. Not so often, but still I went a lot. I wanted to see what was happening. Then it became so hard to see plays. The turning point in my life was when [Giorgio] Strehler staged [Carlo] Goldoni’s Holiday Trilogy at the Odéon. I had seen quite a few performances staged by Strehler at the Théâtre des Nations. Anyway, I think it was his first theater piece in France with French actors. I went one morning to get a place in line at the Odéon. When I arrived, it was the beginning and everything was already sold out and I said, “Okay, if that’s how it is now, I’m through with it. I’m not going anymore.” Because even before a theater piece has begun, all the performances need to be sold out. It’s like with dance. There’s a Parisian phenomena, which started to increase back then and which is that everyone wants to see the same thing and yet there is nobody to see all the rest.
Same for films but it plays a huge role in theater. Now, for the past five years everyone races to Pina Bausch, for example, in dance, or [Merce] Cunningham. Twenty-five years ago, I saw Cunningham’s first performances in Paris with people walking out in the middle. Nowadays with Cunningham, if you don’t reserve tickets three months in advance, you won’t see it. In those cases, I don’t go anymore. I don’t want to. I’m not going to stand in line at five in the morning. I’m too old, unfortunately, to have the courage to do that. And if I’m not sent an invitation, too bad. I don’t go. I go see something else. I go to the movies. That remains something human, unlike theater.
One of the things I hate about theater is this idea of privilege. There’s an idea of privilege in theater in regards to the audience. Especially when it’s a performance at the Comédie Française, at the opera, even more so when it’s a tour by Cunnigham, Pina Bausch, or Strehler, who come to give a certain number of performances. There are ten or fifteen but no more. You have to have seen it and if not you’re a country bumpkin. In those cases, I’m a country bumpkin.
I really prefer to see an unknown film that is released the same week by a French director making his first film or by a Chilian or Venezuelan or Patagonian director that we don’t know. Nine out of ten times I’m disappointed or it isn’t a revelation, but that interests me more. After all, I’m a filmmaker.
These days I go to the theater when – I’ve gotten very lazy – it’s people I know who staged it or are acting in it and send a card.
SD: But, for example, when a filmmaker like you – who, after all, is a filmmaker, as you say – goes to the theater, is it to look at the theatrical staging? Because there are commonalities with cinema. Or to see the actors?
JR: No, I go for the play. Then for the actors and then for the staging. I mean, it’s a whole. I hate arrogant staging in theater. That’s also why, very often, I’m not so happy with what I’ve seen the past fifteen years. It’s why I want to go less and less. Because these days there is first of all the staging, then there are the sets. Or there are the sets first of all and then the staging. Then there is the lighting. Just read the articles and reviews in Le monde or Libération or anywhere and even the invitations you receive. Nowadays you receive invitations where the entire crew is mentioned. Three days ago, I received the invitation to see the play L’imposture, directed by Brigitte Jacques, adapted by Pascal Bonitzer from Bernanos’ novel. I’ll go see it. Everyone is on the invitation card but not a single actor is mentioned. You wouldn’t even know it’s [Philippe] Clévenot in the lead role, that there’s Michel Robin, that there are ten actors, and all brilliant. Personally, I think that’s scandalous.
SD: How do you interpret that?
JR: I interpret it to mean that there is enormous contempt for actors in theater in France today. Which is clear from the viewpoint of people who manage theaters and the journalists who watch the plays as well. Because nine out of ten times, journalists would think they were offending... The lighting is very important, it’s very beautiful. I’ll be the first to admire it. But they would think they are dishonored if the journalists don’t say, “Wonderful lighting by Mr. or Mrs. So and So.” And they treat the actors with the greatest contempt. I mean, whether it is [Michel] Cournot or anyone else, those people deeply despise actors.
SD: The actors will let us make a connection, because what I find striking in cinema, and it’s an ongoing debate right now...
JR: Excuse me, I’d just like to add that among the prestigious French directors, I do really like Chéreau because – God knows there are sets by [Richard] Peduzzi, the lighting is immaculate – he does not despise the actors.
SD: Absolutely. Because he can act too. Someone told me [Claude] Zidi’s film [Deux] is not bad but that no one is going. I haven’t seen it and it may not be bad, why not...
JR: It’s surprising, it’s astounding.
SD: That’s not the question. The question is...
JR: You absolutely have to see it.
SD: There’s Depardieu and Detmers. A film by a filmmaker who has made a lot of comedies, which were not very well considered by intellectual critics. But that’s the rule, alas. He did Les ripoux, which was a nice surprise. And then he made a film...
JR: If Deux were an Italian film, if it were signed by Scola, and if it had Italian actors, the reviews would be ecstatic.
SD: Well? I was told it’s incredible that the film received pretty good reviews, but that no one is going to see it.
JR: The reviews were spiteful, condescending. Except for Libération. But for example, the review in Le monde was totally spiteful.
SD: Really? I haven’t read it. But I was saying, I’m sad, but it would surprise me today that a film based on the work of actors and the honesty of a filmmaker who tries telling the story of a couple, for example, the story that was the dominant story in the 60s and 70s and that nowadays, clearly, no longer interests anyone...
JR: But this is a story that has never been told! Zidi managed to find a totally contemporary way to tell the story of a couple, because to my knowledge nobody has ever told the story told by this film.
SD: That may be possible. I’ll take you your word for it. But I was saying I’m not surprised. Unfortunately, this film does not work because a film based on the work of actors, a contemporary story, two characters and direction relatively in the service of the story – I do not see how that would work since what works today is... Well, it’s the usual litany, it’s L’ours, it’s Le grand bleu, which are films with a point in common, regardless of their qualities. Because I’m not opposed to Le grand bleu. Not fundamentally against it, let’s say.
JR: Not entirely against it.
SD: Not entirely against it. It’s a film I find curious and it shouldn’t be despised. But in any case, these films have a point in common and I could also add Bagdad Café, [Etienne] Chatiliez, etc. They are films that do entirely without actors. And the counterexample I saw was [François] Dupeyron’s film [Drôle d’endroit pour une rencontre], about which the press had a lot of good to say and where it would be really cruel to at least Deneuve, who works extremely hard at...
JR: And Depardieu is good!
SD: Depardieu is very good. It’s a first film, so it’s a film that had a very average score, etc. And I think it would be the same for Zidi. So, I find it interesting that on the one hand, your film, which deals with young actresses learning their trade and who are not well-known – it’s interesting as far as they are young actresses – and at the other end of the chain, we move immediately to animals, to anonymous actors, to ones we won’t see again. For example, the character in Le grand bleu, who is good, moreover, I doubt he will have a classic movie career. I don’t think so anyway. But lots of people who say “Enough with auteur cinema because they’re gross intellectuals masturbating...”
JR: We need scripts. We’ve stopped telling stories the past five years. People want scripts.
SD: This goes back to last week’s episode. They want concrete scripts and actors that everyone loves. Now, it happens that, in general, filmmakers do that, they do it rather well, and we see that that isn’t what is decisive. That’s not what interests people. As viewers, as consumers of images, people are in a different script, which sets other things in motion – mythological, regarding the figure, the desert, the disaffection of the world, the desire for love, dead fathers, the elements...
JR: It’s as you say, people need myths. It’s the point in common between Bagdad Café, Le grand bleu, and all that. Films that are more or less successful. I like some of them, others less. But in effect their strong point is that most of the time, without doing it on purpose or sometimes knowing a bit but not too much... Even Besson, who was doubtlessly more aware of this than Percy Adlon, well, they fall entirely into myth, which was already the strength of Trois hommes et un couffin.
SD: It didn’t work for Bertolucci, who is well-known, but for China and the subject matter.
JR: For the subject matter, which is major. For me personally, China didn’t interest me at all at first and it was when I saw that the subject was coming to the sets and the Chinese costumes that I started getting interested in the film. At that moment, as a result, I became interested in China again.
SD: So, we want to say that people who are auteurs, you for example, are terribly interested in actors at a moment when the actor and the auteur are a bit... Their fate is a bit tied together. That is, if we get rid of auteurs, we will also get rid of actors.
JR: We’re in the same boat.
SD: Yes, it’s the same boat.
JR: It’s clear. And I think the actors know it too.
SD: Is this a real mutation in cinema? You, Jacques Rivette, who sees more films than I do...
JR: Yes, it is a real mutation. But it isn’t by chance that now lots of more or less successful American films are produced by actors. And it’s coming to France too, because Deneuve and Depardieu are co-producers on Dupeyron’s film. So, we are in the same boat and I think that now the actors need to take notice. For a long time, Piccoli has been co-producing some of his ambitious films for a long time. He’s even twice lost everything he had in order to make interesting films. Each time, he heads out again, valiantly, courageously. It’s a logical development. We’re on the same side even if they are in front of the camera and we are behind it. We are on the same side with regards to the whole development of the system and the market. We are the entertainers.
SD: It’s interesting because in that regard, we can see in different countries... For me, the most interesting filmmaker is Moretti. But he’s an auteur/actor. He was born that way.
JR: He reconnects with the old tradition of Chaplin, Keaton...
SD: The American filmmakers close to our hearts, perhaps more so Cassavetes, who just died, but still over time, Woody Allen is turning out to be rather impressive.
JR: Of course.
SD: Eastwood is great.
JR: Of course.
SD: Newman has slowed down, but he was good. Those are actors. We say that in France, we had great actors in the café-théâtre or around it. Coluche, for example. I remember Coluche saying to me – I saw him after Tchao Pantin – “I would never work with Godard. It’s too dangerous for me.” Which was extremely intelligent of him, because he knew that Godard only uses actors who are on the decline.
JR: To destroy them.
SD: Yes, yes. Not to destroy them, but to take advantage...
JR: Not to destroy them. I take back what I said.
SD: Yes, yes, it’s not nice. I don’t mean that either. I think that Godard takes advantage of an actor who is on the decline in terms of myth, of image, in order to make him work for once in his life. Since Godard likes when actors work, that is, in a much more disciplined and scholarly system, let’s say. When the actors aren’t dumb, like Johnny Hallyday, they are grateful. But Coluche had a lot of... And Depardieu, for example, and lots of people, would say: “Godard is dangerous for us.” It’s a bit like retirement. You do a Godard and after, etc. And I have the sense that in France we are hurting because we have no auteur/actors. And this brings me to a question I’ll ask you, but that is completely impromptu, provoked by our conversation. You are one of these people who has not appeared as an actor, except, I recall, a small role in an Eduardo de Gregorio. At the same time – this is an idea I have about all your films – I think your work has, not the exhibitionism of a repressed actor – that applies to everyone and at the limit it is not such an interesting idea – but something related to dance and musical comedy. Sometimes I have the feeling that you are better at doing the movements the actors are supposed to do than the actors themselves. So, the question is quite simply: you are quite interested in dance, we talked about Merce Cunningham, do you regret the fact, consciously or not, that there is absolutely no possibility in French cinema of making people dance?
JR: Of course I regret that, but already in Noroît, I hired for the secondary roles... Okay, we weren’t able to develop it as much as we wanted because it was a film shot in four weeks under difficult circumstances. But it features dancers in almost all the secondary roles. And the fourth film – because it was a series of four films – would have been, in principle, a song and dance film. But not at all like Jacques Demy, which is very nice and all, but much more following the idea of contemporary music and dance and I’d talked to Carolyn Carlson, who agreed to do it. In short, each film would have been a duo of actors, a conflict between actors. That was the idea of the four films, except the first one, which we started but didn’t film with Leslie Caron and Albert Finney. But the other three were conflicts between actors. Juliette and Bulle in Duelle, Geraldine and Bernadette in Noroît, and the last one would have been Anna Karina and Carolyn Carlson. With a very developed form of dance, because Carolyn would of course have been in charge of the choreography with her own dancers. In any case, in Noroît, there are two main secondary roles, Larrio Ekson and Anne-Marie Reynaud, who were from Carolyn’s company.
SD: Because I think you are a major, unemployed choreographer.
JR: Well, it’s very hard in France. I won’t deny it. Choreographer – I have no idea. I don’t have the slightest inkling of dance vocabulary. I’m rather allergic to classical dance, even if when I see a bit it amazes me if it is Nureyev or Baryschnikov. Of course, I’m amazed. But I know that what touched me the most... I was very, very enthusiastic about what Carolyn Carlson was doing, but I was really blown away by the three times I saw Merce Cunningham twenty years ago. It seemed obvious to me. I was in the middle of a room that was up in arms, if I dare say. Morally, in any case, and it seemed obvious to me.
SD: Yes, it’s wonderful.
JR: Very simply.
SD: I was wondering because first, in my opinion, it concerns you. Secondly, because it excites me, because when you look at the history of French cinema – you know it well and even better than me – you realize, perhaps along with Italian cinema, it is the cinema with the least dancing in the world. And I do not know why that is. Do you have any ideas?
JR: The French have two left feet, it’s well known. Myself, I’m the first to admit I don’t know three dance steps. It’s true we have two left feet. Whereas the Italians, theoretically, are better dancers. But in film, yes, yes, yes... There have only ever been special cases.
SD: I think that a good part of what has become French cinema’s strength is choreographing everything but the body. The language, the camera, the stories, the script, the fictions, with the exception of the body. And it’s true that a much less refined American film, which really knows how to get somebody moving, even today, touches us. I think that at a certain point, it’s a cultural thing. We can’t do anything about it.
JR: What you’re talking about, making films that are more about a way of looking at the body, at bodies in motion, is something I have also been thinking about for several years. Especially since Le pont du nord. And let’s say it was at the start of Hurlevent. Unfortunately, the film was a victim of the limited shooting time, but I had planned in my mind for a lot more scenes outside with chases, with movement. It’s why I wanted to see young actors and dynamic bodies. That’s why I chose Lucas and Fabienne, because I liked how they moved, how they walked, how they went around. It’s something I was unfortunately unable to show much in the movie, even if I like how they move in the film. But I filmed a lot less of their movements or their bodies as I initially wanted to. It was a very hard shoot. And maybe it is a desire that I am unable to transcribe. But I know it is something I want to return to now from another angle. I’m looking for the right feet. But it will not be directly about dance. I am always thinking about dance. Maybe I will never do it. I don’t want to do it directly after La bande des quatre, because it would risk seeming too intentional. So, dance, maybe, but in a few years. But you need to find the people, you need to find the accomplices, as Renoir said. Since I am not a choreographer or a dancer, I need to find the person with whom I can have a dialogue, the way Kalfon was the director of Andromaque in L’amour fou. Someone who is at the center of the film. As Carolyn Carlson would have been if we had made the fourth film in the tetralogy of the Filles du feu: Scènes de la vie parallèle. For now, I don’t know. On the other hand, a film that is more about looking at bodies in motion is something I really want to do now.
SD: I find that all the more striking since I think the movies we have discussed, which are big box office hits, are incredibly static films. It seems to me we are in a period of the reign of the frozen image or the freeze frame.
JR: Yes.
SD: And that there is something in movies, a kind of major, accumulated movement in film history, that no longer manages to show itself, except maybe sometimes in the few good music videos. But still, the best music videos are more [Jean-Baptiste] Mondino and Guesch Patti done more with immobility, a body that does not move...
JR: Or very little.
SD: Or very little.
JR: A music video I really like, which is very different, is France Gall’s video for Ella, elle l’a. But precisely, France Gall moves very little in it. Her head moves. What’s interesting are her neck movements. The “petit chèvre de Monsieur Seguin” side she has.
SD: Before we went on the air, we were talking about how hard it is for young actors to have reference points. Today, what does someone who wants to be in movies and is twenty years old have that is strong and in relation to which he can define himself? At one point there was the Actor’s Studio, for example, like it or not, but which was so enormous that one could say yes or no. Today, what is there? There’s Chéreau, Vitez, two or three theater companies...
JR: Mnouchkine is very important.
SD: Mnouchkine. Does that create tics? Or does it create possibilities for filmmakers to watch these movements?
JR: I don’t feel competent enough to answer that question. Because among the young actresses that I’ve seen, even the ones in the film... There are two actresses who spent two years, I think, Fejria [Deliba] and Bernadette [Giraud], taking courses with Antoine Vitez. Laurence [Côte] did an internship with Ariane Mnouchkine. Nathalie [Richard] had a more classical course of study at the conservatory. I have to say that I didn’t feel a strong mark on any of them. Except for Fejria, who is among the five lead actresses, because with Inês, so five... Inês went a different route because she’s from Portugal and was in the Théâtre Français in Lisbon, where she acted at the French high school in Lisbon. Fejria is the one among the five who wants most to be a director herself in theater or film, to write stories. So, she is doubtlessly the one who took the most things from Vitez’s classes. In my opinion, very positive things from Vitez, that is, the science of theater that he gives to his students, that he pours out through anecdotes, theories, making sudden references to the 17th century or some anecdote about Stanislavsky and an actress... Well, I can’t talk about it because I haven’t seen enough of what Vitez does with young actors, young acting students. And I’ve seen even less of what Ariane Mnouchkine does during her seminars. My impression is that they are more important for their students. Not through examples, tics, processes... Because Vitez, he opens up everything, which I think is something very positive about his class – and again I’ve seen a little and I talked more about it with Fejria and Bernadette. He’s interested in taking a scene from Tartuffe and showing five different ways, one after the other, of staging it, of showing this or that character. I think that deep down he’s interested in the plasticity of theater. He even wants to re-use certain plays and stage them differently. I think that is what interests him fundamentally – a play’s plasticity. And besides, it’s true, that is what theater is. A play is made to be performed and performed again by other actors and, eventually, from other points of view, other angles. That is how a play stays alive. There are plays where that works like in Molière, Shakespeare... I don’t want to name all the big names of world theater. And on the other hand, there are other plays that are linked to a time period and that cannot be taken out of that time period. For example, this is obvious for all the successful theater from the 19th century. Dumas fils, Emile Augier... If you want to stage them, they need to be staged in Second Empire costumes and rediscovering the codes from that era. They can’t be transposed. Whereas Molière – there are 500 different ways, some work better, others work less well, but everything is possible. Racine, Shakespeare – everything is possible.
SD: Of course.
JR: There are outlier cases, because Pirandello, for example, is linked to turn-of-the-century Italy. Each time, he talks about very specific anecdotes, mostly Sicilian, which he transposes more or less. And yet, Pirandello is flexible. Maybe less flexible than Molière, but it’s flexible. That’s also why I think Claudel is flexible. A play can only survive if actors, 15, 20 years later and then 100 years later, then five centuries later, want to perform it again. They can do so. And they can only do so if this very, very strong backbone, which crosses the ages, and the language, which is also very strong, which crosses the ages... Because if one performs Corneille and Racine and Marivaux in French, you are not going to change a word, even if it is prose. Marivaux is prose. You cannot change a word of Marivaux. Same for Shakespeare. It’s more worthwhile, I think, to perform him in English. With Shakespeare, you can choose, there are three different versions of Hamlet to choose from. Or make a puzzle out of the three versions as they tend to do. So, there is the principle behind the play, which is very strong and crosses the ages. There is the play’s language, which also has to be very strong. And moreover, it’s not for nothing if Aeschylus and Sophocles have survived, because their language is very strong. And then this enormous plasticity, which makes it so that 25 centuries later, one wants to re-stage Electra, Antigone, etc. Well, Electra and Antigone are still close to us.
But a week ago, I wanted to read it, I’d never read that play. I got the Greek tragedies in the Pléiade edition, translated by Jean Grosjean, who is a translator I like a lot, who translated Aeschylus and Sophocles, and who translated Shakespeare and who translated the Bible. I don’t know if it is faithful. I’m not going to compare the Shakespeare with the original. I’ve looked a little with regards to Shakespeare, but I haven’t looked with regards to Greek for Aeschylus and Sophocles. And even less at the Hebrew for his translation of Genesis, which Gallimard published two years ago. I really discovered Genesis while reading that translation.
I grabbed Women of Trachis, a play by Sophocles. One knows what the other six are about but I didn’t know what Women of Trachis was about. You can tell the story of Electra, you can tell the story of Antigone, in a pinch you can tell the story of Ajax, in a pinch you can tell the story of Philoctetes, and the two Oedipus versions even more. I could not do so for Women of Trachis. I read Women of Trachis in one sitting as if I were at a performance. It’s extraordinary. It’s extraordinary. It’s extraordinary. It is no doubt impossible to perform now, but it might be possible. Three-quarters of the time I was reading, I was saying to myself, I want to stage Women of Trachis next year! In the end, that’s not true. The final quarter is difficult, because in fact it is Heracles’ death. It is Deianeira who sends the fateful robe to Heracles and it’s the death of Heracles.
SD: I was just thinking, he has a wonderful way of talking about theater, but still, his life consists of seeing films, making them and seeing them.
JR: I love reading plays. I have a lot of trouble reading many things. I cannot read long novels. Well, I manage, but at the moment, I prefer to start in on a Balzac or Dostoyevsky, because I tell myself, from the start, it’s worth diving into these 500 pages, whereas I don’t have the same courage with a contemporary novel, right or wrong.
SD: So, you like reading plays...
JR: Yes, because I read them not necessarily thinking of how to stage them, but imagining the voices of the actors, the articulations... I’ve read everything by [Eugène] Labiche, his complete plays in eight volumes. I’ve read and re-read all 165 plays.
SD: That is to say, even just while reading, you put your finger on this plasticity of the theater and sometimes you want to stage it.
JR: Yes.
SD: Now, at the same time, you are after all a filmmaker, as you said.
JR: Musset, for example, is an author I always defend because as everyone knows, he is a great dramatist. But if he is a great dramatist, it is false to say he was a bad poet and a bad novelist. You have to re-read him. Starting with Caprices de Marianne and Lorenzaccio. You have to re-read all of Musset’s major poems. You have to read La confession d’un enfant du siècle. You have to read his tales and his novellas. They are admirable. He’s a major unknown.
SD: It’s not only that he is unknown. It’s that people assign him a personality that he didn’t have.
JR: Absolutely.
SD: I still want to come back to movies. You live more in movies, even if you are passionate about theater. You can’t say about an old film what you’ve just said about Sophocles’ Women of Trachis. That is, Murnau’s Tabu doesn’t have any plasticity.
JR: No, movies don’t have any plasticity.
SD: Right. So, what do you do with the major classics of cinema?
JR: Well, this is a commonplace of critics in the 1920s. The big question that [Ricciotto] Canudo and Deluc raised – they knew it was the seventh art, but they didn’t know why. And everything they wrote at the time is still exciting. Or Epstein and all those people. As well as what happened when sound came, without really realizing, as Bazin said, what Deluc, Canudo, Epstein and others foresaw. And from these two sides – movies are like novels for this or that reason, like theater for this or that reason... The two points of view you have just mentioned.
Movies are like painting, where there is only one copy, or sculpture at most, from which can be made multiple different copies. You can make molds. You can cast it ten times. Rodin’s Balzac, for example. Someone else orders Rodin’s Balzac, someone who can pay for it and has the rights from the Rodin Foundation, I don’t know how that works. They can make a double of Rodin’s Balzac for him, which would be the equivalent of the one at Vavin. Likewise, if a film negative survives, you can make a new print. So, it’s like sculpture, with multiples. Closer to sculpture than painting, because there are no multiples in painting. Or engraving.
SD: And in theater there is the interpretation. You can’t interpret a film. It exists.
JR: It exists like a sculpture.
SD: We don’t have much time left, so how do you, Jacques Rivette, who sees lots of films – on the one hand, you have cinema here like a sculpture...
JR: Yes, like a sculpture, because it has three dimensions. Sculpture has the three dimensions of space and cinema has two dimensions in space and one dimension in time. So, three dimensions too.
SD: Now the episode is coming to its end and we haven’t even begun to talk about...
JR: We’ve started... We’ll come back to it next year!
SD: ...about your enormous consumption of films.
JR: That’s just anecdotal. We talked about it earlier regarding theater or I don’t know what.
SD: This will be my only question on that question: how does one manage to see nearly everything that is released in Paris when one knows one has fewer and fewer people to talk to about them?
JR: It’s not to talk about them. In a very selfish manner.
SD: Is it useful for your work?
JR: It’s a question I don’t ask. It’s more like a drug. With some people it’s alcohol. With other people it is some other kind of mixture, etc. For me, I’m addicted to being in front of a screen on which shadows are projected with some accompanying sounds. Because the latter is very important now. I’m completely addicted to this drug. Sometimes I can spend a week or two without it. For various reasons. I’m in a country where it doesn’t exist or if I’m involved in some intrigue that prevents it or too absorbed in work. But afterwards, I absolutely need to catch up. I need to. And I think it is related to the work I’m trying to do. Sometimes seeing films gives you ideas. Bad films more than good ones! Good films don’t give you any ideas. It’s very nice to see good films, it’s healthy, it proves cinema continues to exist. Two days ago, I saw the new film by Jacques Doillon, which is wonderful. It’s healthy because it makes you want to keep making other films, but it doesn’t give me any ideas. To the contrary, it takes them away. Since he’s done it, I’m not going to do it. However, if I see someone and think, “Hey, he missed a big idea...” Either he missed it or he didn’t manage to transcribe it, to work it out, or maybe he didn’t even see it. So, then you want to steal the idea, to take it and work on it in your own manner.
SD: That’s it.
JR: That’s why I love seeing bad films. First, it’s very relaxing. And then it gives you ideas. And sometimes you see good actors who are lost in them and that makes you want to use them and bail them out. If you can, because sometimes you try to give actors good roles, but you don’t always manage to.
SD: So, there are two kinds of films: films that, not being so good, give you ideas and films that, being good, make you want to make more.
JR: Unfortunately, there is everything in between and that is not interesting. But you can’t know in advance. Films that are not so good, not so bad, average films, ones that are standard, made by machines. The Coppola machine can be okay when it produces Tucker or the Tom Cruise machine when it produces Cocktail. It’s the same for me. I mean, I get just as much pleasure out of seeing Tucker as Cocktail. But in both I see the result of a machine and it isn’t interesting. It bores me prodigiously. I really enjoyed seeing Tucker, but I came out dismayed. Because it’s made by a computer. There are no surprises when you see them. And the only thing in cinema that I still think is interesting is surprise, good or bad.
SD: That’s the end of the episode. La bande des quatre is a very, very good surprise. I think that’s clear. Thank you, Jacques Rivette, for talking to us for two weeks. Of course, it is just a millionth of what we could say. Thank you.
Serge Daney, Microfilms, 5th and 12th March 1989, France Culture (radio station). Translation by Ted Fendt.
