Jacques Rivette (1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director, screenwriter and film critic.

He wrote and directed twenty feature films, including the two-part Joan the Maiden, eight short films and a three-part television documentary. He also acted in small roles and participated in documentaries.

After making his first short film, Aux quatre coins, in his hometown of Rouen, Rivette moved to Paris in 1949 to pursue a career in filmmaking.

“What's important for me in a film is that it be alive, that it be imbued with presence, which is basically the same thing. And that this presence, inscribed within the film, possesses a form of magic. There's something profoundly mysterious in this.”

While attending film screenings at Henri Langlois' Cinémathèque Française and other ciné-clubs he gradually befriended many future members of the French New Wave, including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol.

Rivette's association with this group of young cinephiles led to the start of both his filmmaking career and his work in film criticism. In collaboration with his new friends, Rivette made two more short films and worked as a cinematographer and editor on films by Rohmer and Truffaut.

He also worked in small roles and as an assistant director to Jean Renoir on French Cancan and Jacques Becker on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. During this period he began writing film criticism for the magazine Gazette du Cinéma and later Cahiers du Cinéma, and was one of the most respected writers by his peers.

In 1956 Rivette made the short film Le Coup du Berger, which Truffaut credited as enacting the New Wave movement. The following year he began work on his first feature film with the initial support of Italian neorealist director Roberto Rossellini.

Paris Belongs to Us was shot in the summer of 1958, but not released theatrically until 1961, after Chabrol, Truffaut and Godard had their feature-film debuts distributed and made the New Wave renowned worldwide.

After staging a theatrical version of Denis Diderot's novel La Religieuse starring Anna Karina in 1963, Rivette became the editor-in-chief of Cahiers du Cinéma until 1965. He then began production on a film version of La Religieuse, which led to a lengthy public battle with French censorship over the film's release. Finally released in 1967, the publicity made it financially successful.

Rivette was unhappy with La Religieuse and re-evaluated his career, developing a unique cinematic style with L'Amour fou. Influenced by the political turmoil of May 1968, improvisational theater and an in-depth interview with Jean Renoir, Rivette began working with large groups of actors on character development and allowing events to unfold on camera. This technique led to the thirteen-hour Out 1.

His films of the 1970s, such as Celine and Julie Go Boating, often incorporated fantasy and were better-regarded.

After attempting to make four consecutive films, however, Rivette had a nervous breakdown and his career slowed for several years, with films such as Merry-Go-Round and Le Pont du Nord being difficult productions.

During the early 1980s, he began a business partnership with producer Martine Marignac, who produced all his subsequent films. Rivette's output increased from then on, with films such as Gang of Four and La Belle Noiseuse receiving international praise.

He continued making films until 2009, retiring after the early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease made the production of 36 vues du pic Saint-Loup too difficult for him to continue. Many of his films are known for their long running time, including the 760-minute Out 1.

Almost always at the insistence of the distributors, Rivette edited shorter versions of five of his films and considered some of them to be entirely new films with different meanings.

Filmography

Director

  2009  36 vues du Pic Saint Loup
  2007  Ne touchez pas la hache
  2003  Histoire de Marie et Julien
  2001  Va savoir
  1998  Secret défense
  1995  Lumière et compagnie
  1995  Haut bas fragile
  1994  Jeanne la Pucelle II - Les prisons
  1994  Jeanne la Pucelle I - Les batailles
  1992  Divertimento
  1991  La Belle Noiseuse
  1989  La bande des quatre
  1985  Hurlevent
  1984  L'amour par terre
  1981  Paris s'en va (Short)
  1981  Le pont du Nord
  1980  Merry-Go-Round
  1976  Noroît (une vengeance)
  1976  Duelle (une quarantaine)
  1974  Naissance et mort de Prométhée (Short)
  1974  Céline et Julie vont en bateau: Phantom Ladies Over Paris
  1973  Essai sur l'agression (Short)
  1972  Out 1: Spectre
  1971  Out 1, noli me tangere
  1969  Mad Love | L'amour fou
  1967  Cinéastes de notre temps (TV Series)
  1966  The Nun | La Religieuse
  1961  Paris Belongs to Us |    Paris nous appartient
  1956  Le coup du berger (Short)
  1952  Le divertissement
  1950  Le quadrille (Short)
  1949 Aux quatre coins (Short)