802 Paris Belongs to Us

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domino harvey
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802 Paris Belongs to Us

#1 Post by domino harvey » Thu Dec 17, 2015 6:14 pm

Paris Belongs to Us

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One of the original critics turned filmmakers who helped jump-start the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette began shooting his debut feature in 1957, well before that cinema revolution officially kicked off with The 400 Blows and Breathless. Ultimately released in 1961, the rich and mysterious Paris Belongs to Us offers some of the radical flavor that would define the movement, with a particularly Rivettian twist. The film follows a young literature student (Betty Schneider) who befriends the members of a loose-knit group of twentysomethings in Paris, united by the apparent suicide of an acquaintance. Suffused with a lingering post–World War II disillusionment while evincing a playful temperament, Rivette’s film marked the provocative start to a brilliant directorial career.

SPECIAL FEATURES
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New interview with Richard Neupert, author of A History of the French New Wave Cinema
Jacques Rivette’s 1956 short film Le coup du berger, featuring cameos by fellow French New Wave directors Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, and François Truffaut
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by critic Luc Sante

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knives
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#2 Post by knives » Thu Dec 17, 2015 6:22 pm

It's extremely petty on my part, but given the name checking I wish they included Straub as one of the people involved with the short.

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domino harvey
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#3 Post by domino harvey » Thu Dec 17, 2015 6:24 pm

True to Criterion's general ambivalence, they didn't seem to know what to do with this one, hence the limited extras. Nice to see Neupert getting interviewed though, given that his book on the New Wave is still one of the most widely used introductory texts for those studying the movement

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knives
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#4 Post by knives » Thu Dec 17, 2015 6:31 pm

To be fair the films add up to about 169 minutes which if the interview is long enough might mean they might not have wanted to risk the disc space. Of course Brighter Summer Day flies in the face of that, but maybe they assume it will sell enough to justify that second disc.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#5 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Dec 17, 2015 9:20 pm

It needs a nice essay on PK Dick's influence on Rivette's films (which Rivette himself acknowledged, but -- so far as I know -- did not describe in depth). As it turns out Dick's stories first made it in to Paris not too long after the start of his career. Quite a few stories were available (some translated, others only in English) by the time Rivette began making this film. And it is surely no coincidence that a major character is a paranoid, expatriate American writer with the initials P.K. ;-)

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zedz
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#6 Post by zedz » Thu Dec 17, 2015 10:08 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:It needs a nice essay on PK Dick's influence on Rivette's films (which Rivette himself acknowledged, but -- so far as I know -- did not describe in depth). As it turns out Dick's stories first made it in to Paris not too long after the start of his career. Quite a few stories were available (some translated, others only in English) by the time Rivette began making this film. And it is surely no coincidence that a major character is a paranoid, expatriate American writer with the initials P.K. ;-)
This sounds like interesting conjecture, but a little slender to base a critical interpretation of this particular film on. According to this bibliography only a handful of stories had been published in French before Rivette began this film in 1957, and the first French translation of one of Dick's novels didn't appear until 1959. Unless one of those stories ('Colony', 'Expendable', 'Adjustment Team', 'The Father-Thing', 'Autofac') bears an uncanny resemblance to the plot of Paris nous appartient, I don't think there's any smoking gun here.

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#7 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Dec 17, 2015 10:49 pm

Even the untranslated stories were being discussed -- and I am pretty sure Rivette could read English. I did re-read a number of the stories that were available then, and at least some of them featured the sort of paranoia-laced ambience that one see in Rivette's film. Besides, I would never say there are any _plot_ similarities between the PKD stories and PBtU. Rather it is a mood, a tone -- and the presence of a character (PK) who one could imagine writing the sort of stories that PKD was writing. That's why I say PKD-inspired -- and not "based on any particular PKD story or stories). ;-}

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zedz
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#8 Post by zedz » Thu Dec 17, 2015 11:03 pm

I don't know. . . talking about vague tonal similarities with no concrete evidence that Rivette actually read and was influenced by Dick's work at this particular time - or even that he could have read them before embarking on the film - sounds like a terrible basis for scholarship. Kogonoda-level terrible. So there is a Criterion precedent!

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#9 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Dec 17, 2015 11:11 pm

zedz wrote:Kogonoda-level terrible. !
Thanks. A whole lot.

"Could have read", however, is pretty much a given. Did read -- well, we can't ask Rivette now, can we. And how about the initials PK. Purely coincidental, I'm sure.

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Petty Bourgeoisie
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#10 Post by Petty Bourgeoisie » Fri Dec 18, 2015 1:48 am

Exciting news. Can't wait to see the new restoration.

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#11 Post by Kirkinson » Fri Dec 18, 2015 4:41 am

Michael Kerpan wrote:And how about the initials PK. Purely coincidental, I'm sure.
Coincidences happen, and without the kind of evidence zedz is asking for even obvious-seeming conjecture can be false. The best example of this I often think of is this article from the Guardian in which Robert MacFarlane makes a well-reasoned and seemingly uncontroversial argument for Lewis Carroll's influence on Douglas Adams, the clincher being that Deep Thought's final calculation of the answer to Life in The Hitchhiker's Guide is "42," which is a number Carroll was obsessed with for some reason and used over and over again in his work.

But Neil Gaiman once asked Douglas Adams about Lewis Carroll and the 42 reference in particular (scroll down to August 13, 2001), and Adams said he had tried reading Alice once as a child and again as an adult, and both times he hated it so much he never finished it. All that perfectly reasonable conjecture about Carroll's influence on Adams was unfounded, and the use of the number 42, no matter how peculiar that seems, was in fact a coincidence.

Granted, in this case we know from later comments that Rivette did admire PKD's work. But the timing seems a little too incredible. I would love to be convinced otherwise.

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#12 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Dec 18, 2015 9:12 am

I dug out my copy of the PKD bibliography and my collection of his early stories...

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#13 Post by Ribs » Tue Feb 16, 2016 3:30 pm


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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#14 Post by FrauBlucher » Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:24 am


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matrixschmatrix
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#15 Post by matrixschmatrix » Tue Mar 08, 2016 2:23 pm

I would argue that the similarity in tone between PKD's stories and Rivette's early work probably represents them reacting to similar stimuli, rather than direct influence one to the other- though it's not hard to imagine Dick having watched and reacted to Rivette, as he was something of a film buff (The Man Who Fell to Earth, without being explicitly named, is actually a significant plot point in Valis). There's a strong Dickian feeling to both La La Jetée and Alphaville, and even Welles' The Trial isn't too far off- I think the political paranoia, rapid technological shifts, and changing face of urbanity that informed a lot of the switch from Golden to Silver Age science fiction lent itself to that mood, with a lot of parallel evolution from a lot of different sources resulting.

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#16 Post by Tommaso » Sat May 28, 2016 7:39 pm

I've finally rewatched this one, still using the old BFI disc, which I remember to have bought basically at its release date, so it's almost ten years since I watched it first, and since then, until this second viewing, not again (completely hard to believe). Anyway, an impressive debut which already contains all the typical Rivette themes about conspiracies, theatre, and so on, and the city of Paris as almost a mysterious living being containing these characters. However, the film hasn't aged as well as practically everything Rivette made afterwards. The 'typical' new wave style is much more apparent than in later films, not so much Godard but perhaps even more so Antonioni, and the conspiracy theme is handled here in a much less subtle way than in "OUT1" or "Le pont du nord", less subtle because more 'symbolic' in the way that these unknown forces - which may represent at once commercial cinema, fascism, conservatism of any kind - seem to bring down the theatre production of Gérard, even though it thankfully remains unclear whether the conspiracy actually exists.

I was also somewhat surprised and initially irritated by the constant use of background music on the soundtrack - totally in line with early nouvelle vague, of course, and pretty effective, too - but certainly rather different to Rivette's very sparse use of extra-diegetic music in his later films. Perhaps, however, all these factors make the film a good starting point to Rivette, because they feel more familiar and less idiosyncratic than what he does in his major works. I also loved the brief Godard cameo, btw.

As to the above debate about the name of Philip Kaufman: every time I hear the name of Kaufman, especially in a film by someone who was so extremely well-versed in film history and who quotes Lang's "Metropolis" in his film, my first thought would be of Dziga Vertov. But I admit that I don't have the slightest idea of how to substantiate this association. But that's what came to my mind.

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knives
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#17 Post by knives » Sat May 28, 2016 9:10 pm

In that case wouldn't Vertov's brother who retained the name be more obvious?

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#18 Post by djproject » Sun May 29, 2016 12:34 am

matrixschmatrix wrote:I would argue that the similarity in tone between PKD's stories and Rivette's early work probably represents them reacting to similar stimuli, rather than direct influence one to the other- though it's not hard to imagine Dick having watched and reacted to Rivette, as he was something of a film buff (The Man Who Fell to Earth, without being explicitly named, is actually a significant plot point in Valis). There's a strong Dickian feeling to both La La Jetée and Alphaville, and even Welles' The Trial isn't too far off- I think the political paranoia, rapid technological shifts, and changing face of urbanity that informed a lot of the switch from Golden to Silver Age science fiction lent itself to that mood, with a lot of parallel evolution from a lot of different sources resulting.
This is not far off as PKD acknowledged he was more influenced by French literature (the Flaubert, Balzac, Proust crowd), Russians inspired by the French (Turgenev) and Japanese novels.

I only bring this up because literature definitely played/plays a role in informing films being made and viewed.

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#19 Post by movielocke » Sun Jul 31, 2016 12:49 am

at a certain point, part way through the film, I literally sat up, snapped my fingers, and said aloud, "The Crying of Lot 49!" as the entire experience up to that point of the film had been haunted, for me, of a sense of familiarity with the material. While the similarities are superficial, once you start thinking Pynchon it is hard to stop fitting the film into the Pynchon frame my mind kept insistently pestering me with. Ironically, Pynchon's novella came out several years after this film, but both are suffused with inchoate or obfuscated alleged conspiracies that go utterly nowhere (because, deep(!)).

Given that I don't care terribly much for Pynchon, I think that clouded my enjoyment of the film. on the other hand, to circumstances outside my control, I had to break up the viewing, watching it in three parts over six weeks. That surely didn't help my comprehension, on the other hand for a film containing nothing to comprehend, I'm not sure there was that much lost on being forced into a serial approach for the film.

The central performance was outstanding, and the writing generally excellent, It's a film I'd much like to see in a theatre, but it's doubtful I'd see it again. I'm certainly relieved I watched this one on hulu rather than blind buying it in the BN sale, one fewer criterion to go through the hassle of selling this way.

Still, it's far superior to any godard film I've ever seen, so that's a relief.

To be clear, I didn't dislike it, there was quite a lot about the film I liked, but I didn't love it either.

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domino harvey
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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#20 Post by domino harvey » Thu Aug 04, 2016 10:32 pm

Le coup du berger looks awful on this disc-- there is pixelation artifacting on the text in the opening credits and on all lined images in the film (bed sheets, pianos, &c) and the whole thing looks like a 360p YouTube upload

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#21 Post by Graphist » Mon Oct 17, 2016 5:31 pm

I honestly couldn’t connect to the narrative and the film was definitely drawn-out but closer to the end there was this amazing Babel sequence which I rewatched several times. The Meyerholdian like settings and visuals were just simply stunning. Could someone please tell me if it is from an earlier film? And what is that film?

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#22 Post by Roger Ryan » Tue Oct 18, 2016 8:09 am

Graphist wrote:I honestly couldn’t connect to the narrative and the film was definitely drawn-out but closer to the end there was this amazing Babel sequence which I rewatched several times. The Meyerholdian like settings and visuals were just simply stunning. Could someone please tell me if it is from an earlier film? And what is that film?
While I've not seen this Rivette film, a quick internet search reveals that the "Tower of Babel" sequence is from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), which is what I suspected when you mentioned it - the sequence is a highlight among many highlights in the Lang film.

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#23 Post by Graphist » Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:28 am

Roger Ryan wrote:
Graphist wrote:I honestly couldn’t connect to the narrative and the film was definitely drawn-out but closer to the end there was this amazing Babel sequence which I rewatched several times. The Meyerholdian like settings and visuals were just simply stunning. Could someone please tell me if it is from an earlier film? And what is that film?
While I've not seen this Rivette film, a quick internet search reveals that the "Tower of Babel" sequence is from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), which is what I suspected when you mentioned it - the sequence is a highlight among many highlights in the Lang film.
I think I missed your response somehow and getting back only now. I have to see Metropolis then pronto! Thank you.

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#24 Post by Roger Ryan » Wed Mar 15, 2017 8:34 am

Graphist wrote:
Roger Ryan wrote:
Graphist wrote:I honestly couldn’t connect to the narrative and the film was definitely drawn-out but closer to the end there was this amazing Babel sequence which I rewatched several times. The Meyerholdian like settings and visuals were just simply stunning. Could someone please tell me if it is from an earlier film? And what is that film?
While I've not seen this Rivette film, a quick internet search reveals that the "Tower of Babel" sequence is from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), which is what I suspected when you mentioned it - the sequence is a highlight among many highlights in the Lang film.
I think I missed your response somehow and getting back only now. I have to see Metropolis then pronto! Thank you.
You'll want to see the most recent restoration, released by Kino in the U.S. as The Complete Metropolis - this version reconstitutes the film to the way it premiered in Germany in 1927 and features 25 minutes of additional footage not seen since that premier.

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Re: 802 Paris Belongs to Us

#25 Post by Graphist » Wed Mar 15, 2017 8:45 am

That’s great to know! Thanks for the pointer. I will look for The Complete Metropolis.… I really hope Criterion releases it at some point.

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