OK, I feel like I should get a bit both into what I have seen so far and the comments on here.
So first of all, here's my "updated" schedule:
Seen so far and rated in order from bes to, uh, "worst":
Le Pond Du Nord - 10
La Religieuse - 10 (more of a Bunuel, though)
Duelle - 9
Celine et Julie vont en Bateau - 9
Paris Belongs to us - 9
Noroit - 9
Out 1: Spectre - 8 (RED! tinted, pretty worn out 35mm print)
Merry Go Round - 8
Still to see:
Out 1: Noli Me Tangre - I saw we germans actually did the DVD of this \:D/ which almost makes the cinema experience feel less special. But only almost.
Gang of Four - Scary? Occult? That about sells the film for me, thought it sounded so-so in the program.
La Belle Noiseuse - Looking very much forward to this!
Secret Defense - Looking a LOT forward to this! Heard it has ties to american thrillers (Hitchcock)
va Savoir - Haven't seen it yet, remember when it came out and teenage me wrote it off as "boring french cinema"
L'Histoire de Marie et Julien - Very much looking forward!!
Haut Bas Fragile - Still not sure, but you all make it sound interesting.
I didn't see Hurlevant, as the reviews were broadly negative, and there's a nice DVD of it making the rounds. Same with L'Amour par terre, Jeanne D'arc, Ne touchez pas... and 36 Vues. Shame I missed L'Amour Fou, but hey, you can't see everything I guess.
I really wish he'd make another film. Not sure if the comments on his health can be believed (a friend of mine - who might even make the rounds on here - visited an Ogier retrospective in 2012 where Spectre was shown, and Rivette was in attendance and apparently was approached/talked to other visitors), but this retrospective just proved to me how unique and fantastic a director he is.
OK, so a bit on the films I have already seen...
- Pont Du Nord was clearly the best. What a film!! And what a shame Pascale Ogier passed away so young. Even though it didn't have a definite "ending/meaning", I felt as if its the most rewarding of all his films. The atmosphere was striking, the acting flawless!
- La Religieuse... I wanted to see this for about a decade, and wasn't disappointed. Not sure if the film's overall brownish hue was due to the print's bad shape, or if Rivette actually shot it with a brown/reddish lense... :-k Regardless, I thought it was a gorgeous film, miles ahead of the recent remake which was shown at this year's Berlinale. But - as noted above - more of a Bunuel.
- Duelle is so good. I had seen this one before - the strange thing is that, while watching, the film almost seems flawed to me, but once it's over, it all falls in place. It's also my favorite occult film this side of Lynch and Polanski! It just seems utterly convincing in aesthetic and "regulations". It's a shame there's no proper follow-up (Noroit is more of a "sequel in spirit" to me - more on that later)
- Celine et Julie is the second one I knew beforehand. Those films rated 9 are all so close... Either way, I didn't like this when I saw it 2 1/2 years ago (sorry for the following expletive - I billed it "Celine et Julie dicking around Paris"), which was mostly due to a.) me being tired, very tired b.) the DVD looking sub-par and c.) it being my first Rivette. Watching it on the big screen improved it so, so much. My girlfriend, who accompanies me to every screening, said while Pont Du Nord was also her favorite, this was a close second, both now favorite films of hers. I figure Duelle is the "lunar" to this film's "solar" counterpart. I also liked her approach: "It's like when you are a girl, playing with your friend and puppets, making up the stupidest, but funniest stories." That rang a bell for me. Still, I prefer Duelle.
- Paris Belongs to Us was equally impressive! Detour: I like 400 Blows and Le Petit Detective better than Breathless and Jules et Jim. A lot, actually. This one here proved that my (big) problems with these films are not necessarily just my problems - in comparison, they feel flat and even slightly arrogant. Paris... offers such a sparkling cast and narrative, it's impossible not to be drawn into it. The scene where the guitar-tape is finally played was so chilling in its banal climaxing... Can't believe the only other thing the lead did was that (great) cameo in Mon Oncle.
- Noroit was surprisingly entertaining. Even though it seemed confused and at times willfully abstract, I never got lost or bored. I didn't consider it a "clear" sequel to Duelle though. While you COULD read certain things into it, I thought it was all too obscure to really "go there". Yeah, she could be the sun goddess, and Chaplin's character could be the moon goddess or a person who battled the moon goddess, and yeah, the "treasure" could be the diamond, but but but eh eh eh...
Either way, I am surprised how enjoyable it was for a film where I simply had no idea why certain things happened. The last scene, with the color filters and the dancing and all that, was breathtaking!
Now come the hard ones...
- Out 1: Spectre was only available in a VERY red, VERY damaged copy. :-s I have read there are some people who consider this his masterpiece - I'd argue against that. While it has moments of brilliance, you can feel that this is, essentially, a loose improv-session. The plot was... interesting, but I constantly felt as if there was too little, too late. The allusions to terrorism and politics were interesting, but there was so little action here, so little actual input, that the outcome just felt a bit uncooked. The scene with Ogir and the mirror, and the phonecall, for example, was a great scene. But what does any of this amount to? The paranoia and tension of Paris... just wasn't there. The long cut may be more interesting to me.
- Merry Go Round was the one that... kind of divided my girlfriend and me. I thought the first two acts were among Rivette's best, with the third being visually beautiful but... somehow loosing itself in weird, almost soap-opera-esque dimensions. My girlfriend HATED both Schneider and D'allessandro, and could connect neither with them or the plot at all, mostly just being infatuated with the "otherworld" sequences. Both of us were slightly disturbed by the facial hair-and-shirt-taste of late 70s era musicians (their scenes felt as if Rivette tried to carry something from the previous semi-Quadrology to the film, with mixed success). In the end, I liked it a bit better than her (she rated it about 6.5), but we both agree that it indeed is a difficult film for Rivette. I disagree with her, though, in that I think it was ALMOST a masterpiece, but several flaws wore it down quite a bit. The ending still impressed me (as did the dinner scene), and I took a lot away from it (and that comes from somebody who also considers the talent of both Schneider and D'Allessandro as "limited").
So far, so good.
