Original subtitles

CINEMA OF OUR TIME

JACQUES RIVETTE The Watchman

NIGHT

In your first film, Paris Belongs to Us,

there's immediately a phrase saying

"Paris belongs to nobody," signed Charles Peguy.

- Yes. - Who should we believe?

Both are by Peguy. He says "Paris belongs to us" earlier,

make the point that Paris does not belong only

to the early riser, as the old proverb states,

but also to those who stay for the summer

and who prepare the coming winter.

I was glad to start with this affirmation-negation

which was a dialectic impulse, to use a pretentious word,

that would eventually be taken up by the narration.

In any case, cinema is dialectic, affirmation-negation,

because the picture alternates with black on the screen.

Alternating night and day.

But in the title there's the word "belongs".

What belongs to you?

What belongs to anybody?

Outside of our own skin, and even then,

are we really sure that it belongs to us?

We may feel it does but not all the time.

You've made films, would you say that they belonged to you?

No, they don't belonged to me, on the contrary.

If there's one thing on which we are dispossessed

it's the things that we've made, that we believe we've made.

They're things that never belong to us, not before, during or after.

I think the same thing goes for authors.

And for painters who sometimes take a long look at their paintings.

I have the impression that a writer will write a book

that perhaps...

he'd want to read, though I don't think it works like that...

And he can't read them.

The only films I can't watch are the ones I've made!

Because there are too many memories of the whole process,

everything that happened, every moment...

I imagine that writers can't bear to read their books, because...

they stir up memories...

There are more stories surrounding a film

because of all the people involved.

I think that's what is so great about making films.

You meet so many people. The actors, of course,

but also people who aren't on screen who are important too.

Not only people who work on the screenplay, the dialogue...

Even among the crew members,

sometimes the most important aren't the most visible.

And that's wonderful.

Even if it's sometimes hard, because a film shoot is not always idyllic!

And watching a film afterwards...

For me, and for all filmmakers, it's impossible to watch a film

without all the ghosts coming back to haunt you.

And are they ghosts? Because the people are there,

you're pleased to see them...

You want to see some of them.

Working with Bulle in L'Amour Fou

was completely different from Bulle in Pont du Nord.

Because the characters were different, it was a different time,

our relationship was different,

there'd been several films between those two...

I haven't the same memories at all.

That's why I'm happy to have done five films with Bulle

and I hope I'll have the chance to do more, because...

There's a continuity.

Each time we have a different relationship.

There's 60s Bulle, L'Amour Fou,

there's 70s Bulle, in Duelle, for instance...

But with different characters every time.

There's 80s Bulle, from Pont du Nord

to the last film, The Gang of Four.

She's a special actress, very important to you,

who worked with you over three decades...

There are moments...

of our private lives, too.

When we shot L'Amour Fou Pascale was a little girl.

Then, this little girl grew up, she became an actress

who worked with her mother on an equal footing.

In the last film,

even if it's not referred to, it's quite obvious

that Bulle and I felt Pascale's presence very strongly.

It was impossible to do that story without thinking of her all the time.

That's magnificent. It's Suréna's reply.

It's very famous

but it's superb.

When you think that it's Corneille's last play

and he was practically seventy when he wrote that...

"As I no longer have eyes to turn toward her..."

It's beautiful.

"What matters it, Madam, that all may die with me."

Is that it? I read badly.

"Who may tread, after my death, this earth that bears me

"Will some fragment pierce them, these illustrious forbears

"at night, in their graves?

"Will they breathe air and doing so revive?

"These nephews perhaps foundering in their wake

"Perhaps only to dishonor them

And honor their blood but to degenerate..."

Then there are these four extraordinary verses.

"When we have lost the day that lightens us

"This kind of life is quite imaginary

"And the least instant of a desired bliss

Is better than such a cold and vain eternity."

It's his last play

and he tells posterity what it deserves to hear.

That he expects nothing from it.

The idea that, in Corneille, happiness is stronger than our idea of it

obtains throughout his plays, from the first to the last.

It's a very furtive happiness.

That which the heroes obtain, yes,

but not that which they aspire. They truly aspire to

a true, deep happiness

which eludes them

It eludes them because they're tragic heroes!

There are a lot of Corneille plays with a happy dénouement,

happy, but...

solemn.

There's something in Suréna that makes me think of your films.

Curiosity, the strict sense of the word,

plays a major role, there are whole scenes with:

"Tell me who it is. If it's not him, then it's him."

We can deduce who loves whom.

I see that as a great constant in your films.

Quite simply, curiosity, which is both a nasty vice

and something that makes everything interesting.

- It's not at all a vice. - No, no.

I say that purely to provoke.

That's what I see as curiosity.

You see it as the queen of virtues.

Absolutely.

The day curiosity disappears,

it's time to lie down and wait to breathe you last.

I think curiosity is the only thing

that get things moving

in all areas.

Yes, of course.

I was thinking of curiosity on the simple sense...

"What's coming next?"

Or, "What's that he's hiding?"... but just a thing.

not the secrets of the universe.

Just, "What's behind there?"

On the one hand, that's a feeling

we want the audience to have

so they want to stay on and see what's coming next.

This scene may not interest them but they want to see the next one.

That's dramatic art.

But dramatic art is important. When you read the Examinations,

the three great Examinations that Corneille wrote

as a preface to his edition

two-thirds into his life before writing the last plays,

it's this type of question that he asks in the Examinations.

Questions about the structure, how to maintain interest...

Yes, of course...

That's the obligation of having time on his side.

All storytellers do that.

We could quote Scheherazade.

Yes, we have a theory on Scheherazade's syndrome.

Scheherazade tells stories to put off two things:

her death and possibly too close a relationship

with her commander. - What's his name? Char...

- I've forgotten. - It doesn't matter.

So the problem is, curiosity leads to

playing extra time, like in football.

Having time on your side, gaining time,

but not too much

because you wouldn't know what to do with it.

And sometimes we feel you're a kind of Scheherazade.

Even if we started with Corneille!

I think that's the case for all people who try

to play with fiction.

It seems impossible... I think Scheherazade

is our patron saint, if we can use that term.

You wouldn't say that about Fritz Lang, though.

I would.

I'm taking any filmmaker

where there's more than curiosity.

Fritz Lang's works has morals.

It's true, when I met him - I met him just once

for an interview with Lloyd Eisner as our interpreter

because my English wasn't good enough -

what struck me most was, he only talked about morals.

Just morals, and the effect they had on the audience.

Don't you see morals as a way of obtaining, for the audience,

some extra time, fiction time,

that is born of curiosity, in that there's always something afterwards,

but that doesn't harm anyone, in that it isn't

a curiosity such as voyeurism, such as rape,

a vile little Freudian secret, things like that?

Isn't it in that kind of thing, that you put morals?

The morals of Scheherazade...

To remain on a certain... how should I put it...

To gain time without stealing it from someone.

Yes, and at the same time,

having excessive scruples perhaps prevents me

from being too... (I sometimes reproach myself for this)

from being coarser or cruder perhaps,

more concrete, sometimes,

of not talking directly about certain intimate things,

of having a sense of propriety that may be excessive

with regard to people's secrets, secrets of characters

who perhaps would finally want to be... if not violated

then at least drawn out more from behind their barricades.

And I'm extremely timid in that respect...

Because the character says, "what about me?"

and, through him, the actor...

And you say no, the story, the overall dynamic is what counts.

You have to choose between the story and the character

and the character wants something.

For me, the character is always linked to the actor

and I don't want to violate the actor.

Which perhaps prevents me

from making the characters say things that...

Because the rapport doesn't come from pre-written fiction

but from fiction that takes shape during the shoot

where there's a kind of contract with the actor.

Maybe it's the price I pay for this contract...

that means there are certain things

that I don't feel capable of dealing with

because that would be a kind of violence.

So I leave it for people to guess.

Or perhaps the actor takes it on himself

to give the audience a glimpse of a secret

that will not be disclosed.

Will you set the alarm?

Phone for an alarm call at ten tomorrow.

What is it?

Why do you stay with me?

What?

Why don't you dump me?

It should be easy, I'm mad.

Why do you say that?

I've been thinking, Sébastien...

it's best if we split up.

Maybe just for a few weeks, the time to think.

Maybe afterwards it'd be like before.

Maybe.

You think we need to?

Sébastien, I'm leaving tomorrow morning.

You mustn't worry about me.

It's our only choice.

We have to.

We have to.

No we don't.

We do.

No.

I don't want to.

Stop it.

Stop it, Sébastien.

This very close way of working

by delving into people's personalities brings us closer.

Jacques Rivette's not the type of person

with whom you'd go out for an evening on the town,

slapping each other on the back...

His life is very secret.

I've no idea what he does, I only see him when we're filming

or sometimes at the cinema

or sometimes on the Champs Elysées,

when we'd go for a meal together.

But he's not a mate.

We have an odd relationship

within our working relationship,

our creative relationship,

our artistic relationship.

There's no reason we should meet up.

I sometimes run into him in bookshops

or in the metro.

I first met him

in 1967, on our first film.

I respected him enormously.

He was an adult and I was still a child.

Now we've caught one another up.

There's no age difference any more.

When he says, "Sorry, Bulle, I've not been answering the phone,

I've been feeling under attack for weeks."

I can relate exactly to the kind of neurosis he has

about being bothered by the phone ringing, someone calling,

because I have the same anxieties.

I feel that now, between Jacques and me,

there's no more generation gap, we're the same,

we go through the same worries, the same anxieties,

the same black holes, the same dark chasms.

It brings us closer, we don't need to talk a lot.

There's a gentle complicity.

He was part of my life for twenty years,

that's a long time, especially between 28 and 48,

without being too precise...

They were my best years.

The years when I went through an awful lot

and so did he.

So I went through 20 years of his life

and 6 films in 20 years is normal.

A director only does a film every two or three years.

So doing six films isn't bad.

Given this way we have of working together

it's true that at times I feel close to him

even though we don't see each other much.

It's hard to talk about Jacques Rivette

because he's so secret

that if you say something about him

or about his films or the way he works or lives,

you feel terribly indiscreet, impolite.

So I wouldn't dare tell you everything I think.

I have my opinions about Jacques as a person and as a director

but I don't want to tell you about them.

It would be in bad taste.

A betrayal, almost. It may be silly but that's how it is.

That comes from him.

We were talking about the length of films.

You often say the films you see are too short.

They'd be better longer. You've often done long films.

Do you still have these ideas about length...?

I have the impression that

films of fifty years ago mastered the art

of brevity,

condensing events and ideas

in a way that was breathtaking, but that's now been lost.

Different eras

produce different things.

Because we're now in an era as Deleuze would say,

- and he'd say it much better than me! -

when time no longer...

... has the same speed nor the same density

nor the same tempo.

As if there were a pre-Antonioni and a post-Antonioni period...

I mention Antonioni because he was among those filmmakers

who very strongly

marked this reorientation

of running time.

And nowadays,

in contemporary films,

you need three hours where 50 years ago you needed one.

Three hours to tell the same story or just to tell any story

successfully? - Not the same story.

For example, two months ago I saw

an old Frank Capra film again,

It Happened One Night (New York - Miami).

I was amazed by this film, - my memory of which

was pleasant, if muddled -

firstly by its modernity...

Modernity because in a way it's the first ever road movie.

It's about a journey, not from New York to Miami

but from Miami to New York,

full of incidents, whether on the bus, hitch-hiking

or wherever they happen to be,

with a progression in the feelings of the characters

and with

huge parentheses where the story stops.

I'd completely forgotten the scene in the bus

with the song about the daring young man on the flying trapeze

with all the verses...

And Capra finds a new idea for each verse,

each more amazing.

It's 90 minutes long.

Maybe 100 minutes long.

Now I'm convinced that, to go from Miami to New York in a film

that has the same density of situation

and characters

a serious director couldn't do it in less than three hours.

For the same journey.

So the means of transport are actually slower nowadays...

than fifty years ago!

It takes much longer now to go from Miami to New York

than in 1934.

The difference is that someone like Capra

knew how his story would end when he started.

So the end presented no problems and on that basis

he could invent a lot in between,

either digressively or elliptically.

But there came a time when, for certain basic reasons

that we mentioned, moral reasons,

it was impossible for a post-Antonionian director like you

to start a film knowing exactly how it would finish...

Evil would triumph over good...

The dénouement has become impossible.

Without a dénouement, time becomes cyclical or circular

and films can last 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 10 hours...

The story would be less problematic than the fact that we've lost

sight of the word "FIN". Maybe only the Americans ever had it.

Journalists don't marry millionaires as easily

as in the days of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.

When you came back to earth with Pont du Nord

in the early 80s, it was with the feeling that

we adapt to things as they are, we stop tempting fate

or playing Prometheus

and we come back to the real world.

And we remember that the beginning of the 80s were roaring,

euphoric, entertaining...

Very explosive, in fact. And your film takes that on board.

We can feel something quite intentional

in the processes

which make up Le Pont du Nord and allow you to tackle the 80s.

It's a time when we feel such a decision has been taken.

Just as Bulle said at the end, "I'm alive."

As far as I'm concerned

and I have the impression that, strangely, it concerns

- I won't say everyone, there are always exceptions -

many filmmakers of my generation

and subsequent generations...

After Out, it seemed impossible, in my films,

to talk about

the contemporary world, what we call the real world

and at that time I wanted more than anything

to work on fiction, fantasy fiction films.

I didn't shoot them all because the first project was

after Out and Céline and Julie

was a film we wanted to do with Jeanne Moreau.

- Phoenix. - ...and Juliet Berto

and Michael Lonsdale

which was a story based on the Sarah Bernhardt myth

loosely mixed up with

Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera.

And what came next

were stories that were all different

with one thing in common: the total refusal

of France in the seventies.

It was something I suddenly didn't want to see any more.

And after...

a series of events, more or less successful films,

- some were far from being completely successful -

unfortunate films, at least Noroit and Merry Go Round were,

that were hardly seen anywhere...

They were shaky films, it's true.

When I went to see Bulle and said

"We have to do another film together

and I want to do it with you"...

It was the idea that we hadn't put these bad times behind us,

that they may well continue

and we had to come to terms with it but in order to do that

we had to turn it into fiction, to put it in a film.

And that's why, in Pont du Nord there's this insistence

- that may appear anecdotal ten years after -

on the affairs or scandals

at the end of the seventies, such as the Debreuil affair

or the suicide or non-suicide of Boulin

or the killing of Mesrine, that sort of stuff.

As symptoms, but strong symptoms.

And we shot the film, at least from my point of view I began the film,

not in this atmosphere of eighties euphoria we mentioned

but with the impression of being in a country

- France - that was stuck.

Stuck, because of lots of things we won't go into here,

everyone remembers.

But it so happened that this feeling of being stuck was so strong

that it brought about a certain unblocking.

Perhaps the death of Bulle

was, quite unconsciously on my part,

what Renoir meant when he said you have to kill an innocent

for things to be able

to continue afresh.

After you've made the film, you've shot the film,

you're the foreman, you're responsible for it.

But there's still this theme of curiosity.

How to the two go together?

You're the first to see something being born

yet you're the one responsible for the birth.

The feeling I get at that time

is perhaps

that I'm not in charge of anything at all.

A machine has been put into gear - objectively, perhaps -

but there's a logic

- real or imagined

we could discuss that -

to the film which is paramount and must be observed

and you really can't do what you like.

You can't do as you please

which is good, because you feel you're being guided.

You say, no, that doesn't work,

that might work...

Why? How?...

It works...

by instinct.

Sometimes with Pascal we try

to talk about it rationally, but not too often.

If a few of you feel that something doesn't work

then you should go with it.

Sometimes we don't all agree and then we...

I feel that's when it becomes interesting.

A film has no real chance of existing

unless you get the feeling fairly quickly

that some things are possible and others are necessary...

Some things are possible and others are quite impossible

and are ruled out.

There's a stage after which the film exists

even if it's...

- this is a metaphor that I haven't just invented,

that's been widely used, not just for cinema -

as if there were...

an object, a statue for example, you could say a vase,

even and old chipped implement, that's buried

and by chance a little bit of it is unearthed.

You then have to try to get it out without harming it too much.

That might seem absurd to people from the outside

because it's true that, in a way,

we do do what we want.

That helps a lot,

it helps you to advance, just having...

even in a totally absurd way

how shall I put it, an imaginary blueprint.

It helps you to progress, especially when it's not written down.

There isn't a French word for it.

I was telling you about something I've been reading,

the edition of Edgar Allan Poe that came out recently

where the annotator

mentions that Baudelaire always translates...

- in texts like Genesis of a Poem - he translates as "plan"

what Poe writes as "plot".

Plot suggests intrigue

it also means "plan"

but there's a subversive element to "plot"

that isn't rendered by "plan".

There's already a subject in "plot".

It's a word I'd like to naturalize for the French language

to express that feeling...

Yes, yes.

I wonder if "plot" and complot are not etymologically linked.

Of course they are.

There's always something pre-existent,

either evil, which would be the plot,

or beneficial, which would be the film...

The plot that needs unraveling.

We'll call it the pelote.

A new word!

Are some things either possible or impossible

from a technical point of view?

For instance, not using angle/reverse angle shots

because they don't suit the film...

Of course, and as far as I'm concerned,

each film has its own rules, its own techniques...

Someone like Oshima takes that to extremes.

Every film has its own technique.

Some have cut-always, some have sequence-length shots...

it's less systematic

in my work, but it's true that there are...

It depends mostly on the equipment.

A film like Le Pont du Nord we shot in 16 mm,

on a small budget, without a grip,

with a small camera and tripod.

So we did fixed shots, pans,

sometimes Willie held the camera for certain shots...

And that's all.

We have Valéry to warm us...

Perhaps it's a tough choice between art and sainthood...

I've never felt I had any aptitude for sainthood!

So I preferred to choose art, however imperfect it should be.

Doesn't the saint make do with what's there?

He takes people as they are, he uses whatever's there.

He does what he can rather than what he wants.

There are similarities with artists, with a certain type of filmmakers.

I think artists are very impure.

I've always been struck by this phrase

that I'll quote

imperfectly, a phrase from Bernanos...

He often said there were three...

he was truly touched by three types of people:

children, heroes and saints.

Three forms of innocence.

And an artist is never innocent.

Artists have a portion of basic villainy,

even the greatest of them.

Maybe it's they who manage to go beyond the villainy,

the manipulation...

You mean villainy towards others, or...

No, I think even a painter is someone who...

or a musician...

Even the greatest of them.

Not even them!

They're nowhere near sainthood.

Because they don't forget their own self.

Just as children do.

They're totally open to the outside world.

Or the hero when he's performing an act of heroism.

The Cornelian hero,

the Cid, not the later Cornelian heroes...

The definitive hero.