"In August 1975, after having wrapped shooting on the fantasy film 'Duelle,' number two [of his projected four-film series, 'Scenes of the Parallel Life,' of which 'Marie and Julien' would be the first of the series, though the third one shot], then on number three -- 'Noroît,' the "western" -- Jacques Rivette commenced, in mid-August in Paris, upon shooting 'Marie and Julien,' a love-story that would bring together Leslie Caron and Albert Finney (perhaps in remembrance of Stanley Donen's 'Two for the Road,' where the two actors [Finney and Audrey Hepburn] don't stop reliving, step by step, their own explosive love-story). Eduardo de Gregorio, "scenarist" of 'Marie and Julien' (it's out of several conversations with him and Marilu Parolini that Rivette drafted the project), recalls "a sort of variation on 'Vertigo,' the story of a man who lives alone in remembrance of a woman he loved, and who sees doubling back a woman identical to the other -- sets out on living with her -- and discovers she's of the dead." Along with lead cameraman William Lubtschansky, Gregorio retains the dazzling memory of sophisticated shots carried out in the deserted streets of the XIIIth arrondissement.

" 'But, the next morning...' -- Which is to say, on the third day of shooting -- Jacques Rivette vanished. "A meteor must have passed," commented Claire Denis, first assistant on the film, of the disappearance that ended up lasting two years. And Jacques Rivette himself has never spoken much about this: "Those two shoots had, each in its own way, been exhausting, but I had fallen into my own hole: It was materially impossible to delay production of the third film. For better or for worse, I pretended to do it for two days; on the third day, I left, and the doctor attached to the insurance put an end to the charade." Pretended to do what? Of 'Marie and Julien' there remain to this day only slight traces: a small sheaf of yellowing pages, a unique vestige of the improbable "scenario" of this film-maudit, which lay forgotten in the bottom of a drawer at the home of William Lubtschansky. Here we encounter a "polyglot cat" who hails his master with a resounding "Bonsoir!"; characters whose names change from one page to the next; a "suicide room" evoking Mark Robson's masterpiece 'The Seventh Victim'; and, already present, a mysterious and menacing "Madame X," along with a "forbidden gesture," about which the scenario remarks, without further clarification: "Do not forget." As for the footage shot that August -- it was lost by the laboratory.

" 'Do not forget...' This "almost-dead" film went on living, like a phantom, in the memory of Jacques Rivette. According to Eduardo de Gregorio: "Jacques indeed attempted to resuscitate this film later on, always with Leslie Caron, who was still prepared to be involved with it. I think he first wanted [Michel] Piccoli, then he pursued an absolutely insane, but brilliant, idea: to make the film with Maurice Pialat. But Pialat said no..." "

-from Hélène Frappat's essay, "The Revenant," in Cahiers du cinéma, no. 584, November 2003. Translation by Craig Keller.

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" 'Histoire de Marie et Julien' is a grand film about The Couple, a clairvoyant and profound autopsy (but without Bergman's severity) of the amorous bond and of its unstable metabolism. The conspiracies, the doors that lie open to a world beyond, the hidden letters and the narrative surprises register only as trompe-l'oeil. At its core, the thesis of the film is much simpler: it posits that every story of couples is, in its way, a sort of "ghost story." Balzac declared that "in love, there is always one who suffers, while the other is bored."
In Rivette, the man forgets (Julien's final amnesiac fog), while the woman disappears...."

-from Jean-Marc Lalanne's review, "A Couple," in Cahiers du cinéma, no. 584, November 2003. Translation by Craig Keller.