Jacques Rivette, the great cinematic visionary and probably least known of the major French Wave directors, started making his first film in 1957 and completed it slowly over a period of two years, as money allowed. Finally released in 1961, Paris nous appartient brilliantly captured the mood of paranoia and uncertainty of that Cold War period.

Featuring cameos from fellow New Wave directors Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jacques Demy; a striking musique concrète score, and Charles Bitsch's stunning black and white photography.

***

Though more amateurish in appearance than any of the other celebrated first features of the French New Wave (rivaled only by Eric Rohmer's Le signe du lion in low-rent production values), Jacques Rivette's troubled and troubling account of Parisians in the late 50s remains in some ways the most intellectually and philosophically mature of them as well as one of the most beautiful (1960). The specter of a world-wide conspiracy and impending apocalypse haunts the characters--an inquiring student, a group of actors staging a low-budget production of Pericles, various artists, an expatriate American in flight from McCarthyism--as the student goes on a quest to recover a tape of guitar music by a Spanish émigré who may or may not have committed suicide; echoes of everything from Kiss Me Deadly to the Tower of Babel sequence from Metropolis (quoted directly) inform her mysterious journey. Few films have been more effective in capturing a period and milieu than this one, which evokes the poetry and the potential dread of bohemian paranoia and sleepless nights in tiny one-room flats, along with the fragrant, youthful idealism and utopian dreams conveyed by the film's title (which is countered by the opening epigraph from Charles Peguy: "Paris belongs to no one"). Rivette himself--and friends and colleagues such as Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Demy--make memorable cameo appearances...

Excerpt from Jonathan Rosenbaum's review at the Chicago Reader located HERE

***

Anne, a student in Paris, becomes involved with a group of her brother's arty friends and gets sucked into a mystery involving Philip, an expatriate American escaping McCarthyism; Terry, a self-destructive femme fatale; theatre director Gérard; and Juan, a Spanish activist who apparently committed suicide, but was he murdered? Philip warns Anne that the forces that killed Juan will soon do the same to Gérard, who is struggling to rehearse Shakespeare's Pericles. Anne takes a part in the play in an attempt to help him and also discover why Juan died.

Jacques Rivette started making his first feature in 1957 and completed it slowly over a period of two years, as money allowed. Finally released in 1961, Paris nous appartient brilliantly captured the mood of paranoia and uncertainty of that Cold War period. Rivette's rarely seen debut is one of the most important and far-reaching of the early New Wave films.

Rivette's disquieting film, suffused with sexual and political tension, is as much about its setting – a long-vanished Paris full of fleabag hotels and corduroy-clad intellectuals – as about its story. It features guest appearances from fellow New Waver directors Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Demy, a striking musique concrète score, and stunning cinematography in black and white, which manages to be luminous and ominous at the same time.

***

One of the original critics turned filmmakers who helped jump-start the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette began shooting his debut feature in 1958, 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 also evincing the playfulness and fascination with theatrical performance and conspiracy that would become hallmarks for the director, Paris Belongs to Us marked the provocative start to a brilliant directorial career.

Disc Size:48,593,429,391 bytes

Feature Size: 40,580,247,552 bytes

Dual-layered Blu-ray MPEG4 - AVC

Disc Size: 43,713,214,743 bytes

Feature Size: 33,539,346,432 bytes

Chapter: 20