The New York Times
Review: Jacques Rivette’s 1971 Film, ‘Out 1: Noli Me Tangere’
November 3, 2015
Within what is an intense but relatively narrow circle of cinephiles, Jacques Rivette ’s 1971 film, “Out 1: Noli Me Tangere †(the subtitle is Latin for “touch me notâ€), is considered, as more than one writer has put it, a kind of filmic holy grail. The nearly 13-hour work, a cinematic soak both sprawling and intimate, has been almost impossible to view in the more than 40 years since its production. The movie was screened in New York in 2006 by the Museum of the Moving Image, but the two-week engagement at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. beginning on Wednesday, is its New York theatrical premiere.
The film, set in Paris, is divided into eight episodes, which BAMcinématek is screening in blocks of two apiece, until Nov. 19. Several home video companies worldwide, including Kino Lorber, are releasing the newly restored picture on DVD and Blu-ray early next year. The episodic structure notwithstanding, the movie does not feel like a television drama; the 773-minute “Out 1: Noli Me Tangere†is an authentic exercise in duration. Less than entirely receptive viewers may see the film only as a challenge to endurance. (Mr. Rivette also distilled his materials into a four-hour version, called “Out 1: Spectre.â€)
The nearly two-hour opening episode, “De Lili à Thomas,†for the most part, alternates between the breathing, shouting and stretching exercises of a couple of experimental-theater troupes (this movie was shot and takes place in the Paris of 1970, let’s not forget), and scenes of Jean-Pierre Léaud playing a deaf-mute busker with a harmonica, aggressively panhandling his way through a few bistros. The bistros’ patrons may or may not be aware that they’re extras in a Jacques Rivette film. The frequent Rivette star Juliet Berto also swaggers about in the role of a semi-street person working an even more pugnacious grift, albeit one whose front she has difficulty maintaining.
In his work as a filmmaker and a critic, Mr. Rivette has shown remarkable erudition and, to some, marked eccentricity. He famously detected moral bankruptcy in a particular camera movement in Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1960 film, “Kapò,†and his praise of the much-maligned 1995 Hollywood film “Showgirls †spearheaded a critical reappraisal of it, at least within the aforementioned circle of cinephiles.
The plot that eventually begins to coalesce within “Out 1,†and around its dozens of characters, is consistent with the thematic concerns and enthusiasms Mr. Rivette has explored throughout his directorial career. He frequently has his film actors portray theater people bringing contemporary theory and practice to classical work. Here, as in his 1960 debut feature, “Paris Nous Appartient,†struggles in stagecraft (two theatrical companies are led by former lovers, played by Michael Lonsdale and Michele Moretti) intersect with intimations of conspiracy.
The half-day’s worth of film Mr. Rivette assembled after a six-week shoot was shot in 16 millimeter, which lends the film’s imagery a near-documentary “realism.†What plays out is a cinematic experience of life as performance, performance as life, reality as a construction and reality as someone else’s construction impinging on your own. The pace, which picks up and slows down throughout, is not some kind of perverse challenge to the audience. It is intrinsic to the inescapable atmosphere of the work. The viewer is best off to “just go with it,†as experienced heads used to say to novice LSD users.
But what is it about? Well, in time, Mr. Léaud’s character, Colin, receives messages that lead him to investigate Balzac’s magnum opus “The Human Comedy†and Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark.†Looking into these works, Colin becomes convinced that there is a contemporary iteration of the mysterious power-brokering group that Balzac created and called “the Thirteen.†Ms. Berto’s character discovers something similar, and thinks that there’s profitable blackmail fodder to be derived.
The action of the film then picks up and gains intrigue that anticipates, in some ways, the later work of the director David Lynch. A bit role by Mr. Rivette’s fellow director, Éric Rohmer, sporting a meticulous Van Dyke beard to better portray a skeptical Balzac scholar, is a comic highlight. (“Your poor grasp of reality is matched only by your poor spelling,†Mr. Rohmer’s character tells Colin, who has been submitting questions to him in written form.) The potentially momentum-pushing event of one theater company member’s winning a million francs in a lottery dissipates when another performer makes off with the cash in the same scene. And so on.
The templates of conspiracy and avant la lettre role-playing games Mr. Rivette often uses to power his film scenarios are not necessarily intended to “pay off†in any conventional narrative sense. Sometimes they do (as in the sublime 1974 “Céline and Julie Go Boating†), and sometimes they don’t (as in 1981’s “Le Pont du Nord†).
The conclusion of “Out 1†falls somewhere in between. In testing the porousness of the border between narrative and experimental film, and peppering the work with galvanic, surprising, “did that actually happen†events (as when Ms. Berto seems to endure a brutal beating from a leather-clad biker), Mr. Rivette’s movie delivers an experience that is deeply satisfying precisely because it’s kind of exhausting.
“Out 1: Noli Me Tangere,†in French with English subtitles, is not rated. Running time: 12 hours 53 minutes.
Out 1: Noli Me Tangere
NYT Critic’s Pick
Directors Jacques Rivette, Suzanne Schiffman
Writers Honoré de Balzac, Jacques Rivette, Suzanne Schiffman
Stars Michèle Moretti, Hermine Karagheuz, Karen Puig, Pierre Baillot, Marcel Bozonnet
Running Time 12h 9m
Movie data powered by IMDb.com
Last updated: March 30, 2016