Rivette does not simply borrow from himself in a lazy way as some seem to suggest about this film. As in Celine & Julie, there are two young women embarking on a mysterious adventure, largely played out in the strange and cavernous rooms of a mansion; as in most of his films, the backdrop is the theater, and themes of magic and the occult emerge. But it’s far from retreading old ground; instead, he begins from some of the same building blocks, in narrative and technique, to plunge on in new directions, to look back in again from different angles, to play the theme out to a radically reenvisioned conclusion. Rivette is only doing, in Fassbinder’s terms, what “every decent director” does: making the same film over and over. And for Rivette, theater is the only subject:

If you take a subject which deals with the theater to any extent at all, you’re dealing with the truth of cinema: you’re carried along. Because that is the subject of truth and lies, and there is no other in the cinema: it is necessarily a questioning about truth, with means that are necessarily untruthful. Performance as the subject.
-Jacques Rivette, 1968

Fifteen years later, these are still his concerns, and I’m realizing it is his quest toward this truth — or playing with truth until it becomes harder and harder to locate — that interests him; the finished film is always secondary. Because though the film may be finished, his thread has not been followed to its conclusion. Perhaps he plays with a theme as long as he can, and once all force has been wrung from it, he’s on to the next. I wouldn’t want to suggest I don’t think Rivette is a thoughtful editor, but more and more I find that what I am actually seeing is not a finished product but stages of an experiment.

So in the case of Love on the Ground, what begins as a remarkably intricate and tightly wound piece about — apropos of the theater, of course — identity and role-playing and projection, love and obsession, the creative process and the hold it takes on one’s reality — who pulls the marionette strings after all? Emily and Charlotte are young actors compelled to act out a playwright’s new work in his home for one night only — but it is scarcely fiction, which he owns almost from the start. “I don’t want to make life better than it is; I want life!” he says, perhaps perversely, as what he really wants is to see life reenacted, or perhaps resurrected. The conflation of identity between the two women, the playwright, an illusionist and various satellite figures from the present and past are so various, multi-directional and mind-blowing that the first hour and a half, and all the possibilities that might follow, are staggering. In true Rivettian fashion, all of this is exploded and unwound in the second half, with somewhat mixed results; here devilishly creative, there a drawn-out letdown. But importantly: little if anything is truly resolved.

 

There is probably nothing new I can say about this iconic, much-studied film, but the film itself was something new to me: it may represent the first basically conventional/genre western I loved. It’s thrilling, actually: it contains that indescribable magic some very special films have that, for all their deep-rooted classicism, make you feel like you’re experiencing cinema for the first time.

It proceeds with stark simplicity and literal clocklike precision through a prototypical setup for a showdown: nearly-retired Marshal Will Kane has just over an hour to round up a posse to defend the town against a returning ex-convict with a grudge. Everyone has an angle and an agenda on the situation, from his new wife to his old flame to every influential citizen, but their methodically unfurled positions are too and cannily wrung out to spoil anything about their content or implications here. Suffice it to say, it leads up to one of the most originally conceived finales I’ve ever seen, with all involved irrevocably defining their values and place.

Intended as an allegory for the pervasive silence from members of the Hollywood community when confronted with blacklisting, and attacked by John Wayne and Howard Hawks as being un-American (I anticipate watching their response, Rio Bravo, very soon), its message is timeless and resonates equally deeply in current affairs. Just a perfectly crafted thing from all involved, from direction to script to cinematography to acting (Cooper deserved his Oscar; Katy Jurado is also a standout).

 

Capable enough thriller, enlivened by the presence of Charles Boyer and Lauren Bacall, though admittedly, and unfortunately, they don’t work as a couple at all. Nor does Boyer (Hollywood’s go-to guy for a generic [short] dark & handsome European?) pass for Spanish, nor Bacall for British. Nor is the plot very sensible, about a Republican soldier trying to buy up all the world’s coal so the Nationalists can’t get their hands on it, full of weird asides about a new world language (Entrenaciono!) and mass observers… It’s Graham Greene, and I don’t know how far this strays from his novel, but apparently this is one of the adaptations he was most pleased with, so… Hints are there of what I expect were larger themes of guilt and responsibility on the page: Boyer’s agent has been changed irreparably by war, and others’ loyalties are easily bought and sold, but this doesn’t get the attention it deserves in translation. Well, all that aside, it manages to be a pretty exciting and moody picture, Boyer wonderfully grim as the double-crossed agent and Bacall world-wise and smart-assed beyond her twenty years — apparently she was torn to pieces by contemporary reviewers, but I’d say she’s as good as ever here. A shame the romance angle doesn’t work better, as much a fault of its throwaway treatment in the script as any lack of chemistry between them. Recommended for genre fans.

 

Lovely film, wrongly forgotten! A young couple in 1920s Germany struggle through hard economic times with a baby on the way, and suffer terrible disappointments every time it seems their luck has turned for the better. But this is hardly a typical melodrama or steely message movie: all the misfortunes have a note of whimsy to them (not entirely unlike 49th Parallel) and the lovers mostly manage to keep smiling through it all. And that is not to say this is a happy Hollywood fairytale; it is a responsible and realist film, but wonderfully light on its feet and far from a bummer. Evidently this is one of the first Hollywood films to explicitly challenge fascism, putting common-man notions of peace and fairness in the words of Hans, and establishing a touching search for a place to live simply and freely as the motivation of the beleaguered newlyweds. And this looks to have been released a month before the Hays Code clamped down, so it may be your last chance to see a couple snuggling close in a bed, to hear the words “orgies” and “sex appeal” used freely, and to find prostitution dealt with explicitly (and again, whimsically). Margaret Sullavan is perfect in this sort of plucky, romantic role; Douglass Montgomery is a bit bloodless, but does fine. It is a mature, tender, brilliant film.

 

Not what we’re used to from Rivette in narrative or visuals; in fact it is a fairly straightforward period piece (by no means a strict adaptation of Wuthering Heights, though the mood is there in all its intensity) and it is his most beautifully photographed. The characters — all writhing in their own pain and inflicting pain on others, with the possible exception of quietly observant and flippant maid Hélène — are finely drawn and well-motivated; despite the cast of unknown model types, the acting fulfils the almost unrelentingly dark story capably. Not a film for Rivette insiders only, and in fact it seems to be poorly regarded by his faithful. For what it is I think it’s a very solid film; it only aspires to less than is typical for the director.

 

Chilling and compelling documentary about the spot more people come to die than any other in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge. Real footage and conversations with survivors and loved ones trying to understand suicide and the mystical quality the bridge seems to hold make this a difficult viewing experience. The sensitive subject, and possibly ethically questionable footage, are handled responsibly and even-handedly. Recommended, but, well, watching a dozen or so people plummet to their death is not an easy thing to recover from. Particularly lodged in my mind is one man, by the looks of him well-off and happy enough, laughing on his cell phone, who hangs up, climbs over the railing, and without a second thought lets go. The film is pretty upsetting not to be able to answer a single ‘why?’

 

Finally got around to this essential and seminal screwball film. It is hysterical in every sense of the word. John Barrymore, one of the screen’s greatest over-actors, is in top form as the egotistical theater director who disdains actors but can out-ham anyone in a train compartment or boudoir. Carole Lombard, the genre’s first lady, screeches and howls through her part as the ingenue terrible who lets fame go to her head. Both prowl every corner of the screen and lend every muscle in their bodies to their performances; the film is, among other things, a masterpiece of comic choreography. Dialogue is as quick-witted as you’d expect from Hawks and Hecht. A great genre-defining film.

 

A war propaganda film like no other, neither as ponderous nor as cornball as the typical anti-isolationist rally, and certainly less self-important. With subversive flair, the film is shown from the point of view of a German U-boat crew stranded in Canada and trying to make it to the still-neutral US. The film doesn’t exactly ask us to sympathize with them, but the viewer is so accustomed to doing so that for the most part they are received as usual characters going through a usual struggle, jarring the viewer when they launch into a rousing Heil Hitler! speech or hold a lovable French-Canadian fur trapper played by Laurence Olivier hostage. And that’s right, Olivier puts on a French accent and a plaid shirt, just one of many off-the-wall characters the Germans meet on their trek through Canada. For in this respect too, the heroes and the average joes aren’t treated as they are in the average genre flick. Instead of high-minded speeches about honor and country from men of valor, one is treated to a pageant of world talent, from Olivier to Leslie Howard, in self-effacing, nigh-lunatic roles. Oh, they make their anti-fascist pronouncements, but in the most bizarre circumstances. Truly diverting, and there aren’t many war films I can say that about.

 

An affecting and tender character drama, with a plot that reads like you’ve seen it too many times before: Yiu is a man going through a midlife crisis as he questions his wife’s love and his relationship with his sons, faces financial worries, and has to deal with a young student’s boldly voiced crush on him. But it rises above similarly themed films, not only in its presentation — it is spare and heartfelt where many attack real concerns in glib and superficial ways — but also in its narrative development, which is much more sophisticated than any brief summary would suggest.

It is both simple and intricate; Yiu considers his life and learns what he values in a quiet way, but the course to those truths takes him twenty years into his past, slowly revealing how history repeating has brought him to this point, and how the past he intended to forget continues to influence the present. I won’t spoil many of the details of this unfolding look backward, mostly told first by Yiu and then his wife to their eldest son, but as a narrative tool I think it perfectly substantiates his insecurities and reasons for spending time with the girl; he has become the teacher he idolized and hated, perhaps a lesser mind but a better man, and it sets up a believable kind of psychological confusion in identifying the girl with his wife, innocent and brash and pining for an older man… but this time, the girl wants him, and he’s perhaps always wondered if his wife ever did. This aspect is quite cleverly realized and not laid on too heavily — despite the complicated narrative it still gives the effect of simplicity.

I would perhaps say that it is this lovely story that makes the film so moving, and there is not much compelling cinema in it (performances are very good, though); I could as easily been satisfied with the material as a novella. But that’s hardly a knock on such a compelling, deeply human film.