Jacques Rivette - 1984- Present: Later Film Career

1984- Present: Later Film Career

Rivette's difficulties in securing financial backing for his films in the late 1970s helped to lead him to eventually begin a business partnership with Pierre Grise productions. The company would serve as a chief distributor and financier for all of Rivette's films through his most recent film, 36 Views from the Pic Saint-Loup. Their first film together, Love on the Ground, released in 1984, was another film about a theatrical group and the blur between fiction and reality. Geraldine Chaplin and Jane Birkin star as two members of a theatrical troupe that are invited to appear in a new play that closely resembles the real life of its director, played by Jean-Pierre Kalfon, and the mysterious disappearance of his wife.

Wanting to take a break from his experimental and complex style, Rivette next adapted Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Based on the first part of the novel and set in 1930s southern France, Hurlevent stars three unknown actors who were, unlike the William Wyler and Luis Buñuel versions, the correct ages for the characters they portrayed: Fabienne Babe as Catherine, Lucas Belvaux as Roch (Heathcliff), and Oliver Cruveiller as Catherine's brother William. This was the first film in years where Rivette did not use his usual troupe of actors and technicians. It was released in 1985.

In 1988 Rivette received critical acclaim for his film La Bande des quatre (Gang of Four), a film about four drama students and an all girl school who are each told a moral story about a friend in danger by a strange visitor whom they all encounter separately. While this is going on, the friends develop a vague conspiracy theory involving their teacher (Bulle Ogier). The film was entered into the 39th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won an Honourable Mention.

This film directly led to La Belle Noiseuse (The Beautiful Troublemaker), Rivette's most acclaimed film of his later career. Loosely based on the Balzac short story The Unknown Masterpiece, the film depicts the relationship between a reclusive and uninspired painter Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli), his wife and former model Liz (Jane Birkin) and his new model Marianne (Emmanuelle Béart) who rekindles his artistic inspiration. Both Liz and Marianne's boyfriend grow jealous of the relationship between artist and muse, but Marianne's presence compels Frenhofer to restart his long abandoned magnum opus painting La Belle Noiseuse. The four hour film famously shows in real time the progress of the painting, one brush stroke at a time (provided in hand close up by French abstract painter Bernard Dufour). The film won Rivette the Grand Prix at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival and his only César Award nomination for Best Director.

Rivette then made two back to back films about the life of Joan of Arc, Joan the Maiden, Part 1: The Battles, and Joan the Maiden, Part 2: The Prisons. More interested in Joan as a French political hero on Earth than Joan as a mystical saint in heaven, Rivette's films greatly differed from previous well-known interpretations of Joan from Carl Theodor Dreyer, Robert Bresson and Otto Preminger. Both films starred Sandrine Bonnaire as Joan and were released in 1994.

The next fifteen years would be another active period of Rivette's career, with such internationally acclaimed films as Up, Down, Fragile (1995), Top Secret (1998), Va savoir (2001), The Story of Marie and Julien (2003), Ne touchez pas la hache (2007) and 36 Views from the Pic Saint-Loup (2009).

He recently received some attention for the comment: "Cameron isn't evil, he's not an asshole like Spielberg. He wants to be the new De Mille. Unfortunately, he can't direct his way out of a paper bag."

On 20 April 2012, film critic David Ehrenstein posted online that Rivette was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.