Jacques Rivette - Early Life and Film Criticism

Early Life and Film Criticism

Jacques Rivette was born in Rouen to Andre Rivette and Andree Amiard, a family "where everyone is a pharmacist". He was educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille and briefly studied literature at the city's university before dropping out to become a filmmaker. Inspired by Jean Cocteau's book on the making of La Belle et la Bête, Rivette made his first short film, Aux Quatre Coins, in 1949. He took the film to Paris in the hope of being accepted into the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques, but failed his examination. In Paris, Rivette began frequenting Henri Langlois's Cinémathèque Française, where he befriended Éric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Luc Moullet and other members of the French New Wave. Rivette joined the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin, and in 1950 began to write film criticism for the Gazette du Cinéma, a small film journal he co-founded with Rohmer and Godard. During this time, he made two more short films, Le Quadrille (produced by and starring Godard) in 1950 and Le Divertissement in 1952.

Rivette began to write for Cahiers du Cinéma in 1952 with several other young critics whom he had met at the Cinémathèque and under the guidance of editor-in-chief André Bazin. Rivette championed American directors of the 1940s and 1950s, specifically the work of Howard Hawks, John Ford, Nicholas Ray, Robert Aldrich and Fritz Lang, as well as international directors such as Roberto Rossellini and Kenji Mizoguchi. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Rivette's writing was sometimes at odds with the philosophies of Bazin, such as a dismissal of realism and formalism that Bazin had championed in his film theories. Later in life he would reject the notion of the auteur theory, stating that "there is no auteur in films and that a film is something which preexists in its own right. It is only interesting if you have this feeling that the film preexists and that you are trying to reach it, to discover it, taking precautions to avoid spoiling it or deforming it."

During this period Rivette also found work as an assistant for Jacques Becker on the film Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and for Jean Renoir on the film French Cancan. He also worked on the early short films of his friends Truffaut and Godard, often as camera operator. With financial support from Claude Chabrol and French film producer Pierre Braunberger, Rivette made the 35mm short film Le Coup du Berger (Fool's Mate). Written by Rivette, Chabrol and cinematographer Charles Bitsch, the film is about a young girl who receives a mink coat from her lover and must hide it from her husband, with spoken commentary by Rivette describing the action like moves from a chess game. Godard, Truffaut and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze appear in the film, which was distributed by Braunberger in 1957. The making of Le Coup du berger inspired such directors as Truffaut, Alain Resnais and Claude Chabrol to make their first feature films.

In June 1963, Rivette was made editor in chief of Cahiers du cinéma after Eric Rohmer resigned. Rohmer, always a political conservative, was increasingly at odds with his left-leaning contributors. Under Rivette's leadership, Cahiers changed from an apolitical film magazine to a Marxist magazine that examined the relationship between politics and modern culture. He remained in this position until April 1965, after which he would devote himself entirely to directing films and theatrical productions.