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Director Jacques Rivette just passed away back in January. There's more interest lately in his 12-hour opus Out 1, but if you'll settle for just 2.5 hours, this unique early New Wave feature will take you inside Rivette's world of artists, students, and refugees from political persecution, all in conflict in a sunny Paris of 1958. It's just as revolutionary as an early Godard or Truffaut, but in a style all Rivette's own. Paris Belongs to Us Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 802 1961 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 141 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Paris nous appartient / Street Date March 8, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Betty Schneider, François Maistre, Giani Esposito, Françoise Prévost, Daniel Crohem, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Marie Robain, Jean Martin. Cinematography Charles L. Bitsch Film Editor Denise de Casablanca Original Music Philippe Arthuys Written by Jacques Rivette, Jean Grualt Produced by Claude Chabrol, Roland Nonin Directed by Jacques Rivette

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The French New...

For the first time in the Us, Jacques Rivette’s 1961 directorial debut, Paris Belongs to Us is available thanks to an accomplished new restoration from Criterion. A neglected title associated with the same crew of vibrant auteurs eventually known as the Nouvelle Vague of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Rivette’s thunder was stolen by more famous films from critics turned filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Francois Truffaut (even though it technically went into production before several of theirs). The initial lackluster response explains Rivette’s slower rise to notability, his particular methods and idiosyncrasies eventually embraced nearly a decade later when items like Mad Love (1969) and the monolithic Out 1 (1971), the legendary near thirteen hour production, were released.

Anne (Betty Schneider) is a young literature student in Paris, following in the footsteps of her older brother, Pierre (Francois Maistre). Afetr a disturbing interaction with a neighbor at her hostel,...

This week will kick off the theatrical tour of Jacques Rivette‘s Out 1, a long-impossible-to-see 13-hour masterwork that, judging from my own reaction, couldn’t possibly feel any less new, surprising, or alive than it did in 1971. If you’re wishing to see it, however, patience is probably required. The scope of Carlotta Films and Kino Lorber’ run will (understandably) be limited — and their comprehensive Blu-ray package doesn’t arrive until January — so now, while curiosity hits (something of) a peak, is the finest time to share a Rivette title that’s markedly short, accessible, and, like almost everything else he made, wildly entertaining. It’s also the earliest place one could hope to start

That short film, Le Coup du Berger, is modest in scale, but the ambition of its narrative is uncommon and continually surprising, no matter the knowledge that its maker would later produce such long, dense triumphs.

The following quote comes from Charles Bitsch's interview with director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause, Bigger Than Life) from "Cahiers Du Cinema, the 1950s: Neo-realism, Hollywood, New Wave" and given today's blockbuster cinema I really don't think I need to add any additional context to clue you in to why I wanted to post it after seeing it on This Must be the Place. "I am interested in the story and the characters. The camera is an instrument, it's the microscope which allows you to detect the 'melody of the look'. It's a wonderful instrument because its microscopic power is for me the equivalent of introspection in a writer, and the unrolling of the film in the camera corresponds, in my opinion, to the train of thought of the writer. But if the character on whom I am working has nothing to photograph, then the camera becomes useless...

The shadow of cinematographer Charles L. Bitsch and his camera, briefly visible during a dolly shot in Jacques Rivette's Paris Belongs to Us (1961). Hardly a "material object," you'd say, but Rivette's plots are often about the blurred line between the non-existent and the totally tangible, and, like one of his barely-there conspiracies (such as, well, the one in Paris Belongs to Us), the shadow cast by Bitsch beckons to be interpreted in paranoid, metaphorical terms.

Jonathan Rosenabum once described Paris Belongs to Us as the most mature of the Nouvelle Vague debuts, and the most amateurish. It's certainly a film of impoverished means. Though it's hard to find details on how much—or rather how little—it cost to make, the Cahiers du cinéma group's debuts were all cheapies (adjusted for inflation, the most expensive was probably the half-million-dollar Le beau Serge, with Breathless costing the modern equivalent of...

Criterion will issue two long-unavailable early films by the late, great French New Waver Claude Chabrol (Inspector Bellamy) on Sept. 20.

Le beau Serge (1958), writer/director Chabrol’s first feature, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD for the suggested retail prices of $39.95 and $29.95. Les cousins (1959) on Blu-ray and DVD will carry the same prices.

The drama Le beau Serge, Chabrol’s first film, follows a successful yet sickly young man (Jean‑Claude Brialy) who returns home to the small village where he grew up only to find himself at odds with his former close friend (Gérard Blain)—now unhappily married and a wretched alcoholic—and the provincial life he represents.

In Les cousins, Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures a darkly comic character study that questions notions of good and evil,...