Written by Jacques Rivette, Jean Gruault
Directed by Jacques Rivette
France, 1961
The first and most obvious point of contention or contradiction concerning Jacques Rivette’s Paris Belongs to Us is the Charles Péguy quote that opens the film: “Paris belong to no one.” While this declaration seems to fly in the face of what the film’s title states, the question doesn’t stop with why Rivette instantly counters the name of his own movie; it becomes, which is, in fact, the case? Is the Paris of this film an inclusive locale, one that belongs to everyone or even just a select group of people, or is it an inaccessible world hostile to ownership, a city that strives on its own independent wavelength? Rivette’s debut feature therefore “starts with a puzzle,” as author Richard Neupert puts it, before the story proper even gets underway. And it doesn’t stop there. Over its 141 runtime, Paris Belongs to Us is riddled with paradoxes, inconsistencies, deceit, and ambiguity.
In any case, as the film begins we are with Anne, a young student who meets up with her brother, Pierre (François Maistre, later to star in a number of Luis Buñuel’s finest films), and through him she begins an association with a tight-knit group of individuals, most of whom coalesce around a theatrical troupe led by director Gérard Lenz (Giani Esposito). At a party, discussion turns to the death of Juan, a friend and musician who was working on the now lost score for the group’s staging of Shakespeare’s controversial Pericles. Juan’s death, however, an apparent suicide (though that remains uncertain), is the cause of much speculation and bitterly conflicting opinion. There appears to be some mystery surrounding the circumstances of his passing, most of which has to do with a pervasive sense of paranoia and the suggestion that nefarious forces were behind Juan’s demise.
The severity of the film’s foreboding apocalyptic tone is repeatedly alluded to in such doomsday prophesying phrases as “Am I going mad? Or is the world?”, “The world isn’t what it seems,” and “We must prepare. The hour approaches.” Kaufman is especially prone to ambiguous commentary: “I speak in riddles,” he says, “but some things can only be told in riddles,” or simply, “Juan knew terrible things.” Indeed, Juan is known to have talked of corruption and the end of the world, notions that point toward a supposed grand global conspiracy. Paris Belongs to Us is set in June of 1957 (it was actually shot in 1958 but took nearly three years to see a release), and as such, it is representative of the times, speaking to fervent attitudes of nihilism, anarchy, rebellion, and revolution.
This is also a strange looking Paris, with obscure streets, an absence of the neon lights that typically illuminate the city, and architecture shown to be commonplace, decrepit, or simply just there. This Paris has no bustle, no life. The constrictive interiors are otherworldly in their seclusion, further dislocating everyone from the outside. Rivette and cinematographer Charles L. Bitsch shot mostly in natural light, with exceptionally dark nights expressing the doom of a noir. The exterior day-time scenes, on the other hand, have the feeling of a stagnant late afternoon entering a moment of anxious pause before night falls. Like the Italy of Michelangelo Antonioni’s La notte (1961) and L’eclisse (1962), this is an unkind and unwelcoming French setting. Even the Arc de Triomphe looks menacingly down on Anne as she roams the desolate streets. Still, the picture is beautifully photographed, with a slightly off kilter interplay of angles and staging in depth. And adding amplification to the discord is Philippe Arthuys’ score, a composition of disassociated noises ranging from animalistic murmurs, to vocal harmonizing, to steely sounds that all somehow merge into an atmospheric mélange of musical miscellanea.
Despite the time and place of its production and release, it is difficult to place Paris Belongs to Us as an emblematic work of the French New Wave. It may feature a turn by familiar face Jean-Claude Brialy and it resembles those features from François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard in the sense that it was shot on location with borrowed equipment, little money, and an unconventional script. But there is no humor in Rivette’s film, no youthfulness, no light formal playfulness, even if there is experimentation. There are a few allusions to politics and cinema itself (look for cameos by Godard, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Demy), but Paris Belongs to Us, as much as film with that title should, does little to romanticize the city in the way The 400 Blows (1959) or Breathless (1960) does.
Written by Jean Gruault, who would go one to pen additional scripts for Rivette as well as Godard and Truffaut, Paris Belong to Us is formed of scattered pieces, abounding chaos, and irrational situations. In discussing Pericles, the argument is made that the work, like the world, can end in some logical cohesion. One can’t say the same for this film. As Neupert states, in this “labyrinthine” feature, Rivette is constantly questioning perceived intentions and manipulating perspective (the characters’ and the viewers’). Paris Belongs to Us defies genre and defies even the loose standards of the New Wave. It does, however, undeniably represent the cinema of Jacques Rivette. It is an auspicious beginning for a filmmaker who would tread similar territory for the rest of his illustrious career.