Out 1
Encyclopedia
Out 1 is a 1971
film directed by Jacques Rivette
, one of the major filmmakers of the French New Wave
. Notorious for its unwieldy length of twelve hours and forty minutes, it is also referred to as Out 1: Noli me tangere. When asked why the film is called Out 1, Rivette responded, "I choose "Out" as the opposite of the vogue word "in", which had caught in France and which I thought was silly. The action of the film is rather like a serial which could continue through several episodes, so I gave it the number "One"." The Spectre subtitle for the shorter version was similarly chosen for its ambiguous and various indistinct meanings, while the Noli me tangere
subtitle ("don't touch me") for the original version is clearly a reference to it being the full length film as intended by Rivette.
Divided into eight episodes around 90–100 minutes each, the film is distinctly and explicitly indebted to Honoré de Balzac
's La Comédie humaine
, particularly the History of the Thirteen collection (1833–1835). The vast length of the film allows Rivette, like Balzac, to construct multiple loosely connected characters with independent stories whose subplots weave amongst each other and continually uncover new characters with their own subplots. This experimentation with parallel subplots was influenced by Andre Cayatte
's two parts of La Vie conjugale (1963), while the use of expansive screen time was first toyed with by Rivette in L'amour fou
(1969). The parallel narrative structure has since been used in many other notable films, including Kieślowski
's The Decalogue
and Lucas Belvaux
's Trilogie, to name a few. Each of the episodes begins with a title in the form of "from person to person" (usually indicating the first and last characters seen in each episode), followed by a handful of black and white still photos recapitulating the scenes of the prior episode, then concluded by showing the final minute or so (in black and white) of the last episode before cutting into the new episode itself (which is entirely in color).
's Andromaque
) and its effects on the director and his wife. In the case of Out 1, the two main anchors of the film are two different theater groups each rehearsing a different Aeschylus
play (Seven Against Thebes
and Prometheus Bound
), and the film does not particularly privilege any character within these groups exceptionally more than the others. External to these two groups, two outsiders peripheral to the theater are featured: Colin (Jean-Pierre Léaud
), a young man who believes that there may be a real-life Thirteen group in operation, and Frederique (Juliet Berto
), a young swindler who happens to steal letters which may prove to be communication between members of the Thirteen. Other featured characters include Emilie (Bulle Ogier
), who runs a local hangout under the name Pauline and whose husband, Igor, has been missing for six months. Michael Lonsdale
plays Thomas, the director of the Prometheus Bound group, and there are cameos by directors Barbet Schroeder
and Éric Rohmer
, who plays a Balzac professor in a scene of both plot exposition and comic relief.
The first few hours of the film alternate between documentary-style scenes observing the two troupes' rehearsals, Colin soliciting money from cafe patrons as a deaf man by playing irritating harmonica tunes, and Frederique stealing money through a variety of cons. The plot gradually develops when Colin receives three mysterious messages in quick succession containing cryptic references to "Thirteen" and Lewis Carroll
's The Hunting of the Snark
. He quickly connects this to Balzac and begins a quixotic
quest uncover what the messages mean and who the Thirteen are. Sometime afterwards, Frederique casually interrupts a businessman, Etienne, playing chess
against himself at home; when she has the room to herself briefly, she attempts to locate a stash of money but instead steals a collection of letters. Sensing that they refer to some sort of secret society, she attempts to sell them to several of the correspondents in exchange for either money or more information on the group, but fails to gain any information. Only Emilie buys the letters, but only because they refer to her husband. The Seven Against Thebes production takes on a newcomer, Renaud, to assist in the production, but he quickly begins to take over more and more of the creative direction of the piece from Lili, who recedes into the background in disgust. Their fortunes appear high when Quentin wins a million francs at the races, but in the ensemble's celebration, Renaud steals all of the cash; the production is cancelled and the members undertake a futile search for Renaud, spreading out all across Paris with a photo of him to try to discover his whereabouts. Thomas brings in old friend Sarah to help work through a creative block on Prometheus Bound, but she instead causes a rift within the group and the play is abandoned after another player leaves for unrelated reasons. It turns out that Thomas's block was largely due to his break-up with Lili after being with her personally and professionally for seven years. Thomas also is revealed to be a key member of the Thirteen, although the group never really was fully functional and had agreed to go into a period of dormancy two years prior. Ironically, a chance encounter between Colin and Thomas motivates the latter to suggest reviving the Thirteen to Etienne, who is more reluctant as the group never really did anything to begin with. One of the main correspondents in Etienne's letters, Pierre, is frequently discussed but never seen, described alternatively as sinister and child-like. After reading the contents of the letters sold to her by Frederique, Emilie prepares packages to be sent to major Parisian newspapers containing photocopies of these letters and purporting to disclose the existence of a scandal involving Pierre setting up Igor. Since Pierre and Igor are both members of the Thirteen, members of the group are forced to reconstitute to prevent the disclosure, and Thomas, Ettiene and the ruthless lawyer Lucie de Graffe (Françoise Fabian
) meet to discuss what to do. Frederique eventually meets up with the young man that her gay friend Honey Moon (Michel Berto
) is infatuated with, who turns out to be Renaud; the two become married in a blood ritual, but she suspects that he may be a member of another secret society even more sinister than the Thirteen. After seeing him associate with a local gang, she draws a gun on him, but warns him - causing him to turn around and shoot instantly, killing her. Colin gives up on the idea of the Thirteen, while it is quietly suggested during a discussion between two other members of the Thirteen, Lucie de Graffe and the cynical professor named Warok (Jean Bouise
), that perhaps Pierre was the author of the messages to Colin and has been the invisible hand behind much of the plot, because he misses the Thirteen and wants to either restore it or replace it with young blood like Colin. Several of the characters retreat in the end to Emilie's small seaside house in Odabe, where she breaks down in front of Sarah, confessing her love for Colin (who had been courting her earlier) and Igor at the same time. Her dilemma is solved at the end, when she receives a call from Igor telling her to meet him in Paris. She and Lili set off for Paris. Thomas remains behind on the beach at Obade with two of his actors and has a drunken hysterical episode there, when he pretends to collapse on the sand. His actors are worried and frantically try to revive him. When he reveals his jest, they walk away in disgust and get in the car to go back to Paris. Thomas is left alone on the beach, crying and laughing at the same time, stranded in Obade and for the first time in the film, part of no group whatsoever. The film then quickly cuts to a completely unrelated shot of Marie, an actress from the Thebes group who still seems to be searching for the missing Renaud and the money he stole. A golden statute of a Greek goddess, perhaps Athena, towers above her. The shot is held for a second before fading out.
and 16 mm film
in L'amour fou, Rivette was comfortable enough with the 16 mm format to easily work with it on Out 1, whose massive length financially precluded any serious attempt to shoot the whole film on 35 mm. Incredibly, despite the immense length of the final product, the film was shot under a tight shooting schedule of only six weeks. Rivette's preference for the long take
was the main reason why such a schedule could be maintained; as he wanted a level of realism to the performances, some of the takes include "fluffed" lines by actors, or other conventional "mistakes" such as camera and boom microphone shadows, as well as unwitting extras looking at the camera in exterior shots (including a memorable scene where two young boys doggedly follow Jean-Pierre Léaud in the middle of an extended monologue). Nonetheless, Rivette has stated that often the intimacy of performances in the face of such mistakes was precisely why he kept those takes in the film. Many of the rehearsal scenes, particularly those of the Prometheus Bound group, are composed almost entirely of long shots, although the film also contains more conventional editing pace in some other parts. The pacing of the film as a whole is also loosely based on Balzac, and the first few hours of the film are constructed more like a prologue in which the editing is slower and the characters are only introduced - it is not until three or four hours in that the ostensible motivating story lines begin to reveal themselves.
The work also includes stylistically adventurous techniques, including the shooting of extensively long shots through mirrors (again extending from work in L'amour fou), short cuts to black to punctuate otherwise continuous scenes, short cutaways to unrelated or seemingly meaningless shots, non-diegetic sounds blocking out crucial parts of dialogue, or even a conversation in which selected lines are re-edited so that they appear to be spoken backwards. However, these experiments form a fairly minimal part of the work as a whole, which is generally conventional in style (aside from the length of both takes and the whole work) and fairly easy to follow.
, the film was re-edited down to a four-hour "short" version called Out 1: Spectre, which is more accessible and available (although not widely). Richard Roud
, writing in The Guardian
, called this version "a mind-blowing experience, but one which, instead of taking one ‘out of this world’ as the expression has it, took one right smack into the world. Or into a world which one only dimly realised was there – always right there beneath the everyday world...the cinema will never be the same again, and nor will I." Few people have seen the full-length version, though it is championed by Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
, who compares it to Thomas Pynchon
's Gravity's Rainbow
http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/0397/03147.html, and has included both Out 1: Noli me tangere and Out 1: Spectre in the 100 films singled out from his 1000 favourite films, published in his anthology Essential Cinema.
Out 1: Noli me tangere was restored in Germany in 1990 and was shown again at the Rotterdam and Berlin Film Festivals shortly thereafter. It disappeared again into obscurity until 2004, when both Noli me tangere and its shorter version Out 1: Spectre featured in the programme on
June 1-21, in the complete retrospective Jacques Rivette Viaggio in Italia di un metteur en scène organized by Deep A.C. and curated by Goffredo De Pascale in Rome Sala Trevi Centro Sperimentale and Naples Grenoble Institut. Then, only in April/May 2006 Rivette retrospective at London's National Film Theatre, with the shorter film also screening twice across two subsequent nights at Anthology Film Archives
in New York City on the same April weekend as the NFT projection of the long work. The North American premiere of Noli me tangere took place on September 23 and 24, 2006 in Vancouver's Vancouver International Film Centre
organized by Vancouver International Film Festival
programmer and Cinema Scope editor Mark Peranson, attended by around twenty people (22 at Peranson's initial count, before episode 1, though others came and went). A subsequent screening took place as a part of the 2006 festival over September 30 and October 1, introduced by Jonathan Rosenbaum.
The subtitled Out 1: Noli me tangere provides a particular challenge for exhibitors, as the subtitles are not burned onto the print of the film itself, as it commonplace with most foreign films shown in North America. Rather, the subtitles for Out 1, provided by the British Film Institute
, are projected from a computer in a separate stream (in the Vancouver screening, just below the film itself), which then has to be synchronized with the film itself, almost certainly by someone unfamiliar with the entire Out 1. Few theatres can meet this technical challenge, especially over a thirteen hour span. In addition, the film was shot on 16mm at a nonstandard 25 frames per second, a speed few current projectors are equipped to handle. In the Vancouver screening, the film was projected at 24fps, adding about an extra half hour to the film as a whole.
Screenings of both the long and short works took place in late November and December 2006, during a large retrospective of Rivette's work which ran at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens
, New York City. The screening of the longer version was sold out for the December 9 and 10, 2006 screening, so the Museum held an encore performance of the film on March 3 and 4 in 2007 (which came close to selling out). It was shown on both occasions over 2 days. In interviews, Rivette has explicitly stated that the work is meant to be seen theatrically "on the big screen", and apparently dislikes it being watched on a television. Ironically, the preparation of the film in eight episodes was in large part due to the "naive hope", according to Rivette, of it originally being distributed like that on French television, although his disdain for that mode of exhibition only arose after the film's completion.
Vancouver (September & October 2006):
New York (November 2006):
New York (February 2007)
Chicago (May 2007):
Los Angeles (July 2007):
1971 in film
The year 1971 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*February 8 - Bob Dylan's hour long documentary film, Eat the Document, premieres at New York's Academy of Music...
film directed by Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette is a French film director. His most well known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1....
, one of the major filmmakers of the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
. Notorious for its unwieldy length of twelve hours and forty minutes, it is also referred to as Out 1: Noli me tangere. When asked why the film is called Out 1, Rivette responded, "I choose "Out" as the opposite of the vogue word "in", which had caught in France and which I thought was silly. The action of the film is rather like a serial which could continue through several episodes, so I gave it the number "One"." The Spectre subtitle for the shorter version was similarly chosen for its ambiguous and various indistinct meanings, while the Noli me tangere
Noli me tangere
Noli me tangere, meaning "don't touch me" / "touch me not", is the Latin version of words spoken, according to , by Jesus to Mary Magdalene when she recognizes him after his resurrection....
subtitle ("don't touch me") for the original version is clearly a reference to it being the full length film as intended by Rivette.
Divided into eight episodes around 90–100 minutes each, the film is distinctly and explicitly indebted to Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
's La Comédie humaine
La Comédie humaine
La Comédie humaine is the title of Honoré de Balzac's multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories depicting French society in the period of the Restoration and the July Monarchy .-Overview:...
, particularly the History of the Thirteen collection (1833–1835). The vast length of the film allows Rivette, like Balzac, to construct multiple loosely connected characters with independent stories whose subplots weave amongst each other and continually uncover new characters with their own subplots. This experimentation with parallel subplots was influenced by Andre Cayatte
André Cayatte
André Cayatte was a French New Wave filmmaker and lawyer, who became known for his films centering on themes of crime, justice, and moral responsibility, themes which Cayatte persisted in affirming regardless of changing contemporary attitudes.Some of Cayatte's earlier films that covered these...
's two parts of La Vie conjugale (1963), while the use of expansive screen time was first toyed with by Rivette in L'amour fou
L'Amour fou
L'amour fou is a 1969 movie directed by Jacques Rivette.L'amour fou follows the dissolution of the marriage between Claire, an actress , and Sebastien, her director . It is black and white with two different film gauges employed at different times throughout the film...
(1969). The parallel narrative structure has since been used in many other notable films, including Kieślowski
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Krzysztof Kieślowski was an Academy Award nominated influential Polish film director and screenwriter, known internationally for The Double Life of Veronique and his film cycles The Decalogue and Three Colors.-Early life:...
's The Decalogue
The Decalogue
The Decalogue is a 1989 Polish television drama series directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and co-written by Kieślowski with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, with music by Zbigniew Preisner...
and Lucas Belvaux
Lucas Belvaux
Lucas Belvaux is a Belgian actor and film director. His directing credits include the Trilogie, consisting of three films with interlocking stories and characters, each of which was filmed in a different genre. The three films are Cavale, a thriller; Un couple épatant, a comedy; and Après la vie,...
's Trilogie, to name a few. Each of the episodes begins with a title in the form of "from person to person" (usually indicating the first and last characters seen in each episode), followed by a handful of black and white still photos recapitulating the scenes of the prior episode, then concluded by showing the final minute or so (in black and white) of the last episode before cutting into the new episode itself (which is entirely in color).
Plot and themes
From the starting image of a small group of actors lying down with their legs bent back towards themselves, Rivette again focuses his film around rehearsals for a play, a motif present in both L'amour fou and his debut feature Paris nous appartient (1960); in particular, he extends L'amour fous relentless reportage-style examination of the continual development of a play under rehearsal (in that case Jean RacineJean Racine
Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...
's Andromaque
Andromaque
Andromaque is a tragedy in five acts by the French playwright Jean Racine written in alexandrine verse. It was first performed on 17 November 1667 before the court of Louis XIV in the Louvre in the private chambers of the Queen, Marie Thérèse, by the royal company of actors, called "les Grands...
) and its effects on the director and his wife. In the case of Out 1, the two main anchors of the film are two different theater groups each rehearsing a different Aeschylus
Aeschylus
Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
play (Seven Against Thebes
Seven Against Thebes
The Seven against Thebes is the third play in an Oedipus-themed trilogy produced by Aeschylus in 467 BC. The trilogy is sometimes referred to as the Oedipodea. It concerns the battle between an Argive army led by Polynices and the army of Thebes led by Eteocles and his supporters. The trilogy won...
and Prometheus Bound
Prometheus Bound
Prometheus Bound is an Ancient Greek tragedy. In Antiquity, this drama was attributed to Aeschylus, but is now considered by some scholars to be the work of another hand, perhaps one as late as ca. 415 BC. Despite these doubts of authorship, the play's designation as Aeschylean has remained...
), and the film does not particularly privilege any character within these groups exceptionally more than the others. External to these two groups, two outsiders peripheral to the theater are featured: Colin (Jean-Pierre Léaud
Jean-Pierre Léaud
-Early years:Born in Paris, Léaud made his major debut as an actor at the age of 14 as Antoine Doinel, a semi-autobiographical character based on the life events of French film director François Truffaut, in The 400 Blows....
), a young man who believes that there may be a real-life Thirteen group in operation, and Frederique (Juliet Berto
Juliet Berto
Juliet Berto was a French actress. A member of the same loose group of student radicals as Anne Wiazemsky, she first appeared in Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her, and would go on to appear in many of Godard's subsequent films, including La Chinoise, Week End, Le Gai Savoir,...
), a young swindler who happens to steal letters which may prove to be communication between members of the Thirteen. Other featured characters include Emilie (Bulle Ogier
Bulle Ogier
Bulle Ogier is a French actress.Ogier's first appearance on screen was in Voilà l'Ordre, a short film directed by Jacques Baratier with a number of the then-emerging young singers of the 1960s in France, including Boris Vian, Claude Nougaro, etc.She worked with Jacques Rivette Bulle Ogier (born...
), who runs a local hangout under the name Pauline and whose husband, Igor, has been missing for six months. Michael Lonsdale
Michael Lonsdale
Michael Lonsdale , sometimes billed as Michel Lonsdale, is a French actor who has appeared in over 180 films and television shows....
plays Thomas, the director of the Prometheus Bound group, and there are cameos by directors Barbet Schroeder
Barbet Schroeder
Barbet Schroeder is a Franco-Swiss movie director and producer who started his career in French cinema in the 1960s, working together with directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette.-Life and career:...
and Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma....
, who plays a Balzac professor in a scene of both plot exposition and comic relief.
The first few hours of the film alternate between documentary-style scenes observing the two troupes' rehearsals, Colin soliciting money from cafe patrons as a deaf man by playing irritating harmonica tunes, and Frederique stealing money through a variety of cons. The plot gradually develops when Colin receives three mysterious messages in quick succession containing cryptic references to "Thirteen" and Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...
's The Hunting of the Snark
The Hunting of the Snark
The Hunting of the Snark is usually thought of as a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll in 1874, when he was 42 years old...
. He quickly connects this to Balzac and begins a quixotic
Quixotic
Quixotic may refer to:* Quixotic, an adjective deriving from the novel Don Quixote* Quixotic, an album by Martina Topley-Bird* Quix*o*tic, a Washington D.C. based rock band* DJ Quixotic, a Los Angeles-based record producer...
quest uncover what the messages mean and who the Thirteen are. Sometime afterwards, Frederique casually interrupts a businessman, Etienne, playing chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
against himself at home; when she has the room to herself briefly, she attempts to locate a stash of money but instead steals a collection of letters. Sensing that they refer to some sort of secret society, she attempts to sell them to several of the correspondents in exchange for either money or more information on the group, but fails to gain any information. Only Emilie buys the letters, but only because they refer to her husband. The Seven Against Thebes production takes on a newcomer, Renaud, to assist in the production, but he quickly begins to take over more and more of the creative direction of the piece from Lili, who recedes into the background in disgust. Their fortunes appear high when Quentin wins a million francs at the races, but in the ensemble's celebration, Renaud steals all of the cash; the production is cancelled and the members undertake a futile search for Renaud, spreading out all across Paris with a photo of him to try to discover his whereabouts. Thomas brings in old friend Sarah to help work through a creative block on Prometheus Bound, but she instead causes a rift within the group and the play is abandoned after another player leaves for unrelated reasons. It turns out that Thomas's block was largely due to his break-up with Lili after being with her personally and professionally for seven years. Thomas also is revealed to be a key member of the Thirteen, although the group never really was fully functional and had agreed to go into a period of dormancy two years prior. Ironically, a chance encounter between Colin and Thomas motivates the latter to suggest reviving the Thirteen to Etienne, who is more reluctant as the group never really did anything to begin with. One of the main correspondents in Etienne's letters, Pierre, is frequently discussed but never seen, described alternatively as sinister and child-like. After reading the contents of the letters sold to her by Frederique, Emilie prepares packages to be sent to major Parisian newspapers containing photocopies of these letters and purporting to disclose the existence of a scandal involving Pierre setting up Igor. Since Pierre and Igor are both members of the Thirteen, members of the group are forced to reconstitute to prevent the disclosure, and Thomas, Ettiene and the ruthless lawyer Lucie de Graffe (Françoise Fabian
Françoise Fabian
Françoise Fabian is a French film actress. She has appeared in over 80 films since 1956.She was born in Algiers, Algeria, and is the widow of screenwriter and director Jacques Becker and actor Marcel Bozzuffi. One of her best-known roles is as Maud in Eric Rohmer's My Night at Maud's...
) meet to discuss what to do. Frederique eventually meets up with the young man that her gay friend Honey Moon (Michel Berto
Michel Berto
Michel Berto was a French actor. He was the brother of French actress Juliet Berto.-Filmography:* 1971 : Out 1 : Noli me tangere by Jacques Rivette : Gay friend Honey Moon...
) is infatuated with, who turns out to be Renaud; the two become married in a blood ritual, but she suspects that he may be a member of another secret society even more sinister than the Thirteen. After seeing him associate with a local gang, she draws a gun on him, but warns him - causing him to turn around and shoot instantly, killing her. Colin gives up on the idea of the Thirteen, while it is quietly suggested during a discussion between two other members of the Thirteen, Lucie de Graffe and the cynical professor named Warok (Jean Bouise
Jean Bouise
Jean Bouise was a French actor. In the 1950s he helped to found Théâtre de la Cité, and was a player in the company. He entered films in the 1960s, and played a supporting roles in The Shameless Old Lady, Z, L'Aveu, Out 1 and The Return of the Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, Section spéciale...
), that perhaps Pierre was the author of the messages to Colin and has been the invisible hand behind much of the plot, because he misses the Thirteen and wants to either restore it or replace it with young blood like Colin. Several of the characters retreat in the end to Emilie's small seaside house in Odabe, where she breaks down in front of Sarah, confessing her love for Colin (who had been courting her earlier) and Igor at the same time. Her dilemma is solved at the end, when she receives a call from Igor telling her to meet him in Paris. She and Lili set off for Paris. Thomas remains behind on the beach at Obade with two of his actors and has a drunken hysterical episode there, when he pretends to collapse on the sand. His actors are worried and frantically try to revive him. When he reveals his jest, they walk away in disgust and get in the car to go back to Paris. Thomas is left alone on the beach, crying and laughing at the same time, stranded in Obade and for the first time in the film, part of no group whatsoever. The film then quickly cuts to a completely unrelated shot of Marie, an actress from the Thebes group who still seems to be searching for the missing Renaud and the money he stole. A golden statute of a Greek goddess, perhaps Athena, towers above her. The shot is held for a second before fading out.
Characters
- Achille (Sylvain Corthay): Actor in Prometheus Bound troupe. Accompanies Thomas and Rose to Odabe at the end of the film.
- Arsenal (Marcel BozonnetMarcel BozonnetMarcel-Louis Bozonnet is a French actor born in Semur-en-Auxois on the 18 May 1944.Bozonnet entered the Comédie-Française in 1982, and became a "sociétaire" in 1986...
): Actor in Seven Against Thebes troupe. Vaguely knew Renaud and introduced him to the rest of the group. Also known as Nicolas, Papa, or Theo. - Balzac specialist (Éric RohmerÉric RohmerÉric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma....
): Professor whom Colin contacts (while still acting as a deaf man) to attempt to discover some further clues as to the possibility of the existence of the Thirteen in real life. - Beatrice (Edwine Moatti): Actress in Prometheus Bound troupe. Is a confidant and possibly lover to Thomas. Engages in a threesome with Thomas and Sarah. Her relationship with the Ethnologist is broken off when he announces his intentions to depart for the Basque region for work. This also causes her to leave the troupe.
- Bergamotte (Bernadette Onfroy): Actress in Prometheus Bound troupe.
- Colin (Jean-Pierre LéaudJean-Pierre Léaud-Early years:Born in Paris, Léaud made his major debut as an actor at the age of 14 as Antoine Doinel, a semi-autobiographical character based on the life events of French film director François Truffaut, in The 400 Blows....
): Young outsider who pretends to be a deaf in order to panhandle around Parisian cafes. Receives three messages from Pierre which set him off to try to uncover a real-life "Thirteen" in the vein of the Balzac novels. Falls in love with Pauline after numerous rendezvous at her store. Makes many connections through his investigations, but ultimately fails to find any cooperative parties and abandons his belief in the Thirteen. - Elaine (Karen Puig): Actress in Seven Against Thebes troupe. Alerts Lucie when Lili goes missing for several days (which turns out to be a trip with Emilie to Odabe).
- Emilie (Bulle OgierBulle OgierBulle Ogier is a French actress.Ogier's first appearance on screen was in Voilà l'Ordre, a short film directed by Jacques Baratier with a number of the then-emerging young singers of the 1960s in France, including Boris Vian, Claude Nougaro, etc.She worked with Jacques Rivette Bulle Ogier (born...
): Name that Pauline goes by at home. Wife to Igor and mother of two toddlers with him. His disappearance six months prior causes her to buy Pierre's letters from Frederique that refer to the disappearance. Despite Sarah's admonitions, she plans to send photocopies of the letters to newspapers in order to discover what is going on; however, Iris winds up burning them behind her back. Leaves for Odabe, where she confesses her love for Colin and Igor to Sarah. Igor calls her not long after and tells her to meet him in Paris. See Pauline. - The Ethnologist (Michel Delahaye): Romantic interest of Beatrice. Breaks up with her when he announces his departure to the Basque region for work. Beatrice leaves Prometheus Bound shortly afterwards because of this.
- Etienne (Jacques Doniol-ValcrozeJacques Doniol-ValcrozeJacques Doniol-Valcroze was a French actor, critic, screenwriter, and director...
): Member of the Thirteen. Frederique steals his letters during an attempted con and tries to sell them off for money and information about the group. Meets with Thomas to discuss the revival of the group and later with Thomas and Lucie to discuss how to control Emilie's potential contact with newspapers. - Faune (Monique Clement): Actress in Prometheus Bound troupe.
- Frederique (Juliet BertoJuliet BertoJuliet Berto was a French actress. A member of the same loose group of student radicals as Anne Wiazemsky, she first appeared in Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her, and would go on to appear in many of Godard's subsequent films, including La Chinoise, Week End, Le Gai Savoir,...
): Young petty thief who cons men only as long as she needs to get into their wallets. Her only friend and confidant is Honey Moon, a gay barfly played by Juliet Berto's real-life brother Michel Berto. Finds Etienne's letters while looking for his money and takes them instead. Starts calling the correspondents to sell them for money, but begins to try to make sense of the information referring to the Thirteen and also asks for information, particularly from Lucie. Meets Honey Moon's crush, who turns out to be Renaud, and has a blood wedding with him. After suspecting his involvement in a secret society, she follows him and winds up causing him to shoot her to death before he realizes who she is. - Gian-Reto (Barbet SchroederBarbet SchroederBarbet Schroeder is a Franco-Swiss movie director and producer who started his career in French cinema in the 1960s, working together with directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette.-Life and career:...
): Hanger-on at Pauline's store. - Honey Moon (Michel BertoMichel BertoMichel Berto was a French actor. He was the brother of French actress Juliet Berto.-Filmography:* 1971 : Out 1 : Noli me tangere by Jacques Rivette : Gay friend Honey Moon...
): Gay confidant of Frederique who borrows money from her, incites her to disrupt black market pornographers, and is infatuated with Renaud, which eventually leads to Frederique seeking Renaud out. - Igor (unseen): Emilie's husband and father of her two toddlers. Member of the Thirteen. Been missing since leaving on work six months ago. Discussed in Etienne's letters, some of which Emilie buys from Frederique. Reunites with Emilie by the film's end.
- Iris (Ode Bitton): Pregnant nanny of Emilie and Igor's children. Member of the Thirteen. Solves their problem by burning Emilie's letters to the newspapers which would have revealed the Thirteen and scandalized Pierre.
- Lili (Michele Moretti): Director of the Seven Against Thebes troupe, formerly involved with Thomas. May be involved with Quentin. Gradually recedes from the production as Renaud's influence expands. Accidentally takes a picture of Renaud which the troupe uses to try to get someone from the public to identify him. Member of the Thirteen.
- Lucie (Françoise FabianFrançoise FabianFrançoise Fabian is a French film actress. She has appeared in over 80 films since 1956.She was born in Algiers, Algeria, and is the widow of screenwriter and director Jacques Becker and actor Marcel Bozzuffi. One of her best-known roles is as Maud in Eric Rohmer's My Night at Maud's...
): Lawyer who Lili renews contact with after long silence. Member of the Thirteen. Correspondent in some of Etienne's letters. Is contacted by Frederique and meets her, but winds up taking some of the letters from her instead. - Marie (Hermine Karagheuz): Actress in the Seven Against Thebes troupe. May have delivered one of Pierre's messages to Colin, which may make her a member of the Thirteen. Last character seen in the film, standing next to a Parisian monument.
- Marlon (Jean-François SteveninJean-François StéveninJean-François Stévenin is a French actor. He has appeared in 150 films and television shows since 1968. He starred in the film Cold Moon, which was entered into the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.-Selected filmography:* Out 1...
): Thug with a criminal history who is an acquaintance of Frederique. She encounters him in a bar, and he bizarrely beats her, but she pickpockets him during the beating. - Max (Louis Julien): Quentin's son. Suggests the Seven Against Thebes troupe use Lili's photograph of Renaud to ask members of the public if they've seen him around.
- Nicolas (Marcel BozonnetMarcel BozonnetMarcel-Louis Bozonnet is a French actor born in Semur-en-Auxois on the 18 May 1944.Bozonnet entered the Comédie-Française in 1982, and became a "sociétaire" in 1986...
): Actor in Seven Against Thebes troupe. Vaguely knew Renaud and introduced him to the rest of the group. Also known as Arsenal, Papa, or Theo. - Papa (Marcel BozonnetMarcel BozonnetMarcel-Louis Bozonnet is a French actor born in Semur-en-Auxois on the 18 May 1944.Bozonnet entered the Comédie-Française in 1982, and became a "sociétaire" in 1986...
): Actor in Seven Against Thebes troupe. Vaguely knew Renaud and introduced him to the rest of the group. Also known as Arsenal, Nicolas, or Theo. - Pauline (Bulle OgierBulle OgierBulle Ogier is a French actress.Ogier's first appearance on screen was in Voilà l'Ordre, a short film directed by Jacques Baratier with a number of the then-emerging young singers of the 1960s in France, including Boris Vian, Claude Nougaro, etc.She worked with Jacques Rivette Bulle Ogier (born...
): Name that Emilie goes by at her store where local youths hang out. Colin meets her there and soon falls in love with her. She abandons the shop to retreat to Odabe. See Emilie. - Pierre (unseen): Member of the Thirteen. Author of letters to Colin. Correspondent in some of Etienne's letters who may be implicated in Igor's disappearance. Emilie threatens to send evidence of this to newspapers after she pays Frederique for the letters.
- Quentin (Pierre BaillotPierre BaillotPierre Marie François de Sales Baillot was a French violinist and composer.Baillot was born in Passy and studied the violin under Giovanni Battista Viotti...
): Actor in the Seven Against Thebes troupe. Father to Max. Wins a million francs in the lottery, which is promptly stolen during celebrations by Renaud. Attempts to find Renaud but fails, and joins Prometheus Bound troupe briefly afterwards. - Renaud (Alain Libolt): Brought in by Arsenal/Nicolas/Papa/Theo to help the Seven Against Thebes troupe, but gradually starts to exert more and more influence on the production to Lili's chagrin. Steals Quentin's million francs in lottery winnings during the troupe's celebration. Turns out to be Honey Moon's crush, which causes Frederique to find him. They have a blood marriage, but she soon suspects that he may be a member of a secret society (though ultimately it seems more likely to be a local gang, and not the Thirteen). He shoots her to death when she catches him off-guard.
- Rose (Christiane Corthay): Actress in Prometheus Bound troupe. Accompanies Thomas and Achille to Odabe and comforts him during some of his hysteric episode at the end.
- Sarah (Bernadette LafontBernadette LafontBernadette Lafont is a French actress and the mother of Pauline Lafont .Bernadette Lafont won the César Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for L'Effrontée...
): Writer residing in Emilie's Odabe home. Thomas asks her to help him with the direction of Prometheus Bound, and later has a threesome with her and Beatrice. She clashes with the group, which is a factor in the play's abandonment, along with Beatrice's departure due to personal factors. Member of the Thirteen, she doesn't trust Thomas and strenuously attempts (unsuccessfully) to intervene to prevent Emilie from sending Pierre's letters to the newspapers. Emilie later confides her love for Colin and Igor to her. - Theo (Marcel BozonnetMarcel BozonnetMarcel-Louis Bozonnet is a French actor born in Semur-en-Auxois on the 18 May 1944.Bozonnet entered the Comédie-Française in 1982, and became a "sociétaire" in 1986...
): Actor in Seven Against Thebes troupe. Vaguely knew Renaud and introduced him to the rest of the group. Also known as Arsenal, Nicolas, or Papa. - Thomas (Michael LonsdaleMichael LonsdaleMichael Lonsdale , sometimes billed as Michel Lonsdale, is a French actor who has appeared in over 180 films and television shows....
): Director of the Prometheus Bound troupe, formerly involved with Lili, in ambiguously romantic relationships with both Beatrice and Sarah during the course of the film. Asks Sarah to help him direct the play. After a threesome with Sarah and Beatrice, winds up abandoning it due to Sarah's friction with the group and Beatrice's unrelated departure. Member of the Thirteen. Destroys Emilie's letters incriminating Pierre. Proposes to reunite with Lili, but is rejected by her, which leads to his final hysteria on the beach. - Warok (Jean BouiseJean BouiseJean Bouise was a French actor. In the 1950s he helped to found Théâtre de la Cité, and was a player in the company. He entered films in the 1960s, and played a supporting roles in The Shameless Old Lady, Z, L'Aveu, Out 1 and The Return of the Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe, Section spéciale...
): Member of the Thirteen. Referred to in Etienne's letters. Both Frederique and Colin ask him about the group, but he denies all knowledge.
Style
Having worked with both 35 mm film35 mm film
35 mm film is the film gauge most commonly used for chemical still photography and motion pictures. The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 35 millimeters in width...
and 16 mm film
16 mm film
16 mm film refers to a popular, economical gauge of film used for motion pictures and non-theatrical film making. 16 mm refers to the width of the film...
in L'amour fou, Rivette was comfortable enough with the 16 mm format to easily work with it on Out 1, whose massive length financially precluded any serious attempt to shoot the whole film on 35 mm. Incredibly, despite the immense length of the final product, the film was shot under a tight shooting schedule of only six weeks. Rivette's preference for the long take
Long take
A long take is an uninterrupted shot in a film which lasts much longer than the conventional editing pace either of the film itself or of films in general, usually lasting several minutes. It can be used for dramatic and narrative effect if done properly, and in moving shots is often accomplished...
was the main reason why such a schedule could be maintained; as he wanted a level of realism to the performances, some of the takes include "fluffed" lines by actors, or other conventional "mistakes" such as camera and boom microphone shadows, as well as unwitting extras looking at the camera in exterior shots (including a memorable scene where two young boys doggedly follow Jean-Pierre Léaud in the middle of an extended monologue). Nonetheless, Rivette has stated that often the intimacy of performances in the face of such mistakes was precisely why he kept those takes in the film. Many of the rehearsal scenes, particularly those of the Prometheus Bound group, are composed almost entirely of long shots, although the film also contains more conventional editing pace in some other parts. The pacing of the film as a whole is also loosely based on Balzac, and the first few hours of the film are constructed more like a prologue in which the editing is slower and the characters are only introduced - it is not until three or four hours in that the ostensible motivating story lines begin to reveal themselves.
The work also includes stylistically adventurous techniques, including the shooting of extensively long shots through mirrors (again extending from work in L'amour fou), short cuts to black to punctuate otherwise continuous scenes, short cutaways to unrelated or seemingly meaningless shots, non-diegetic sounds blocking out crucial parts of dialogue, or even a conversation in which selected lines are re-edited so that they appear to be spoken backwards. However, these experiments form a fairly minimal part of the work as a whole, which is generally conventional in style (aside from the length of both takes and the whole work) and fairly easy to follow.
Exhibition
First shown as a work in progress at the Maison de la Culture in Le HavreLe Havre
Le Havre is a city in the Seine-Maritime department of the Haute-Normandie region in France. It is situated in north-western France, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Seine on the English Channel. Le Havre is the most populous commune in the Haute-Normandie region, although the total...
, the film was re-edited down to a four-hour "short" version called Out 1: Spectre, which is more accessible and available (although not widely). Richard Roud
Richard Roud
Richard Roud was an American writer on film and co-founder, with Amos Vogel, and a former program director and latterly director of the New York Film Festival from 1963 to 1987....
, writing in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, called this version "a mind-blowing experience, but one which, instead of taking one ‘out of this world’ as the expression has it, took one right smack into the world. Or into a world which one only dimly realised was there – always right there beneath the everyday world...the cinema will never be the same again, and nor will I." Few people have seen the full-length version, though it is championed by Chicago Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
, who compares it to Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature...
's Gravity's Rainbow
Gravity's Rainbow
Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern novel written by Thomas Pynchon and first published on February 28, 1973.The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest...
http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/0397/03147.html, and has included both Out 1: Noli me tangere and Out 1: Spectre in the 100 films singled out from his 1000 favourite films, published in his anthology Essential Cinema.
Out 1: Noli me tangere was restored in Germany in 1990 and was shown again at the Rotterdam and Berlin Film Festivals shortly thereafter. It disappeared again into obscurity until 2004, when both Noli me tangere and its shorter version Out 1: Spectre featured in the programme on
June 1-21, in the complete retrospective Jacques Rivette Viaggio in Italia di un metteur en scène organized by Deep A.C. and curated by Goffredo De Pascale in Rome Sala Trevi Centro Sperimentale and Naples Grenoble Institut. Then, only in April/May 2006 Rivette retrospective at London's National Film Theatre, with the shorter film also screening twice across two subsequent nights at Anthology Film Archives
Anthology Film Archives
__notoc__Anthology Film Archives is a film archive and theater located at 32 Second Avenue on the corner of East Second Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City devoted to the preservation and exhibition of experimental film. It is the only non-profit organization of its...
in New York City on the same April weekend as the NFT projection of the long work. The North American premiere of Noli me tangere took place on September 23 and 24, 2006 in Vancouver's Vancouver International Film Centre
Vancouver International Film Centre
The Vancouver International Film Centre houses the 175-seat Vancity Theatre, along with a production room and offices for the Vancouver International Film Festival...
organized by Vancouver International Film Festival
Vancouver International Film Festival
The Vancouver International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for two weeks in late September and early October...
programmer and Cinema Scope editor Mark Peranson, attended by around twenty people (22 at Peranson's initial count, before episode 1, though others came and went). A subsequent screening took place as a part of the 2006 festival over September 30 and October 1, introduced by Jonathan Rosenbaum.
The subtitled Out 1: Noli me tangere provides a particular challenge for exhibitors, as the subtitles are not burned onto the print of the film itself, as it commonplace with most foreign films shown in North America. Rather, the subtitles for Out 1, provided by the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
, are projected from a computer in a separate stream (in the Vancouver screening, just below the film itself), which then has to be synchronized with the film itself, almost certainly by someone unfamiliar with the entire Out 1. Few theatres can meet this technical challenge, especially over a thirteen hour span. In addition, the film was shot on 16mm at a nonstandard 25 frames per second, a speed few current projectors are equipped to handle. In the Vancouver screening, the film was projected at 24fps, adding about an extra half hour to the film as a whole.
Screenings of both the long and short works took place in late November and December 2006, during a large retrospective of Rivette's work which ran at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens
Astoria, Queens
Astoria is a neighborhood in the northwestern corner of the borough of Queens in New York City. Located in Community Board 1, Astoria is bounded by the East River and is adjacent to three other Queens neighborhoods: Long Island City, Sunnyside , and Woodside...
, New York City. The screening of the longer version was sold out for the December 9 and 10, 2006 screening, so the Museum held an encore performance of the film on March 3 and 4 in 2007 (which came close to selling out). It was shown on both occasions over 2 days. In interviews, Rivette has explicitly stated that the work is meant to be seen theatrically "on the big screen", and apparently dislikes it being watched on a television. Ironically, the preparation of the film in eight episodes was in large part due to the "naive hope", according to Rivette, of it originally being distributed like that on French television, although his disdain for that mode of exhibition only arose after the film's completion.
Title
Out 1 is known by many titles. Out 1: Noli me tangere, The frequently cited longer title of the film has its origins as a phrase written on the film canister of an early workprint. The longer title was commonly understood as the film's actual title until a finished print was made in 1989 for exhibition at the Rotterdam Film Festival and telecine transfer for TV broadcast. At that point Rivette asserted the title on-screen as simply Out 1. Out 1: Spectre is, however, the proper title of the shorter, four-hour variation of the film, which is nonetheless a completely separate and distinctive work rather than a simple shortened form of the longer film.External links
A list of reviews from the New York screening (June 2006):Vancouver (September & October 2006):
- Out 1 at Variety
- Out 1 at GreenCine Daily
- Out 1 at Senses of Cinema
New York (November 2006):
New York (February 2007)
Chicago (May 2007):
Los Angeles (July 2007):
- Out 1 at Film Journey
- Out 1 at Reverse Shot