• Rivette’s dedication to the visual motif of imprisonment, bars holding Anna Karina’s Suzanne is quite the formal achievement
  • Rivette’s second feature after 1961’s Paris Belongs To Us. Godard had made 9 features in that time- haha. Rivette has always been the long-form artist of the New Wave- this clocks in at over 140 minutes as well
  • handsome black and white drawings in the prelude, unlike most of the New Wave- this is an 18th century story—but certainly has a contemporary statement from Rivette
  • It is a nice resume builder for Anna Karina. Proves she’s more than just a muse for Godard—she has a cameo in Varda’s Cleo, but her other work in the archives is all with Godard prior to this. She’s in just about every scene here, and is very good throughout as the tortured Joan of Arc-like soul
  • Dozens of these behind bars prisoner shots—you have to admire Rivette’s dedication. This is certainly more like Bresson (half between Pickpocket with the visually behind bars motif and an actual prison escape procedural A Man Escaped) than New Wave

Rivette’s dedication to the visual motif of imprisonment, bars holding Anna Karina’s Suzanne is quite the formal achievement

This is certainly more like Bresson (half between Pickpocket with the visually behind bars motif and an actual prison escape procedural A Man Escaped) than New Wave

dozens of these– a masterful visual motif

  • Stark grays, rock, matching robes on the nuns… drained, like Karina’s performance (another Bressonian trait) mostly shot in interiors, very verbal

tark grays, rock, matching robes on the nuns… drained, like Karina’s performance (another Bressonian trait) mostly shot in interiors, very verbal

  • Long-form, repetitive, this is a procedural or treatise
  • Tossing her cell, certainly a prison film
  • She’s naïve, but Rivette is talking liberation and taking aim at systematic authority, government, hypocrisy
  • Second film now (Paris Belongs To Us, too)that a rigged deck— a web leading to death—conspiracy
  • A tragically beautiful final frame- laid out from the fall like Vertigo

A tragically beautiful final frame- laid out from the fall like Vertigo

  • Highly Recommend – top 10 of the year quality