Paris nous appartient
For the longest time I believed that “À bout de souffle” is Godard’s most acclaimed movie, and TSPDT seems to agree with me, but there are quite a few lists which prefer “Le Mépris” and “Pierrot le Fou”. For Truffaut’s “400 Coups” it’s the same time – there something about these very young Nouvelle Vague directors that start off making low budget but wonderful movies and then move onto comparably less interesting stuff. Maybe this is just those magical years of 1959-1961 where people just looked awesome, and Paris was the most beautiful city in the world. Actually Paris still looks like that, and “Paris nous appartient” is a rather unknown film. So what I just said may not apply to all Nouvelle Vague films.
I am surprised by how unknown “Paris nous appartient” is. Sure, it doesn’t really make sense but I already said that about “Céline et Julie”. In terms of storyline though, I don’t think it is anymore confusing than, say, “The Big Sleep”. Rivette is trying to put a lot into his first movie – existentialism, film noir atmosphere, drama, love and murder – but to me, it never felt like too much. Maybe sometimes I would get confused about who is who in the film, but by focusing rather strongly on the Gérard-Anne-Terry triangle, it’s actually not that bad. Most of all, though, I thought that the film looked perfectly Nouvelle-Vague-ish – a little imperfect, very stylish and rather playful in the way it approaches filmmaking. You can clearly see how strongly they influenced each other in their Cahiers du Cinéma Gentlemen’s Club before they all diverged into doing different things (Truffaut especially, I mean “Le Dernier Métro” had nothing to do with “Les 400 Coups”), and I love witnessing these influences. Except for Truffaut’s first movie, all of the others seem to be very obsessed with life and death (mostly death); it is no different here, and all of them effortlessly combine a lightness in leading their lives with the heaviness of potential death.
Originally I saw the film because it said somewhere Rivette was filming it at the Cité Universitaire. Well, I did not see a single shot in the that looked like the Cité U, but it matters little. I suppose the film was all about being a student. Actually we did lead lives like that when we were in Paris. Luckily none of it involved suicides, but the small student-ish rooms, the talky parties – it’s a pretty good portrait of student life with its many voices and thoughts. I kind of miss these conversations in which people talk way too much but even if 10% of it is worthwhile I would still feel like I learned something new.
Much like “Céline et Julie” I suspect that all of Rivette’s movies are strange, almost surreal pieces that are essentially unwatchable unless you are into this kind of stuff like me. To my sense of style, “Paris nous appartient” is the second most esthetic Nouvelle Vague film after “À bout de souffle” and that certainly means something. It’s totally underrated.
Some bullets:
- I tried to pay attention to people’s style here. (After all, Patricia’s boyish style in “À bout de souffle” is rather relevant.) Somehow Anne seems to dress differently than all the other girls – her top/skirt combination has a somewhat different cut and make her look less… sexy? In any case it establishes her as an outsider, I feel.
- Terry is probably the least active femme fatale I have ever seen in a noir. Sure, this is not really a film noir, but unlike Anne who is at least actively looking for cues, Terry seems awfully passive. All she does is being a little mean.
- I really liked seeing Jean-Claude Brialy here. As another Jean-something of the Nouvelle Vague, I enjoyed him in “Une femme est une femme” immensely. Too bad his character Jean-Marc never really got to do anything.
- I knew that the film features a lot of cameo appearances of Godard, Demy and the likes, but I couldn’t find them. After all, I don’t really know how they look like.
- Is Shakespeare’s Pericles actually any good?