Paris nous appartient

This is an unusual film. It revolves around a group of characters that are slightly connected to each other through their artistic tendencies and/or political beliefs. The group is presented well - it is quite realistic, even though it is so colourful. This is perhaps because the criteria for being part of the group are so 'normal'. Friends, people with similar interests.. acquaintance networks - this is something that is presented very well in the film.

A sinister undercurent pervades the whole movie: a background plot that is never revealed, or shown directly - it is something that the characters speak to each other about and make reference to. While in other movies the conspiracy plot would have been the central theme, here it is pushed into the background, delegated to a simple object of discussion - the movie instead revolves around the lives of the characters and in particular, the protagonist's, from whose point of view the situation is seen. By bringing the focus onto the characters and their daily lives, illusions and aspirations, the movie manages to to breathe fresh life into what would have otherwise been just another conspiracy film.

A few technical things: The acting is not very consistent. The parisian scenes were very good and the photography was aesthetically pleasing. The music enhanced the atmosphere significantly, though some of its psychedelic overtowns were a bit overpowering at points (making the dialogue hard to follow - if the intention was to transfer the confusion/paranoia to the viewer, it was appropriate, however).

It's not a masterpiece, but it is definitely interesting and worth watching at least once.

Rivette is perhaps the least known of the 5 Cahiers directors of the New Wave. I've only seen The Nun before and I enjoyed it. This first feature was disappointing to me. Great location work and photography but way too long. Basically a pretty, naive girl gets involved with a bunch of pretentious a-holes who suggest a suicide was a murder and she tries to play amateur detective. Not in the sense an American film like this would. It's mostly her confronting different people who tell her enough to keep her interested but no evidence is found. The film mentions creeping fascism in the forms of McCarthyism in the US and the Franco regime in Spain. But is it all just paranoia? By the end, I could care less and it turned out to be much ado over nothing (Shakespeare). I don't get what this film was trying to achieve. I assume Rivete was a leftist so is he criticizing them or supporting them? Might have been better with the running time cut and a new ending. This isn't The 400 Blows or breathless or even Le Beau Surge.

Anne Goupil (Betty Schneider) is a literature student in Paris in 1957. Her elder brother, Pierre, takes her to a friend's party where the guests include Philip Kaufman, an expatriate American escaping McCarthyism, and Gerard Lenz, a theater director who arrives with the mysterious woman Terry.

Begun in 1957 and completed three years later, it was then-critic Jacques Rivette's first full-length film as a director and one of the first works of the French New Wave, though it was not released theatrically until 1961. Oddly, it seems to be one of the lesser-known today, despite being a fascinatingly odd mystery.

Apparently many people say this film is "like a David Lynch movie". That similarity is there, so I appreciate that... but then the question becomes, does that mean that David Lynch films are "like a Jacques Rivette movie" since Rivette came first by quite a few years?

:It's 1957. Betty Schneider is a student who gets involved in small acting troupe. As the rehearsals proceed, she notices odd things, and begins to suspect some secret organization is responsible for the death of the American journalist, novelist and music composer for the show, Daniel Crohem.

Jacques Rivette's first feature shows the gelid calm that appeared in most of his movies. with politics and assassination merging in a manner that Hollywood would only tackle in the 1970s.... usually with an air of hysteria. There are a lot of shots around Paris that makes the city a cynical observer of these human goings-on, a subjective camera that views the affair with contempt. I wonder how cameraman Charles Bitsch got that effect.

If you like David Lynch's films, you might enjoy "Paris nous appartient". After having seen it, I still did not know what it was really about. This film develops an atmosphere of sheer mystery, which will never be solved completely. On the other hand, it also touches the political situation of the 50s. The overall existence of conspiracy is very appealing, as is the innocent character of Anne. Music and camerawork are very unusual, the latter making the film rank among the best of the European New Wave.

9 out of 10.