Paris nous appartient

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.

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.

We have a rather intimidating tappestry here at first sight, about a web of Parisian lives connected to each other and informed by a bunch of nested references. To a mysterious suicide and a missing sound tape, to a staging of a Shakespeare play as mirror of the film we are watching, to shadowy conspiracies supposedly pulling the strings of what we see from a higher, unseen level.

So we have a film-within, as often with Nouvelle Vague, but also a film without. Or better yet, the film we are watching as devised by unseen minds above shaping its world. Bridged by actors (and non-actors) who act parts knowingly or unknowingly, who may be chess pawns moved in turn by other pawns. The idea is that eventually we never get to find out how much of what we saw was this game and whether or not the game was imagined or masking a sinister plot.

So far so good, a complex film in which to superimpose the various grids. Yet at the same time not so complex after all, rather obvious in how it handles us the various keys.

For example; describing the play he's staging, the director says that he welcomes the challenge of bringing order to the convoluted mesh of different roles, that the world of the play is chaotic but not absurd. Does anyone have doubts that we're watching a surrogate Rivette describe the film? Then the stuff about conspiracies. The idea is of course that they may or may not be true, yet in getting there we are treated with naive politics about money ruling the world, a policed, monitored world.

In the finale we get some rather interesting insinuations about where the mind conspiring for answers in the face of an uncertain world leads us. When anything is imagined to be possibly true, nothing is.

The one notion that holds some actual power in all this, is precisely the one that is not explicit. A film noir plot elusively unraveling in the background of so much distraction, about a mistress and her ex-lover arranging murders as suicides. Why, to what end, again open ends. We may or may not imagine this, but this ambiguity is ours.

We would later find in the films of David Lynch and Raoul Ruiz all this situated back in the imaginative mind, where all our fanciful storytelling begins and where the illusionary images (bent by desire) we use to represent reality are born. In more cinematic ways, more fluid. This maintains the appearance of an ordinary world, it's talky, and the camera is not adventurous. It's never really dangerous, except until too late, or passionately engaged in its codas.

But one of the places this mode begins is here, in nascent form. Earlier yet, it was film noir, which the film references and even innovates in an important way, ingenious for its time (by making the noir plot the vague inference, and the karmic forces of noir the explicit reference and actively recognized by the characters). Although it often appeared clearcut and about a simple crime, it was riskier stuff in the right hands.

(A few more words on this: with noir we view a threatening cityscape where cast upon it are shadows of the mind, illusions of desire about a woman or money which in turn distort what is perceived of reality. With the post-noir landscapes (such as in Lynch), we experience instead the world of the mind - now the shadows are inverted, they're pieces of reality which seep back as filmic devices, which the mind arranges into a movie plot that sustains the illusion! This is for me one of the most fascinating journeys available in cinema, from Shangai to Inland Empire, and Rivette's film may not have refined as much but it's an important link in the transition.)

This is the second Rivette movie i watch, previous one was "La Belle Noiseuse". LBN is a better movie. PARIS BELONG TO US is a very strange movie but that's something everyone can guess just reading the synopsis and the plot. One can say there are political undertones here or a "Lynchian" vibe, even Kafkaesque. Whereas i don't necessarily disagree, i would say that this is not that political/cryptic/nightmarish. It's more drama than mystery and most of the questions were answered in the ending, even though the answers are not so satisfying.

In any case, i liked it a lot. Pace is very good for a 140 minutes French art movie of the 60's. It's interesting, it made me invest and i was curious to see where it goes. Great as a time capsule, Paris was wonderful. Actors are great. This is one of the movies that you should watch a second time for understanding it completely. I won't though. It's good but it is not THAT good. Pace was good as i said but it should have been at least 10-15 minutes shorter. For a 140 minutes movie, it should have been more intriguing to call it a great movie. And the ending was probably clever but i didn't like it, so much for nothing.

But there was some brilliant dialogue here. Way too cynical for its time of course. I think this is a timeless movie, hasn't aged a bit. Less obscure than it seems. If this description made you curious too, watch it, you won't be disappointed.

It's like the New Wave version of a mystery/conspiracy thriller, and in that regard it works really well. The black and white cinematography suits the tone perfectly, even if the very poor quality of the film makes it hard to tell, and it's supported by some disorienting editing and a great use of light and shadows. There's also a really terrific score, probably one of the best for this genre. Even though the film runs 140 minutes, it never really feels boring, as the conversations between characters are gripping enough to keep the viewer's interest. The story is rather strange, as it appears to be non-linear and occasionally irrelevant, but it seems to work out at the end. However, unfortunately, the end is a complete disappointment, as it attempts to hammer home some political viewpoints that just end up being confusing, and then coasts to a unsatisfactory finish without really tying up any of the loose ends. It's an interesting watch, and you could do a lot worse, but it's no masterpiece.