Jacques Rivette, a leading figure in the French New Wave movement best known for experimental and challenging works, died Friday in Paris. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, according to his producer and friend Martine Marignac, and reported by the New York Times.
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A photo taken on November 13, 1984 shows French film director Jacques Rivette posing in Paris. French President François Hollande, in a statement announcing Mr. Rivette’s death, hailed him as “a cineaste of the woman”.
Like numerous innovative artists of the French New Wave, Rivette made his name as a critic for the esteemed Cahiers du Cinéma, where he wrote alongside such legends as Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and André Bazin. Serge Toubiana of the Cinematheque museum in Paris described Mr. Rivette’s “sense of conspiracy, sense of secrecy” and the “magnificent place” he provided to female characters.
Influential French filmmaker and critic Jacques Rivette, the director of such classics as Celine and Julie Go Boating, L’amour fou, and La Belle Noisuese, died today.
Known for his often-tousled hair and slight build, he was among the last survivors from a generation of directors that included Francois Truffaut who startled filmgoers and revitalized filmmaking in the 1950s and ’60s.
He said Rivette was a “woman’s director… offering major roles to actresses who made cinema history” such as Anna Karina, star of “The Nun”, a 1966 film that was initially banned because of its cynical view of the Roman Catholic Church. (His magnum opus, the 760-minute Out 1, screened at select cities for audiences of extremely devoted moviegoers a year ago.) But at the same time, his films don’t quite invite you in the same way as the New Wave staples mentioned above.
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Karina, a muse of Godard and his wife from 1961-65, was herself considered a pioneer of French New Wave.
