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With Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette is considered to be the most experimental of the French New Wave directors. Like Godard, he had a background in film criticism, but he also loved popular American cinema, especially genre directors such as Robert Aldrich and Frank Tashlin.

Rivette's stories progress in unconventional ways - often following multiple plot lines that can be romantic, mysterious, and comic all at once and employing extensive improvisation. As a result, his films are often extremely long ( the infamous Out 1 clocked in at 13 hrs, although a 4 1/2 hour cut was later produced.) and many of them are rarely seen.

In 1950, Rivette joined the Ciné-Club du Quartier Latin, and began to write film criticism for the Gazette du Cinema, a small film journal. During this time, he made his first short films, Aux Quatre Coins (1950), Le Quadrille (1950), and Le Divertissment (1952). In '52, Rivette began to write for Cahiers du Cinema with several other young critics who would form the core of the French New Wave: Eric Rohmer , Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Claude Chabrol. Rivette championed American directors of the 40's and 50's, specifically the work of Howard Hawks, John Ford, Nicholas Ray, and Fritz Lang. In 1958, he began to work on his first feature using the borrowed equipment and short ends of film stock. He finished Paris Nous Apparteint two years later.

Filmography

• Aux Quatre Coins (1949)
• Le Quadrille (1950)
• Le Divertissement (1952)
• Coup du berger (Fools Mate, 1956)
• Paris Nous Appartient (Paris Belongs To Us, 1960)
• La Religieuse (The Nun, 1966)
• L'Amour fouL'amour fou Jacques Rivette, 1969 The plot of L'amour fou is quite thin. It follows the dissolution of a marriage between Claire, an actress (brilliantly played by Bulle Ogier), and Sebastien, her director (Jean-Pierre Kalfon). It is black and white with (1969)
• Out 1 (Out 1: Noli me tangere, 1971)
• Out 1: Spectre (1972)
• Céline et Julie vont en bateauCeline et Julie vont en bateau (also "Celine and Julie Go Boating" Jacques Rivette, 1974) Celine and Julie Go Boating is a hypnotic, circular film, which starts slowly with the meeting of Julie (Dominique Labourier), a shy librarian, and Celine (Juliet Be (Celine and Julie Go Boating, 1974)
• Duelle (Twilight, 1976)
• Noroît (Northwest Wind, 1976)
• Le Pont du Nord (1982)
• L’amour par terre (Love on the Ground, 1984)
• Hurlevent (Wuthering Heights, 1985)
• La bande des quatre (The Gang of Four, 1988)
• La belle noiseuse (The Beautiful Troublemaker, 1991)
• Jeanne la Pucelle (Jeanne the Maid, 1994)
• Haut bas fragile (Up Down Fragile, 1995)
• Secret défense (Secret Defense, 1998)
• Va savoir (Who Knows, 2001)
• Histoire de Marie et Julien (The Story of Marie and Julien, 2003)