Celine and Julie Go Boating

Céline et Julie vont en bateau

In a world organized in pairs of opposites, a librarian who loves metaphysical experiments happens to meet a performer who makes a living by doing magic tricks. The two become fast friends and roam around Paris, seeking in the most unexpected places the solution to a riddle that haunts an otherworldly mansion – the house of fiction, where a mysterious spectacle that holds a young girl hostage unfolds each day. Fast-flowing as the bed of the Seine, psychotropic and imaginative, delirious yet elaborately structured and calculated down to the last continuity edit, dreamlike and carnal, this fascinating cinematic game by the most overlooked Nouvelle Vague filmmaker reintroduces us to familiar ghosts, while seeming to take us on a tour of the outside world for the first time. A unique cinematic experience, a truly special case in the history of cinema, it continues to inspire new narratives while reproducing itself from within like a Russian doll on each new viewing.
Screening Schedule

No physical screenings scheduled.

Direction: Jacques Rivette
Script: Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Bulle Ogier, Marie-France Pisier, Jacques Rivette, Barbet Schroeder, Eduardo de Gregorio
Cinematography: Jacques Renard
Editing: Nicole Lubtchansky
Sound: Paul Laine
Music: Jean-Marie Senia
Actors: Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Bulle Ogier, Marie-France Pisier, Barbet Shroeder, Philippe Clevenot, Jean Douchet
Production: Les Films du Losange
Co-production: Action Films, Les Films Christian Fechner, Les Films 7, Renn Production, Saga, Simar Production, V.M. Production
Costumes: Jean-Luc Berne, Pierre D’Alby, Laurent Vicci
Make Up: Ronaldo Abreu
Format: DCP
Color: Color
Production Country: France
Production Year: 1974
Duration: 192'
Contact: Les Films du Losange
Awards/Distinctions: Special Jury Prize – Locarno IFF 1974

Jacques Rivette

As François Truffaut wrote, the New Wave began "thanks to Rivette.” Rivette, like Rohmer, was something of a late bloomer as a director. He shot his first film in 1958. Without the financial benefit of a producer, Rivette took to the streets with his friends, a 16mm camera, and film stock purchased on borrowed money. It was only, however, after the commercial success of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959), Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), and Godard’s Breathless (1960) that the resulting film, the elusive, intellectual, and somewhat lengthy Paris Belongs to Us, saw its release in 1960. His next film, the considerably more commercial The Nun (1966), was an adaptation of the Diderot novel that Rivette had staged in 1963. Rivette’s true talents first made themselves visible during the fruitful period 1968–74. During this time he directed the four-hour L’amour fou (1969), the legendary 13-hour Out 1 (1971), and the three-hour Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), his most entertaining and widely seen picture. Since Celine and Julie Go Boating, Rivette's career has been as mysterious as one of his plots. In 1976, he received an offer to make a series of four films, Les Filles du Feu. Rivette continued to be an innovative and challenging artist until the end of his career.

Filmography

1961 Paris Belongs to Us
1966 The Nun
1974 Celine and Julie Go Boating
1980 Merry-Go-Round
1985 Wuthering Heights
1989 Gang of Four
1994 Joan the Maiden
1998 Top Secret
2003 The Story of Marie and Julien
2009 Around a Small Mountain