Paris Belongs to Us

This 1961 debut feature from the late French New Wave founding member Jacques Rivette makes its American home video debut in a beautiful Criterion edition. Long overshadowed by fellow filmmakers Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, and others, Rivette's idiosyncratic, collaborative films have generated renewed interest with the recent releases of his epic Out 1 and playful Le Pont du Nord, and viewers can see the birth of his themes and preoccupations in Paris Belongs to Us. Anne (Betty Schneider), a small-town girl attending school in Paris, becomes involved in a theater group led by the passionate but broke Gérard (Giani Esposito), whose rehearsals for Pericles must keep finding new spaces as cast members drop out. Anne is also introduced to a vague and vast international conspiracy by American-in-exile Philip (Daniel Crohem), a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who is fleeing the blacklist. The film hopscotches through Paris (some rehearsal spaces are marvelous little pockets hidden in the city) and spirals around itself while Anne plays detective searching for a missing musical recording, the last work by a deceased Spanish guitarist. Where other films of the New Wave look to the future, this is an accomplished, engaging, fascinating portrait of Paris at the end of the 1950s as the arts seem mired in tradition, and political and social energy is suppressed at all levels (also look for filmmakers Claude Chabrol and Godard in small roles). A minor classic, newly restored, extras here include Rivette's 1956 short film Le coup du berger, an interview with film historian Richard Neupert, and an essay by critic Luc Sante. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)