Paris nous appartient (1960) - film review

At a party, literature student Anne Goupil meets Philip Kaufman, a refugee from McCarthyist America, and Gérard Lenz, a theatre director. Gérard is accompanied by a young woman, Terry, who reveals that her boyfriend, a Spaniard, recently killed himself.  Intrigued and determined to discover the reason for the suicide, Anne joins Gérard’s theatre company, who are rehearsing a performance of Shakespeare’s play Percicles.   Philip reveals that the Spaniard was the victim of an international terrorist organisation and that Gérard is to be their next victim...

Along with Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge and François Truffaut’s Les Quatre cent coups, Paris nous appartient marks the debut of another great director of the French New Wave, this time Jacques Rivette.    For his first full length film, Rivette combines a familiar thriller theme with that distinctively fresh New Wave blend of contemporary realism and visual poetry.

Lacking the funds to make the film, Rivette relied heavily on his friends to give him financial and moral support.  He borrowed money from Les cahiers du cinéma , the film review magazine on which he worked with Truffaut, Chabrol and Godard, whilst Chabrol and Truffaut supplied him with a camera and film.  The film started as a something of a hobby in the summer of 1958 and was not released until 1960.  Despite its rough and ready feel, Paris nous appartient is widely regarded as one of the seminal films of the French New Wave.

© James Travers 2002

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