Le Pont du Nord (1981) User Reviews

Wide Open Spaces

[nrogershancock · 8/10 · 19 August 2009]

Alright, this must be said: as difficult as they are to see in many countries, the series of films Rivette made from "Amour Fou" to "Merry Go Round" are some of the most amazing, magisterial works of that decade, of all time even. "Le Pont Du Nord" is at the tail end of this streak, and is a minor achievement in comparison. However.

Even minor Rivette is fascinating, and the prospect of a female Quixote traveling through a late 70s Paris in a period of destruction/reconstruction, with call backs to the radical '60s (and a sly nod to Fassbender's "Third Generation"), and a score by Astor Piazzola, is enough to make anyone excited. There is something else, too, that I have not seen much commented on; the friendship between the two female leads, related as they were in real life, is a genuine pleasure to watch, and exists somewhere other than acting as we are used to thinking of it. Generally recommended, for fans of the director and the performers,I would say very strongly recommended, no hesitation.

About fictions and steps that pave the way out

[chaos-rampant · 30 January 2016]

I saw this in memory of Jacques Rivette who passed away the other day, a wandering soul who paved the way for so many cinematic walks.

Here he retraces steps he had already taken before, two girls daydreaming a life of adventure around Paris in Celine and Julie, a grid of fictions and elusive conspiracy unfolding across the city as he favored since his very first. There are watchers throughout the city, a satchel full of newspaper clippings - stories within stories - and a map that points at symbolic reality.

The deliberate obliqueness - the daydreamed sense - is of course always Rivette's tool of suspending burdensome logic but we don't really cross beyond here to something alive, we spend a bit too much time stuck in the map. He traces these steps without the freshness of a first time, without making his way finally to a clearing that will open up a sense of meaningful horizon.

The part that captivates me is the one that echoes Celine and Julie. Two girls once more, one reading from a book and summoning the other, brash one as her fairy guide in a world of fictions and rituals, both of them lovely. It's the sense of reverie in the walking around; for Rivette - a cinematic flaneur - the city has to be walked in order to yield its insight. The insight is in the train tracks that lead out, atop the Arc, in the construction developments at the outskirts of Paris where, now at the outskirts of fiction, the world is a mass of gaping and colorless structures. It's one of the most roaming films.

The last scene is a container on its own right for Rivette's purpose and unlocks the whole; a mock karate fight where the opponent is unseen, there are set motions and steps to take, it accomplishes really nothing, except the fictional enactment loosens up the spontaneous experience of playing in this way, which can only take place because story has been exhausted and we have finally arrived at the end of the maze. Or is it the shape fiction takes when unburdened anymore by any plot about money? Or does it escape from the fact that someone has just been murdered? In the French semiotic sense these mean one and the same, layers of an onion.

Mysterious and fascinating city of Paris...

[Masako-2 · 10/10 · 26 February 2000]

This is one of the most fascinating films I've ever seen. Since then, I became a serious devotee of the director Jacques Rivette, the most important filmmaker among late/post nouvelle vauge other than Eric Rohmer. While borrowing the main two characters from Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, they are trailing the city as if they were exploring inside the shell of a snail, which the city is actually constructed. The film shows you amazing scenery of Paris, absolutely not in a touristic sense. In this film, Bulle Ogier co-worked with her daughter Pascale Ogier, who played the heroine in "Les Nuits de la pleine lune" by Eric Rohmer, another unforgettable film and suddenly passed away at the age of 24, right after the film was released.

Paris as star

[pstumpf · 5/10 · 28 March 2007]

Rivette in minor, self-imitative mode (echoes of "Duelle" and "Celine et Julie vont en bateau"), exploring one of his usual obsessions - a suspected vast conspiracy, uncovered and struggled against by glamorous looking women. Carelessly plotted and filmed (the boom makes frequent appearances at the top of the frame, and one wishes that the clangorous "natural" soundtrack had been cleaned up, at least of traffic noise), the film's best aspect is the Parisian setting - here, a city seemingly under assault by developers - many of the locations are in a state of decay, transition or destruction - this is not the Paris seen either by tourists or in most movies. As Marie LaFee (Bulle Ogier) has just been released from a year's sentence, she finds it impossible to breathe when she enters an interior; hence, there is not a single indoor shot in the movie (apart from a brief elevated train trip, and a night spent in a parked car - and even these are open to the outdoors). After encountering Baptiste (Pascale Ogier) three times (according to Baptiste: once is accident, twice is chance, three times is fate), Marie pairs up with this strange young woman who fancies herself as Marie's protector from the all-seeing "Maxes" (spies who are everywhere). Marie encounters her former lover Julien (Pierre Clementi) and the two women deduce (from a briefcase full of newspaper clippings, and a map of Paris divided into 64 segments) that he is involved in some sort of conspiracy; all three are followed by a threatening, but ineffectual, "Max" (Jean-Francois Stevenin). There are elements of fairy tales (the lions, the "dragon" in the playground) and sci-fi (the "eyes" which Baptiste feels compelled to slash, the spider web), but, despite the pervasive humorlessness, it's hard to take this movie seriously. The whole thing seems like a silly trifle, concocted primarily for the amusement of the participant's - especially at the end, when Rivette seems to abandon the film completely and simply keeps the camera rolling on a martial arts lesson between two of the actors.

Still, worth seeing for Paris and the always wonderful Bulle Ogier. Rivette is never uninteresting, even when he's not entirely successful.

Seen March 27, 2007 at Florence Gould Hall at the French Institute, NYC.

Rivette's flight of fancy

[lor_ · 6 January 2023]

"Le pont du nord" is an overlong but enticing adventure of two women wandering on the familiar-looking streets of Paris, which within the film's internal logic, amount to a fantasyland. Though improvised, picture boasts strong continuity and a fresh unpredictability which should grab and hold the attention of arthouse audiences while, in common with most of director Jacques Rivette's previous games-playing films, eluding the grasp of general fans.

Bulle Ogier toplines as Marie, a newly-released convicted bank robber with vague terrorist background (resembling her role in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1979 "The Third Generation"). She bumps into Baptiste (Pasale Ogier), a strange young girl who attaches herself to Marie in rather aimless strolling around the French capital. Duo become involved with gangsters Julien (PIerre Clementi) has a briefcase containing a strange map of the city and files on political scandals. A mysterious figure whom Baptiste names Max (Jean-Francois Stevenin) also tails the duo.

Using excellent sound recording to create atmosphere, Rivette unfolds his spare narrative very slowly, finally emphasizing Marie's futile attempts to make sense of her (and Baptiste's) predicament by imagining a large-scale board game (according to the strange map) in which various areas are traps and which offers both danger and potential prizes to them as players. Her overactive imagination combines with Baptiste's paranoia and violent behavior to create tragic results when it turns out the gangsters are not playing games.

Bulle Ogier gives a riveting performance as a woman trying to escape her past and start fresh. Pascale Ogier (her real-life daughter) has a showy first starring role in features here, but her deadpan expression combined with physical volatility becomes dull through repetition and Rivette's unwillingness to condense his material. Her paranoia, imagining spies monitoring everyone and her violent attacking of eyes on posters which seem to be staring at her is a strong motif, which Rivette reinforces with the sound of whirring helicopters overhead and eerie surveillance camera footage at film's end.

Shooting entirely on exteriors, Rivette manages to inject a bit of explicit fantasy via a fire-breathing dragon, guarding the North Bridge, which Baptiste manages to quell with a "Tin Drum" style piercing scream. William Lubtchansky's 16mm visuals have been blown up to 35mm effectively.

Of all the critically-acclaimed directors of the French Nouvelle Vague (including Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle, Claude Chabrol and Alain Resnais), Rivette has never received the approval of the general public. "Le Pont du Nord" will please his relatively small following but remains too private and obscure to win new converts.

My review was written in October 1981 at the New York Film Festival.