L'amour fou. 1969. France. Directed by Jacques Rivette. Written by Marilù Parolini, Rivette. With Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Josée Destoop. 35mm. In French; English subtitles. 252 min.
“...a cinema which does not impose anything, where one tries to suggest things, to let them happen, where it is mainly a dialogue at every level, with the actors, with the situation, with the people you meet, where the act of filming is part of the film itself. ...The film itself is only the residue, where I hope something remains. What was exciting was creating a reality which began to have an existence of its own, independently of whether it was being filmed or not, then to treat it as an event that you're doing a documentary on, keeping only certain aspects of it, from certain points of view, according to chance or to your ideas, because, by definition, the event always overwhelms in every respect the story or the report one can make out of it. ...The fact that at one time there was a camera in front of some people, which made them act in a certain way, and everything they may have thought or said or done at that time no longer has any importance. It is dead and gone; the only thing that counts is what remains, and what remains is a crystallization of it...It's the moment when you pass from the stage of raw recorded reality into the dimensions of a film: that's the point where you have the greatest responsibility, because that is when the film -- whether you like it or not -- is going to start to 'say' something. But it, itself, must say it, not me nor anyone else.” - Jacques Rivette, from Cahiers du Cinema, No. 204 (1968)