Out 1 [Part 2]. 1971. France. Directed by Jacques Rivette, Suzanne Schiffman. With Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Michael Lonsdale. DCP courtesy Kino Lorber. In French and English; English subtitles. 776 min.
Prepare yourself for an unforgettable moviegoing experience: a marathon screening of Jacques Rivette’s ultimate film maudit. Out 1 represents the summa of all cinematic improvisations, with Rivette inviting his principal actors, including Bulle Ogier and Juliet Greco, to spend months dreaming up their own characters—how they spoke, moved, clothed themselves—and then serving as the medium (as in a séance), or mediator (as in a power struggle), in a filmed series of improvised encounters unified by the most mysterious and elusive of plots. Jean-Pierre Léaud, as a young hustler who pretends to be deaf and mute to cadge money in Paris cafés, finds himself inexplicably lured into a strange world of encoded messages involving Balzac’s The Thirteen and Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, underground political collectives, and actors rehearsing the plays of Aeschylus. Out 1 is at once utopian—the seaside house of the novelist offers the illusion of freedom from tyrannical authorship—and an expression of post-1968 disillusionment with all revolutionary pipe dreams.
Out 1 will be presented in two parts, over two days, with 10-minute intermissions between each episode. Below, please find an approximate screening schedule:
Day Two approximate screening schedule:
Episode 5: 1:00 PM start
Episode 6: 2:40 PM start
Episode 7: 4:30 PM start
Episode 8: 6:20 PM start (ending approx. 7:45 PM)