‘Out 1’ or — Through The Looking Gl(ass)?
It starts with the most provocative shot possible — a group of French theatre actors showing their bottoms to camera. For a 13 hour long, impenetrable, improvised film that takes quite some gall (Gaul?) and seems to be riling us up from the get-go with Parisian avant-garde insouciance thrust in our faces. But this is necessary as if you think that’s provoking the audience then wait until you’ve sat through the 45 minute-long experimental and improvised theatre exercises, monologues about Balzac and mathematics or extended scenes involving Hugo Drax from ‘Moonraker’ drinking champagne to celebrate the arrival of a tortoise as Jacques Rivette’s ‘Out 1’ (1971) is pure, 100% un-cut French cinema so it might as well start as it means to go on… and on… and on.
The “story” (ha, ha, ha) concerns two theatre groups who appear to be loosely connected and not just because they are each rehearsing Aeschylus plays; one ‘Prometheus Bound’ and the other ‘Seven Against Thebes’. Both are aiming to get behind the meaning of the plays, to strip away as much of the text as possible to reveal, if possible, a contemporary and/or authentic meaning. Meanwhile a mute and deaf young man called Colin is annoying customers in cafes playing his harmonica for money until he is given a message consisting of cryptic passages of Balzac and Lewis Carroll that hints at a secret society operating in Paris called ‘The Thirteen’ whilst pretty, petty criminal Frederique, who fleeces men for cash, gets inadvertently drawn into this world too after stealing some letters containing potentially explosive information.
Will the plays get performed? Will they even finish the rehearsals?! Will the Thirteen destroy the world? How much playing of the bongo drums can a human being take? Will you want to slit your wrists if you have to sit through another improvised acting workshop? And what will happen to the tortoise? Find out the answers to all this and more in Jacques Rivette’s ‘Out 1’!
For the uninitiated this film could seem like an interminable chore and sitting through it feeling like being indoctrinated into a cult itself. Do people only claim to like this film because they’ve been brainwashed by its pummelling nature? For the initiated there is a vast amount to enjoy here and is typically Rivettian with his usual themes and ideas at play. Indeed, what with a secret society operating in Paris, the dividing of the city into sections along with the use of altered maps and children’s games to navigate the metropolis ‘Out 1’ fits very much between Rivette’s ‘Paris Nous Appartient’ (1961) and his later ‘Le Pont du Nord’ (1981).
It also shares very similar territory to the post-sixties anti-paranoia (and it is anti-paranoia as even the film suggests this is all a game and let’s not take any of this too seriously after all and remember those bottoms) of Thomas Pynchon as conspiracy and systems of secret messages clash against self-deflating humour. And this is a very funny movie. There’s a excellent scene early on (well, about three hours in so early on in context) involving Eric Rohmer explaining the work of Balzac so when I say “very funny” it all depends on how you interpret the words “very funny”.
‘Out 1’ also predates a lot of Umberto Eco’s ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’ as secret societies vibrate on the cusp of being as symbols and texts are frantically deciphered, even the by use of a pendulum at one point. And let’s not forget Rivette’s love of Fritz Lang — this is a cloak and dagger story after all. Oh, and is Colin’s use of a harmonica in any way connected to Sergio Leone? It is pointed out that his ‘Once Upon a Time in The West’ (1968) is playing in the cinema across the street after all. And if you ever suspected David Lynch was a Rivette fan then wait until you get to the backwards talking scene.
The big reference here, though, is Lewis Carroll especially in ‘Out 1’s use of mirrors. We are introduced to the second theatre group by way of its reflection and there’s the fact that certain characters have duel identities, identities that seem to be annihilated by mirrors. Is this another stripping away of artifice in a search of “truth” or are these the dreaded devourers we have been warned of? Pauline/Emile in particular should be careful especially as her name(s) has been foreshadowed with the concept of infinity earlier on Colin’s chalk-board.
And what of those extended rehearsal sequences? Possibly there is to show process at work? A kinaesthetic breaking down for both performers and, by proxy, the audience? Or, as Michael Lonsdale quotes from ‘Prometheus Bound’ — “I have made creatures with the gifts of reason and reflection. Before, human beings saw without seeing, listened without hearing, and like the shapes of dreams, muddled everything up throughout their lives.” Either way, this film is a chance to see a level and depth of acting exploration not usually glimpsed in a movie and all the actors here are impressive. Although I want to take a brief moment to talk about Juliet Berto in particular who, for me, steals the movie (she is, after all, a petty thief). She’s simply wonderful as she lopes around Paris with a long-legged, louche, insolent strut as though she’s a marionette of Mick Jagger operated by Audrey Hepburn. She also has the film’s funniest lines with anyone acting opposite her struggling, and sometimes failing, to not laugh at what she comes out with. It’s worth sitting through this movie alone just for her.
‘Out 1’ is like nothing else and is a remarkable and engrossing experience, although if you’re familiar with Rivette’s work then none of this will be too much of a surprise. Still, you might be scratching your head and tearing your hair out after three or four hours in its company even if, by the end, you might not be wanting it to stop… ever. You’ll have become part of the group and you never even noticed. Or the whole thing could be a joke. But if it’s a joke then, to quote Colin — “In that case the entire magical, mysterious world in which I move would be shattered in a moment.”
Then again the movie might not be anything more than a bunch of pretentious French actors showing us their bottoms. For me, though, it is important to have movies this artistically uncompromising around in cinema, forever standing guard like a sentinel at one of the seven sectors protecting us from compromise and banality. Maybe that’s what that final shot is all about?
