My buddy Andrew O’Hehir, the intrepid “Beyond the Multiplex” explorer at Salon, is now also heading up that site’s Film Salon, which kicked off just a week or so back. He’s gathered an impressive and eclectic group of contributors to answer the question “What was your favorite film of the decade?” Not the greatest, or best, or whatnot, but favorite. It’s an interesting approach to a potentially hackneyed theme, and the responses thus far have been interesting, memorable. My answer, about a film my regular readers know I’ve been raving about and maintaining as a touchstone for years, is here. Andrew’s waggish sense of humor is reflected by the piece that he placed directly below my own, which, I must say, contains the most hilarious lede I’ve read in perhaps a decade.
I’m sure you appreciate that you were posted above JS instead of below him…
Surprised Joe didn’t figure out a way to put his John Thomas somewhere in those three paragraphs.
perhaps a good question to ask in the wake of robin wood’s passing. but do you really think there’s a difference between best and favorite?
Glenn, happy to see the love for any Rivette film. Certainly the most underrated member of the French New Wave, Rivette has been making consistently interesting and often brilliant work for decades. But because of the sheer length of many of his films and, you’re right, the unclassifiable nature of the work, it’s remained difficult to see. CELINE AND JULIE blew me away, but I didn’t have a decent copy of it until the BFI DVD came out. I finally saw the complete OUT 1 at UCLA a few years ago and was not disappointed. The sense of play, invention, chance, magic, mystery and otherness in the films is unique to Rivette and if it reminds me of any other art it’s maybe the very best novels of Paul Auster or the some of David Lynch’s recent work like MULHOLLAND DRIVE and INLAND EMPIRE.
This was the first Rivette film I saw and it remains a favorite. I was utterly charmed by its slow, rhythmic, off-kilter examination of this supernatural romance, and its last image of Emmanuelle Beart, delivering a wonderful last line with a Mona Lisa smile, is one of the most indelible images in Rivette’s always-rewarding cinema. Great choice, Glenn.