Merry-Go-Round (film)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Merry-Go-Round
Original title Merry-Go-Round
Country of production France
original language French , English
Publishing year 1981
length 142 minutes
Rod
Director Jacques Rivette
script Jacques Rivette, Eduardo de Gregorio, Suzanne Schiffman
production Sunchild Productions, Institut National de l'Audiovisuel
music Barre Phillips (bass), John Surman (bass clarinet)
camera William Lubtchansky
cut Nicole Lubtchansky
occupation

Merry-Go-Round is a 1977 film directed by Jacques Rivette . It was first released in Germany in 1981 and in France in 1983.

action

Ben, who comes from New York, and Léo, who comes from Rome, meet in the lobby of a hotel on the edge of the Parisian airport in Roissy. Both were notified by telegram to be there. The sender of the telegram was Elisabeth, Lisa - Ben's friend, Léo's older sister. Ben and Léo arrive, but initially there is no trace of Lisa. Then they find a message from her, reach a villa via a few stops and finally come across Lisa. This villa is one of the houses that belonged to the father of the two young women, but which is now apparently being taken over by the new owners. There is a rather strange behavior in the mansion, but one would not have expected the coup that occurs without further ado: Lisa is kidnapped in a waiting ambulance.

It is the beginning of a completely inscrutable plot that Léo and Ben got into and that will take them to the most varied of places around Paris: David Hoffman is Léos and Lisa's father, and David Hoffman died in an airplane accident four years ago or was his death faked? Is the money he left behind, at least 20 million francs, still in a bank safe? Who has the key to the safe and when? Who knows the code for the safe? What role does the dubious Mr. Danvers play with the capabilities of a medium? A straw man instead of David Hoffman? - In any case, the strings seem to be pulling the strings by the equally pretty and opaque-looking Shirley - Ben's sister, Lisa's former girlfriend and until his disappearance - or death - David Hoffman's lover. Shirley, in turn, accuses Lisa of only chasing her father's money from the start. Lisa's kidnapping? Staged by herself. In a modern bungalow and the adjacent park there is a showdown, in which good and bad cannot, however, still be clearly distinguished. And so the deaths of Lisa and of Mr. Danvers seem particularly pointless.

This crime story, which itself doesn't seem very realistic, but rather quotes elements from crime novels, is repeatedly interrupted by scenes from a parallel life, perhaps also from Ben and Léo's fearful dreams. Again and again Ben is chased through a forest and sometimes threatened by a rider in knight armor, sometimes by an archer. Again and again Léo, or a young woman who looks very similar to Léo, wanders through a dune landscape; once she sinks into a sand pit there and is threatened by snakes.

Varia

The other

During the filming there were tensions between Rivette and Maria Schneider. "We started filming with the two main characters, but after just eight days things were going very badly," said Rivette in an interview. According to Joe Dallesandro, it was the cast who encouraged Rivette to continue filming at all. But Maria Schneider was no longer available for the “Scenes from a Parallel Life” in which Ben is rushed through the forest and Léo wanders across the dunes. Her character is represented in these scenes by Hermine Karagheuz; in the credits it is referred to as "l'autre", the other.

The film music

As with Rivette's two previous films, the musicians can also be seen playing the music in Merry-Go-Round . At Duelle and Noroît they were present on the set and also seen in most of the shots. In Merry-Go-Round you can see jazz musicians Barre Phillips and John Surman in the studio; Her music recordings are set like dividers between individual chapters of the film. The music usually overlays the beginning of a scene and then fades away.

reception

After the strenuous shooting from August to October 1977, during which there were days on which Rivette did not appear on set, the editing of the film dragged on for more than a year, so that the first fully assembled version was available in late 1978. From the start Rivette was not satisfied with the result: “un film malheureux” - an unfortunate film. The cinema release in France was only more than four years later, on April 8, 1983. Before that, in autumn 1981, the film was shown in a few cinemas in Germany.

In his review of the film, Norbert Jochum first quoted Rivette in DIE ZEIT : “What I want is to discover a cinema in which the narrative does not necessarily play the leading role. I'm not saying that it should be eliminated completely, I think that's impossible. If you throw the narrative out the door, it comes back in through the window. What I mean is that in the cinema I imagine the driving force is not the narrative, but the spectacular - in the truest sense of the word. ”Rivette succeeded in doing this with Merry-Go-Round , it was one of the few films about which one could say that they are not just “the execution of a script”.

Jean-Claude Biette saw things a little more critical after the French theatrical release, but finally came to a similar conclusion. He wrote that “sometimes (it happens) that when a filmmaker starts a movie,… doesn't (remember) his magical formulas. He no longer heard the voice of his talent. Every filmmaker (but) has an instinct in reserve that (gives) the strength to look chaos in the face. ”Rivette had mobilized this instinct, and Merry-Go-Round was “ the result of such a stroke of luck - an open one Movie".

Much later, in his obituary after Rivette's death in 2016, Jonathan Rosenbaum, actually a great lover of Rivette films, gave his rating of Merry-Go-Round in one word: "abortive" - ​​unsuccessful.

literature

  • Jan Paaz and Sabine Bubeck (eds.): Jacques Rivette - Labyrinthe . Center d'Information Cinématographique de Munich, Revue CICIM 33 from June 1991. ISBN 3-920727-04-5 . In it p. 91–94: Short synopsis, statements by Rivette about the film, excerpt from a review of the film by Jean-Claude Biette.
  • Hélène Frappat: Jacques Rivette, secret compris (= Auteurs ), Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-86642-281-3 . (French.) In it p. 159: Assistant director Lydie Mahias' memories of the shooting.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Serge Daney, Jean Narboni: Entretien avec Jacques Rivette . In: Cahiers du Cinéma . May / June 1981 ("Nous avons commencé à travailler avec les deux acteurs, et au bout de 8 jours, les choses allaient très mal.").
  2. ↑ According to Samm Deighan: Three Houses With Neither Beams Nor Rafters . In: The Cine-Files . Spring 2017.
  3. ↑ So at least Lydie Mahias' assistant director, in: Hélène Frappat: Jacques Rivette, secret compris , p. 159.
  4. ^ All data according to filmography, in: Hélène Frappat: Jacques Rivette, secret compris , p. 240.
  5. ^ DIE ZEIT, October 9, 1981 Norbert Jochum's review of the film.
  6. ↑ Quoted from Jan Paaz and Sabine Bubeck (eds.): Jacques Rivette - Labyrinthe , p. 94.
  7. ^ Artforum, No. 5/2016 Jonathan Rosenbaum's obituary for Rivette.