The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, December 16-22
Duelle (1976)
Directed by Jacques Rivette
The forever elusive cinema of Jacques Rivette finds its most referential incarnation in this sublime homage to the Hollywood noirs that the director made his name reviewing for Cahiers du Cinema. Conceived as the second part of a fantasy four-film series (two of which never got made), Duelle tells the tale of two deities engaged in battle—Rivette regulars Juliet Berto and Bulle Ogier as the moon and sun goddesses, respectively, both at their most playful—using 1970s Paris as an arena to determine superiority. As the goddesses clash with—or rather, orbit around—each other, so does Rivette’s aesthetic and his subject matter form a similar dialectic. The metteur-en-scène’s vérité style is used to prowl on edge of these mystical interactions, captured in long takes grounded firmly in the reality of Paris’ haunting streets. Nothing is ever for certain in the rabidly experimental, Duelle, where Two and Two no longer make Four. Eric Barroso (December 18, 9:15pm at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Lynch/Rivette”)