An Early Rivette Short

      1950, Jacques Rivette's second short film, Le Quadrille, deals with three men and two women in a room in some house, maybe an annex off to the side of where a party happens.  It's impossible to know the context.  The sixteen millimeter black and white film is silent, no music either, running time forty minutes.

     With this expansive time frame, considering that very little happens in the movie, we see an embryonic attempt of Rivette's unfathomable desire to explore something small or minimal at length; small in the sense of a spare plot, if plot can be applied here.

     On a divan are a man and a woman.  Another chair holds a nineteen year old Jean-Luc Godard, who co-wrote the scenario with Rivette.  I didn't recognize Godard until halfway through the movie.  I've never seen him with so much hair, or looking so young.  

     Another young man sits near a pensive young woman seated alone.  She looks around, nervously at times, but is mostly still.  The other woman, fidgety, sometimes perches at the edge of her seat.  No one says anything.

     It's like an absurdist play by Eugene Ionesco.  They all smoke cigarettes incessantly.  Godard does funny things with his cigarette, makes nervous motions with his hands, is comical at times, whereas the man on the divan is very still through most of the film.  He resembles Marcel Duchamp, has a noble face and exudes calm.

     The other man moves about the room sometimes and eventually leaves, the door not quite closing and opening back slowly to an ajar position.  Godard approaches the woman by herself in the chair, kisses her hand, then invites the woman on the divan to accompany him.  After they leave, the calm man closes the door, left partly open again by Godard.  He sits near the woman, takes a brief look at her, and then approaches her from behind, putting his hands on her shoulders.  She relaxes and smiles, gazing upward at him.  Fade to black.

     These two, evidently, want to be alone throughout the film as it unfolds in real time.  Nearly forty minutes of being in company with others, wanting to enjoy one on one time with a beloved person can make for a tense situation, curling one's insides.  The suspense is enhanced by the movie's silence, and by the mystery of not knowing what this situation is about until the ending reveals the desire between these two, both of whom have displayed the least nervous movements, showing stoic patience.

     It's an odd little movie.  It shows Rivette's willingness from the beginning, at age twenty-two here, to be unconventional, to demand patience from an audience.  For that alone, it's worthwhile for film viewers interested in seeing challenging cinematic works.  Here there is an inkling of the director's later greatness, and for that, I value this strange film.

Vic Neptune