Northwest Film Forum

This pivotal masterpiece was Rivette's first film to use as key elements an extended running time, scenes written and developed with actors’ participation and a blurring between art and reality. Focusing on the turbulent relationship between a director and an actress, the story moves between the couple’s unraveling and rehearsal scenes for a Jean Racine play. "You emerge from it changed," writes CHICAGO READER film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. "It’s a life experience as much as a film experience."

"I reject the word 'script' entirely—at any rate in the usual sense. I prefer the old usage—usually scenario—which it had in the Commedia dell'Arte, meaning an outline or scheme: it implies a dynamism, a number of ideas and principles from which one can set out to find the best possible approach to filming." –Jacques Rivette