Le Pont du Nord (1981) ( Le pont du Nord )

Le Pont du Nord (1981) (Blu-Ray) (*)

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Original Title: Le pont du Nord
Language Selections:
English ( Subtitles )
French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )

Product Origin/Format:
United Kingdom ( Blu-Ray/Region B )

Running Time:
129 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Cast/Crew Interview(s)
Interactive Menu
Photo Gallery
Scene Access
Booklet

Movie filmed in 1981 and produced in:
France ( France, Benelux )

Directed By:
Jacques Rivette

Written By:
Bulle Ogier
Pascale Ogier

Actors:
Bulle Ogier ..... Marie
Pascale Ogier ..... Baptiste
Pierre Clémenti ..... Julien
Jean-François Stévenin ..... Max
Benjamin Baltimore ..... Le Max au couteau
Steve Baës ..... Le Max au manteau
Joe Dann ..... Le joueur de bonneteau
Mathieu Schiffman ..... Un Hongrois
Antoine Gurevitch ..... Trois garçons
Julien Lidsky ..... Trois garçons
Marc Truscelli ..... Trois garçons

Synopsis:

The culmination of New Wave master Jacques Rivette's legendary middle period (which ranged from L'Amour fou through Out 1, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Duelle, Noroît, and Merry-Go-Round), Le Pont du Nord envisions Paris as a sprawling game-board marked off with tucked-away conspiracies, where imagination and paranoia intermingle; where the hinted-at stakes are sanity, life, and death. Regular Rivette actress Bulle Ogier stars as Marie, a claustrophobic ex-con who, shortly after wandering into Paris, encounters the wild and potentially troubled young woman Baptiste (Pascale Ogier, Bulle's actual 22-year-old daughter). Baptiste, a knife-wielding, self-proclaimed kung-fu expert with a drive to slash the eyes from faces in adverts (including, in one instance, those on a placard for Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha), accompanies Marie on her quest to solve the mystery behind the contents of her former lover's (Pierre Clémenti's) suitcase: an amalgam of clippings, patterns, and maps of Paris that points to a vastly unsettling labyrinth replete with signs and intimations whose menacing endgame remains all too unclear. Gorgeously shot by the master cinematographer William Lubtchansky, Le Pont du Nord is a freewheeling, powerful experience whose hypnotic rhythm and ominous undercurrents resolve into a frightening and exhilarating portrait of post-revolutionary, early-'80s Paris - and in turn form a prime example of Rivette's uncanny, occult cinema. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Jacques Rivette's rare and essential feature Le Pont du Nord on Blu-ray and DVD for the first time anywhere in the world.

Marie (Bulle Ogier), a toughened woman of a certain age, heads to Paris after getting out of prison and is joined by Baptiste (Pascale Ogier, her real-life daughter), a long-limbed and fiercely determined dark angel who travels by scooter. Marie reunites with her boyfriend, Julien (Pierre Clémenti), a pathological gambler whose mysterious briefcase entangles him in big trouble that Baptiste decides to unravel. The women's poetic excursions through the ruins of industrial sites and Impressionist landscapes morph into a spy-versus-spy caper involving left-wing terrorist plots and government infiltration. In Rivette's rhapsodically probing view, the labyrinthine city of recondite romanticism and the bloody ideals of revolutionary heroism appear fated to vanish together, even as the chill of rational order reveals another shimmery layer of ingrained authority. Pascale Ogier brings an exhilarating feral passion to her role, starting with her pugnacious confrontation with a suave motorcyclist (Jean-François Stévenin); she died in 1984, at the age of twenty-five, and this movie may be her greatest showcase.

Le Pont du Nord stars Bulle and Pascale Ogier as two women who randomly meet and investigate a strange and surreal mystery together involving a strange package and several characters all named Max.

This product was added to our catalog on Tuesday 01 October, 2013.