Film Details

One of the “holy grails” of world cinema can now be seen! The fourth film by French New Wave master Jacques Rivette is a 12-hour and 55-minute opus (in eight episodes) featuring an all-star cast of Nouvelle Vague icons: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, Bulle Ogier, Françoise Fabian, Bernadette Lafont, Michael Lonsdale, Erich Rohmer, Barbet Schroeder, et al. Inspired by the epic narratives of Balzac (with a tip of the mad hat to Lewis Carroll), the movie focuses on two experimental theater groups, each rehearsing an Aeschylus play, and on some peripheral Parisians—most notably a “deaf mute” busker and a cunning con woman who both may have accidentally uncovered a citywide conspiracy involving a secret society (“the Thirteen”). The characters in these different spheres cross paths and interact in an ever-expanding web of performance; eventually, according to Rivette, “the fiction swallows everything up and then self-destructs.” Out 1 was originally envisioned as a TV mini-series. But when French television rejected it, Rivette edited his footage down to a four-hour version (with a totally different vision) entitled Out 1: Spectre, released in 1974. His original 775-minute movie, given the name Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not), was projected only once—in 1971—and then did not resurface until 1989. Given only a handful of special screenings around the world since then, Out 1: Noli Me Tangere has now been digitally restored and released to theaters. It’s one of the cinema events of the decade!