Out 1
Entry updated 23 April 2025. Tagged: Film.
French film (1971; vt Out 1: Noli Me Tangere). Sunshine Productions, Stéphane Tchalgadjieff. Written and directed by Jacques Rivette, in collaboration with Suzanne Schiffman; loosely based on Histoire de Treize (1833-1835) by Honoré de Balzac, with dialogue largely improvised by the cast. Cast includes Juliet Berto, Françoise Fabian, Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Michael Lonsdale, Michèle Moretti and Bulle Ogier. 773 minutes. Colour, with a few b&w sequences.
In contemporary Paris, two experimental theatre companies, one run by Thomas (Lonsdale) and one by Lili (Moretti), endlessly rehearse, but never mount productions of, Aeschylus plays. Some members of the troupes may or may not be members of the mysterious group known as The Thirteen, who may be Secret Masters seeking to control Paris, or may only be playing harmless games, or may be different groups of people under different names, or may not exist at all. Petty thief and swindler Frédérique (Berto) and a strange outsider named Colin (Léaud), who believes that The Thirteen are real-life enactments of Balzac's group with a dose of Lewis Carroll thrown in, attempt in various ways to penetrate the mystery, without success. Other ostensible members of The Thirteen include financiers, academics and the bookshop owner Emilie/Pauline (Ogier), who believes in it enough to murder people she thinks are getting too close to their secrets (which remain entirely opaque).
Though set entirely in contemporary Paris and on the fringes of sf, Out 1 deserves consideration as one of the most Paranoid and ominous Secret Masters films to take the template of Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1922) into entirely unexpected areas. Across its near-13-hour length, the formlessness of the early hours of the film, much of which are taken up by the theatre rehearsals and with almost entirely improvised dialogue, constrict into almost resolution, then dissipate as the sect's activities remain undiscovered. Form matches content perfectly as characters seek to impose order on a world which refuses to allow them that luxury. The impulse to make the world into story is perfectly summed up by Colin, who, when told that The Thirteen may be no more than a joke, cries, "If that were the case, the whole magical and mysterious universe in which I step forth would be instantly dulled. And that is impossible." In one particularly inexplicable scene, the characters suddenly start talking backwards, foreshadowing Twin Peaks (1990-1991) directed by David Lynch.
Very rarely screened for decades after its completion, Out 1 took on near-mythical status among cinephiles until its recent restoration and re-release. In the absence of the full version, Rivette, perhaps the most uncompromising of all the French Nouvelle Vague directors, also created a four-hour version, Out 1: Spectre, though this too was not widely released. [CWa]
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