Noroit (1976)

Thursday, October 29, 2020 @ 7:00 PM
Globe Cinema - 617 8 Avenue SW, Calgary, AB
$13.75 General | $11.62 Members/Seniors/Students | $43.45 5-Pack Punch Pass

PART OF OUR MASTERS: JACQUES RIVETTE SERIES.

RESTORATION COURTESY OF ARROW FILMS AND THE AMERICAN GENRE FILM ARCHIVE.

DIRECTED BY JACQUES RIVETTE | FRANCE | 135 MINS

The second film in the proposed cycle Scènes de la vie parallèl, Noroît, loosely adapted from the classic Jacobean play The Revenger’s Tragedy (the authorship of which is now widely attributed to Thomas Middleton), reorients the basic schematic of its predecessor Duelle, swapping out a war between celestial goddesses for one between pirate queens. Morag (Geraldine Chaplin) is mourning the death of her brother, responsibility for which she attributes to the power-mad Giulia (Bernadette Lafont), leader of an isolated band of pirates who occupy a remote island castle. Morag vows revenge, enlisting the assistance of Erika (Kika Markham), who operates as a piratic double agent. Various parties become involved in overlapping conspiracies, and a staged piece of amateur theatre, veiled commentary in the manner of Hamlet’s play within a play, sets in motion the final apocalyptic showdown between Morag and Giulia, two larger than life and monomaniacally vengeance-bent matriarchal archetypes with nothing left to lose.

If The Revenger’s Tragedy is now customarily attributed to Thomas Middleton, it was once believed to be the work of Cyril Tourneur. Antonin Artaud, scion of the “theatre of cruelty,” believed the play to have been Tourneur’s work when he had earlier adapted it in outlandish, provocative fashion. Artaud was apparently on Rivette’s mind when he set out to make Noroît, and it is worth noting that Artaud’s avant-garde vision of extreme, confrontational performance is roughly contemporaneous with Claude Lévi-Strauss and the emergence of structural anthropology as a discipline. Both the aesthetic and milieu of Noroît are consciously evocative of Fritz Lang’s Technicolor pirate opus Moonfleet (1955). This is also the film where Rivette went furthest in explicitly incorporating elements from operatic dramaturgy. Following Noroît, a third film from Scènes de la vie parallèl, The Story of Marie and Julien, originally meant to feature an English-speaking cast, stalled early into its production (Rivette said to have succumbed to “nervous exhaustion”), ultimately to be made with Emmanuelle Béart and Jerzy Radziwilowicz in 2003.

-Written by Jason Wierzba

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Masters Series: Jacques Rivette

Most cinema lovers are aware of the cohort of young film critics—among them Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, and Claude Chabrol—who would go on to notoriety as the preeminent figureheads of the French New Wave. Of the young Cahiers du cinéma critics operating under the informal tutelage of André Bazin, it was Jacques Rivette who would, as a filmmaker, take most directly to heart Bazin’s insistence that the cinema might be able to distinguish itself from the theatre most distinctively by repurposing its texts and templates. Rivette’s early criticism excelled at assessing the interrelation between the arts, and he continued as an active filmmaker to believe in cinema as an “impure” form assimilating elements from all those to have preceded it. From the outset presenting a radical break from tradition nevertheless in a constant, exceedingly dynamic dialogue with traditions (on any number of fronts at any given time), the films included in Calgary Cinematheque's Masters: Jacques Rivette series are first and foremost emancipatory collaborations with actresses, seeking to establish methods by way of which theatrical ritual might serve to indulge a return to archaic matriarchal myths, provoking a radical break with the thrust of industrial modernity and its image culture. 

About Calgary Cinematheque

We are a non-profit film society dedicated to presenting significant, challenging, and essential works of cinema art in Calgary. During our season, which runs from October to April, we screen films weekly, in curated programs which situate each film in a thematic and historical context. We do this because we believe cinema is an essential form of artistic, social, and political expression. Audiences should be able to engage with a wide range of cinematic expression, not only with what is commercially viable. We believe in the power of sharing these experiences with other people in a theatrical setting and we strive to cultivate a community around that experience.

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In the spirit of respect, reciprocity and truth, we honour and acknowledge that this screening takes place on Moh’kinsstis and the traditional Treaty 7 territory, as well as the oral practices of the Blackfoot confederacy: Siksika, Kainai, Piikani as well as the Îyâxe Nakoda and Tsuut’ina nations. We acknowledge that this territory is home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region 3 within the historical Northwest Métis homeland. Finally, we acknowledge all Nations, Indigenous and non, who live, work and play, as well as help steward this land, honour and celebrate this territory.

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