Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974) just got released by the Criterion Collection this Tuesday. I got my copy in the mail the same day, upgrading from my BFI DVD release from way, way back. This is one of those films that just makes the viewer happy, inspires us to dive headlong into the cinema. Céline et Julie vont en bateau is a film for film lovers and not in the same way as something superficial and empty like Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019) or The Artist (2011). It’s a film that celebrates its process of production as well as the process of spectatorship. Céline et Julie vont en bateau is one of those rare films like Daisies (1966), The Sieges Of Alcazar (1989) or Matinee (1993) that really is just euphoria for film incarnate on film.
Céline et Julie vont en bateau was one of the first Jacques Rivette films that I ever saw, so it will always be one of my favorites. If Jean-Luc Godard is the brain of French cinema, Rivette is its soul. Céline et Julie vont en bateau is the link in Rivette’s career from Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (1971) to Duelle (1976). This film is Rivette’s first major step into “fantasy” film, into the world of Louis Feuillade. Unlike Franju, Rivette updates this fantasy, filters it through Věra Chytilová’s political “unrealism” to find all new undiscovered treasures within the cinema. This might all sound like hyperbole, but I assure you it isn’t. Céline et Julie vont en bateau is so intangible, so abstract, that to discuss it is like attempting to describe a dream hours after waking.
The spectacles in a film by Jacques Rivette are spectacles of necessity, not frivolity. No one actually needs the dreams of Star Wars or Harry Potter. Rivette’s visions, born out of an unprecedented degree of collaboration with his performers, are images conjured by a make-shift community for the whole of the cinema. Céline et Julie vont en bateau is a fantastic utopia where the cinema has completely synthesized with reality.
