There are filmmakers who made longer films than Jacques Rivette, but few who have made as many incredibly long films. Rivette’s record is 1971’s “Out 1,” which runs some 15 ½ hours. (It was originally intended for TV, but no station would take on such an experimental project.) Comparatively, the three films in I-House’s weekend Rivette retro are on the short side. “L’Amour Fou,” his 1968 chronicle of a crumbling marriage (inspired by Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina), runs four dense hours.
His most famous work, 1974’s “Celine and Julie Go Boating,” goes for 3 ½, and only a fraction of it at the end features boating. The recently restored “Le Pont Du Nord” — with real-life mom and daughter Bulle and Pascale Ogier loosely investigating a mystery — is a relative quickie at just over two hours. Each brims over with playfulness, sucking willing viewers into their shape-shifting structures. They’re long, but emerging from them after it’s easy to wish they’d never end.
Jacques Rivette
Friday, Sept. 6 and Saturday, Sept. 7
International House
3701 Chestnut St.