L'Amour fou

Screening on Film

Directed by Jacques Rivette.
With Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Josée Destoop.
France, 1969, 35mm, color and b&w, 252 min.
French with English subtitles.

A study of disintegrating personal relationships, L’Amour fou focuses on a theater group preparing to stage Racine’s Andromaque while being filmed by a television crew. During the rehearsal, the play’s director replaces his wife in the lead with his former mistress. The film, shot in both 16mm and 35mm, was developed from ideas of the cast and technicians and improvised during filming. Its extreme length is integral to its meaning and texture, which critic James Monaco has compared to the musical form of Indian tals—“long, enormously complex rhythmic structures of as much as thirtytwo beats.”