Undisputed master of the Nouvelle Vague, Jacques Rivette lives again with the complete version of one of his last, significant works, inspired by a classic by Luigi Pirandello. Yesterday the Taormina Film Festival remembered him eight years after his death with the international premiere of «Va Savoir. +», the definitive edition, with many unpublished scenes, of the film that Rivette made in 2001, released in Italy with the title «Chi lo sa?». A mix of drama and comedy that starts from the famous text of the Agrigento playwright «Come tu mi vuoi», in the film performed in a Parisian theater by Camille and Ugo, actress and director, work and life companions for whom the trip to the French capital will be a real sentimental and intimate journey. Jeanne Balibar and Sergio Castellitto will play themwho introduced the screening of the film in the evening at the Palacongressi, with the artistic director of the festival Marco Müller.
«Pirandello is a passion of my life – said the Roman actor meeting the press – because it is the crucial junction between nineteenth-century theater and the theater of psychoanalysis, therefore an author of extraordinary modernity. Jacques intended to draw a parallel between the game of Camille’s lost identity and that of the changing mask of the great Sicilian author. I believe he wanted to mix not the spoken languages, but the languages of the theater: the high theater of Pirandello himself and the equally elevated theater of the actors who when they leave the stage in reality do not do so, taking the troubles of their characters into the dressing room».
Castellitto recalled the strong bond with the director, considered his master on a par with Scola and Ferreri. A relationship of human and professional esteem, above all of great trust and collaboration: «Jacques had me direct the scenes of Pirandello’s play, exactly as my character did. He shot very long scenes without ever asking to change a movement that I made myself and the other actors do».
There are many memories that link the Roman actor to Rivette. One in particular is very significant: «When I asked him if I had to shake Jeanne in a scene he replied, “It’s you, I don’t know”. He gave actors back an authorial dignity that I have rarely encountered in my career. As an actor I claim, and perhaps I learned it with him, to sign the bottom right of the frame of my interpretation inside a cage that is given to me, because there is also the will of the actors to submit to the will of the director. He was different, but to be able to do that you have to have an immense authority; Jacques possessed it».
What made him a unique director among the masters of that filmography that made history? «The greatness of his cinema is the lightness that continually touches tragedy.. In this he was unique; it is no coincidence that it is a classic of the Nouvelle Vague, a generation of talented directors who became masters at a young age.”
Still no news on the film’s theatrical release. In the meantime, Castellitto will return to the cinema in December with Edward Berger’s «Conclave», an international co-production based on the novel of the same name by Robert Harris. With him Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini.