Book Review: “Mr. Everywhere” – Pierre Rissient, Undisputed Champion of Cinema – The Arts Fuse

Written by Gerald Peary

For half a century, cinephile, production assistant, filmmaker, press agent, producer, and program designer Pierre Rissient used all his energy to pay close attention to the filmmakers he took under his wing for their extraordinary personal vision.

Father Everywhere: Pierre Rissient Translated from the French by Paul Cronin. With a foreword by Clint Eastwood and an introduction by Bertrand Tavernier. Sticking Place Books, 160 pages, $18 (paperback)

What did Pierre Rissient do? What I did not Rissient do? The Frenchman wore so many hats in the cinema (and in fact he always wore cowboy hats), and had so many overlapping roles, that it’s hard to pin down. Cinephile, production assistant, filmmaker, press agent, producer, programmer, that’s a good start. Influencer, above all. Rissient said: “I was a conductor of sorts. For fifty years, Rissient (1936-2018) used all his energies to bring serious attention to the filmmakers he took under his wing for their extraordinary personal vision. He equipped others to allow these professional directors—many of whom were unknown to the public at large—to shown in theaters and celebrated at film festivals.

He became friends with John Ford, Fritz Lang, and Howard Hawks, and later, Clint Eastwood and Quentin Tarantino. He liked to be called “the French connection.” He was the first to notice Jane Campion, when she visited Australia and saw her shiny trousers. He found King Hu in Hong Kong, Lino Brocka in the Philippines, and was Martin Scorsese’s first champion. He found illegal American writers and directors who had been exiled from Europe and proudly displayed their work. That is just one example of his many accomplishments.

Yes, there was a problem: Rissient’s quarrelsome, hot-headed nature. He believed it. Over the years I’ve been called all kinds of things: scout, troublemaker, hot-tempered press agent.” He eventually became estranged from his close film-making friends, King Hu and Joseph Losey among them. No, he did not feel the pain that he saw as stupid. My first encounter with him was probably the usual Rissient when we chatted in Cannes and at the Telluride Film Festival. I also have an opinion, so naturally we confronted the movies we saw. How did Pierre feel about the disagreement? I remember him looking at me confused. How could a so-called film critic be so stupidly wrong? Still, he’s a colorful and charming guy, and you can hear his voice powerfully in 2016’s powerful, inescapable interview book.Father Everywhereconducted in France by Samuel Blumenfeld, and now translated for the first time into English.

Before movies, there was literature and poetry: Brecht, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Herman Melville, and Henry Miller. But also popular books: the Série noire series of the 1950s. A boy from the French provinces, Rissient moved to Paris to study law but soon left to pursue a life of cinephilia. He did his best to avoid the military, choosing to spend his time instead in the trenches of the Cinémathèque française. He watched Rossellini’s films, befriended Claude Chabrol. “Jean Renoir was the first filmmaker whose work I took seriously,” he said. “He became a kind of benchmark for me.”

His relationships with young filmmakers, all compulsive cinematographers, led him to work in the first films of the Nouvelle Vague, starting in 1958 with Chabrol’s. They are cousins. Godard “visited the set … and recognized me as a talented student.” That allowed the work to continue Lack of breath. “…[A]t 23, I was the first assistant to finish in France, which is something I am proud of.” Each of his relatives made films, so Rissient also directed several shorts. What he learned would be used by others in his way of understanding movies. “It taught me a lot about lenses and spatial awareness, about where to put the camera, about the spaces around the actors. That’s when I started to understand that having a rhythm is important to guide a person.” In the following years, Rissient ordered two small but well-received roles. However his first calling turned out to be more… promoting other people’s films.

There is something new for me, and perhaps for other American readers of this book. There was another cinema in Paris that challenged the Cinémathèque for the diversity and pride of its repertoire. Mac-Mahon. This is where Rissient and his cineaste friends planted their flags because, unlike the rigid regime of the Henri Langlois Cinémathèque, they were given the opportunity to influence the program. Lovers of old Hollywood, put photos in the living room of their Four Aces: filmmakers Fritz Lang, Raoul Walsh, Joseph Losey, and Otto Preminger. Lang was a special guest at the theater. And when Jules Dassin and Losey spoke there, the audience included Americans listed among the people living in Paris: John Berry, Michael Wilson and Paul Jarrico.

Rissient and company are slightly separated from Movie books majority, electing Losey and Walsh to Books favorite Howard Hawks and Nicholas Ray. Those things were important in the Paris movie theaters! Also, Rissient said, the Mac-Mahonists went beyond the directors with the personal title Books desperation-support directors with a theme combined with mise en scène. Rissient admitted: “Our zeal to defend what we loved may seem shameful, even arrogant. But all we wanted was to advance the conversation, to deepen the ideas surrounding mise en scène. (For those who don’t know: it’s a strange, indecipherable phrase that vaguely means “What’s put into the play.”)

Historic designer Pierre Rissient. Image: Criterion Collection

In 1963, Rissient officially entered the film business with Mac-Mahon Distribution, giving French theaters a true celebration of American cinema: Walsh, Jacques Tourneur, and Josef von Sternberg. Sam Fuller in 1963 Shock Corridor it was an unexpected success in France, and for Leo McCarey in 1937 Make Way for Tomorrow-even if it’s an office center-it’s got new people to like. Two contemporary American films, Abraham Polonsky’s Tell them Willie Boy is here (1969) and Jerry Schatzberg’s A monster (1973), were also uncommon in the US population but were known causes in Paris.

In 1965, Rissient made a second foray into the film business, teaming up with future filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, who was then a journalist, to create a two-person publishing house. Their belief: they would only represent the films and filmmakers they loved the most. Also, they worked hard to ensure that films and filmmakers succeed. Over breakfast once, Tavernier explained to me how they would work together, surrounding a film critic and bullying him until he agreed to write well about one of their clients. Tavernier remembered what fun he had Movie books described as “the terrorist acts of Rissient and Tavernier.” Unlike many others, he got along well with his friend Pierre.

Between 1964-1972, the couple worked on about 70 films, and closed their business amicably. After that, Rissient became a regular at Cannes, eventually becoming a Cannes expert and even a programmer. He brought there Jeremiah Johnson (1972), Conversation (1974), In the Realm of Feelings (1976), and Apocalypse Now (1979). And he was a top producer, with great success with Jane Campion’s Piano (1993). But more importantly, he traveled the world, helping filmmakers with low budgets and little money to pay for his help. Rissient said he was often broke, “he gave a lot of money to work with Funny Lady [1975]Barbra Streisand’s next book which, needless to say, I turned down.”

In an interview with this book in 2016, Rissient at 80 admitted that his life was declining, that he was tired of watching movies given to him on DVD, that he reduced his film festival to half a year. But he remained as opinionated as before, insisting on that Citizen Kane (1941) is “exaggerated” and that Affecting Evil (1958) “he felt swollen.” He noted that “I never followed Antonioni” and said of Elia Kazan, “I still don’t think he’s the great filmmaker that others imitate.”

And his sometimes annoying personality? Maybe I should have been more political and more careful, not harsh or inflexible in my decisions. Did you repent? Does he repent? Regardless, Rissient died two years later in 2018. I can testify to this: with international film groups, there will never be another. And what about this epithet from his best friend Clint Eastwood? He was passionate beyond measure, his love for cinema was deeply rooted in it.

Gerald Peary is professor emeritus at Suffolk University, Boston; former curator of the Boston University Cinematheque. Reviewer for the latter Boston Phoenixhe is the author of nine books on cinema; secretary-director of documents For the Love of Movies: A History of American Film Criticism and Betty from Archie; and outstanding performer in the independent report of 2013 Computer Chess. His last documentary, The Rabbi goes to the Westdirected by Amy Geller, screened at film festivals around the world, and available for free on YouTube. His book 2024 Mavericks: Interviews with the World’s Iconoclast Filmmakerspublished by the University Press of Kentucky. His new book, A reluctant film critic, a combined review of the memoir and the work, can be purchased here. Geller and I, who co-host the seven-part podcast, Rabbis go Southavailable wherever you listen to podcasts.