What is a work of art worth? H.L. Mencken once quipped that he would sacrifice all the men in New Jersey for The Heart of Darkness. Jacques Rivette's vast La Belle Noiseuse ("the beautiful troublemaker") is a mysterious and spectacularly beautiful meditation on the subject of the human cost in making great art. It's one of Rivette's finest films and worthy of close study. The picture is a very loose adaptation of a story by Honore Balzac called "The Hidden Masterpiece". The story, which is classic, is worth reading before you watch this four-hour long film. (Nice, legible copies of the Balzac story are readily available on the Internet.) In the Balzac story, two painters, Nicolas Poussin and Porbus (a 17th century portrait painter) visit the elderly eccentric painter, Frenhofer. Frenhofer lectures both men on art, arguing that a great painting simulates nature so well that a nude woman painted in frontal perspective will seem to have a back side as well. Nicolas allows his mistress, who is also his model, to pose for Frenhofer. Frenhofer has been working for many years on a painting called "The Beautiful Troublemaker", an image of a famous Parisian courtesan. Poussin loses his mistress to the rigors of working with Frenhofer. When Frenhofer displays the finished painting, it is an abstract convulsion of chaotic colors with a foot pointed in one corner. It's now clear that Frenhofer is mad. When no one can understand his painting, Frenhofer burns it and, then, dies. Rivette summarizes this tale in an earlier movie and his acquaintance, the great female director, Clair Denis, challenged him to make a picture based on the Balzac story. Of course, several of the premises of the story no longer apply -- painters don't feel obliged to follow the mandate of Appelles, that is, to paint nature so realistically that real birds will dive down in an attempt to eat painted grapes. Photography has rendered moot the canon of realism. (This is dramatized by the opening sequence in the film in which one of the characters uses a Polaroid camera to take the picture of another character.) The artistic esthetic espoused in La Belle Noiseuse (1992)is avowedly expressionistic -- real things have a hidden appearance, a secret essence that can only be displayed by systematically distorting actual photographic appearances. The artist's agony is to wrest from appearance the inner essence or spiritual dimension (as Kandinsky and the German expressionists would say) of the thing portrayed.
Frenhofer's manor is an ancient castle. We first see the artist ambling across his garden carrying a dead hare in his hands. Frenhofer wears a turquoise shirt and blue slacks. These colors represent the artist and we have earlier noticed a turquoise sheet of paper inexplicably pinned, it seems, to the door frame at the room in the Inn where Nicolas and Marianne are staying. (The doors to Frenhofers's studio are similarly turquoise -- Marianne remarks that the place reminds her of a church to which the artist replies that it was previously a stable.) Dialogue informs us that Frenhofer hasn't exhibited for many years, that his last show was before Marianne was born, and that he imagines a consummate painting, but one that he cannot complete, "la Belle Noiseuse", a portrait of a famous 17th century courtesan. Frenhofer makes some sinister and uncompromising remarks about painting -- that a work of genius must have "blood on the canvas". Porbus, Frenhofer's agent (and also a chemist) speaks about persuading the great painter to produce a last masterpiece. When he faints or has some kind of seizure, dropping inert to the table where his head thunks loudly, everyone is alarmed. It is another uncanny event that seems to pass without much comment. The men adjourn to the studio where Nicholas agrees that Marianne will pose for Frenhofer's last painting. Later, Marianne is understandably outraged that Nicholas has offered her for this service -- "you sold my ass," she says. But the next morning, before Nicholas is awake, she dresses and goes to Frenhofer's manor to pose for him. She is given a suitably grand entrance, passing through strange rooms in the manor to the sound of loud music (Stravinsky's Petruschka) -- Frenhofer is in the kitchen and we see his maid's daughter outside, practicing dance steps to the accompaniment of the music. These shots are portentous and lensed in deep focus -- Frenhofer and Marianne in the kitchen in the foreground and, outside, the young girl dancing on the grass. (The house is full of odd retreats-- there's a library gothic with old musty books and a chimera room with sphinxes and strange murals on the wall. People make odd comments: "I thought you were the police; I work with endangered species" and "Justine ate all of the hydrangeas" and "The place was once a jungle." Frenhofer's sad and laconic wife is making bug-repellent soap with arsenic, something that Porbus says is a bad idea.") First, Frenhofer draws the girl in a sketchbook -- we see his pen scratching away at the paper. Then, she takes off her clothes and he draws her nude on largest sheets of paper with wash and pen and some watercolors. Frenhofer forces her into bizarre poses and begins to paint her on larger sheets of paper, outlining her form silhouette with chalk. The sound of pen or brush marking the paper is amplified, an eerie creaking and squeaking. Nicholas comes to the house and is greeted by a girl wearing a surgical mask -- an odd and alarming image for this moment of viewing. It turns out that Frenhofer's wife is a taxidermist and she is mounting rare bird species in a tower overlooking the manor. Frenhofer's wife assures Nicholas that "Frenho is a gentleman" -- that is, that he would not seduce his model. She's not the most reliable source for this information because Frenhofer seduced her and made her his wife. (They have now negotiated a "truce", the woman says. "Each tends to their own wounds.") Frenhofer says that he wants to rip Marianne apart and expose what's inside of her. He increasingly sounds less like a painter and more like some kind of serial killer. The dialogue and mise en scene become increasingly bizarre -- Frenhofer refers to a sculptor named Rubek who was killed with his model in an avalanche in Norway: this is clearly a reference to Ibsen's last play When we dead awake. A huge picture of a nude woman seen from the back was prominently displayed when Porbus, Nicholas, and the two women with Frenhofer toured the studio. Now we see Frenhofer making the picture modeled on Marianne's muscular derriere. Something is wrong with the continuity -- how can he be making this picture now, after we have previously seen it displayed. Frenhofer manipulates Marianne's body as if she were an echorche or some kind of articulated marionette. There are long passages of silence broken only by the sound of the artist's chalk or pen marking the paper. For three or more minutes at a time, the camera simply shows Frenhofer's hands drawing on the paper. Sometimes, he makes weird forms that we can't correlate to Marianne's pose. But, then, the camera shows us that time has passed and that she has been forced into a different pose. Marianne, played by Emmanuelle Beart is naked starting one hour and 14 minutes into the film and remains naked until the intermission at 2 hours and 14 minutes. And this is only half way through the picture. There's a remarkable shot that passes so swiftly you might miss it: Marianne is stepping through threshold and framed by the door. In that instant, Frenhofer perceives that she is an apt subject for his last masterpiece. Throughout the film, doors and windows serve as frames.
An intertitle tells us that Intermission will last a few minutes "before the next pose." Part Two continues the sessions in which Marianne poses nude for Frenhofer. The artist seems stymied and wants to give up the project but Marianne persists and won't let him abandon "la belle Noiseuse". She and Frenhofer get drunk on cognac or brandy. (This is highly stylized: a few sips renders the characters picturesquely drunk, but when they need to be sober, the booze has no affect on them.) Liz appears and watches the proceedings with palpable anguish. Marianne asks why she is being used to "replace Liz". Marianne tells Frenho that she is done with Nicolas. And, in fact, she spends the night in Frenho's gargantuan castle. (This is an expressionistic set -- to reach the bedrooms, the characters have to climb an enormous spiraling staircase that leads to corridors about 100 yards long and weird warrens of bedrooms. One of Rivette's characteristic motifs involves figures entering through separate doors, but, then, converging into a single space behind those doors -- I recall the oddly visceral impact of this motif in ...: in that film, a man and a woman, maintaining distance between them enter separate rooms in a hotel only to access suites that are interconnected by a door; the couple, who have maintained their distance on the street, immediately embrace in the interpenetrating space behind the doors. Similarly, Frenho and his wife part in a hallway, enter separate doors, at least on of which that seems to be locked and, then, are shown in an odd, gloomy labyrinthinth, a sort of haunted house in which all the rooms seem to be connected. Marianne, when she stays over on second night is installed in a small apartment somewhere within this warren of small, cell-like rooms.) On the next day, Frenho is late to the studio, a passive-aggressive gesture that enrages Marianne who is now chain-smoking. Frenho appears, seems somewhat abashed, and begins to overpaint a large canvas on which he has painted, a decade earlier a study of Liz as a somewhat felilne "la belle noiseuse." There are long sequence shots showing Frenho's hands painting over the image of Liz's face. Frenho doesn't return to his living quarters that night -- instead, he beds down on a cot in the studio. Liz is with Marianne, who is becoming increasingly frazzled. Liz can't sleep and so she goes the the studio in the middle of the night, finds Frenho sleeping, and leaves a muddy footprint on one of the studies strewn on the floor -- Frenho has taken to climbing into the loft and surveying his work from that height above the studio space. (The muddy footprint that Liz leaves reminds us that Marianne took off her shoes when she first walked through the village to reach Frenhofer's castle.) Liz observes that Frenho is using a canvas on which appears for the work showing Marianne and she's justifiably outraged about being effaced from the picture. The action is complicated by the appearance of Porbus who talks to Liz -- it is intimated that Liz had an affair with Porbus after she was involved with Frenhofer. Furthermore, Nicolas, who has now been, more or less, abandoned by Marianne, now meets with his sister -- she has inexplicably come to his rescue. The sister, Julienne's appearance in the movie is a bad mistake, a serious misstep by Rivette and his writers. We don't need a new character at the three hour mark in this film and Julienne's motivations are extremely vague, underwritten, and enigmatic. I understand the practical problem in the narration -- once Marianne is holed-up with Liz and Frenho, Nicolas has no one to talk to. The creates a problem that is solved by importing Julienne into the movie. A little backstory is provided: Nicolas and his sister were living together; he met Marianne and she moved in with them. The apartment was too small and the women clashed. Julienne's story is offputting and trivial -- suddenly, the film seems to be about (in part) housing problems in Paris. There are queasy suggestions of incest between the brother and sister and, certainly, Julienne acts more like a lover than a sibling. By this point, everyone is angry with everyone else -- Julienne fights with her brother and, then, later fights with Liz. Liz fight with Marianne. Frenhofer is annoying aloof. Sometime on the fourth day, with Marianne posing in the remote distance, Frenho finishes the picture. Marianne sees the canvas (which we don't ever view in its entirety) and flees the studio in horror. Liz looks at the picture, again concealed from us -- also shows horror and marks the back of the canvas, where Frenho has put a date (1990) with a black cross, seemingly signifying that the picture is posthumous. Liz lays in bed with Frenho and they discuss the fact that they are both now dead -- whatever the canvas shows, it signifies that Frenhofer is done, kaputt: either the canvas is a transcendent late masterpiece or it is a horrible failure. In any event, the canvas signifies some type of creation that is terminal --something that you can't go beyond. In the middle of the night, Frenhofer with the assistance of his housekeeper's little girl (the child that we saw dancing to Petrushka in the first half) puts the big painting in an alcove, walls it up with mortar, and, then, plasters over the place where the picture has been interred. Frenho then paints a large merely decorative nude that doesn't show Marianne's face. On the next day, all the characters are gathered for the unveiling of "la belle noiseuse". Frenho shows the innocuous nude, a pleasing enough picture but not the titanic canvas that he has painted and walled-off. Porbus isn't disappointed -- he has a new Frenhofer painting and will make a fortune from it, whatever it's merits. Porbus who is a compulsive womanizer makes a play for Julienne. Marianne rejects Nicolas plea that they return to Paris via Barcelona and the Spanish coast -- she's done with him. Nicolas realizes that the canvas is a failure and tells Frenhofer that he doesn't want his own career to end as a "comedy." Liz knows what Frenhofer has done and praises him for a last masterpiece -- not the canvas given to Porbus but the picture that has been immured in the studio wall and that "masterpiece" of the act of renunciation reflected in the walling-off the now-invisible and "hidden" canvas. The final sequence is pastoral, shot in gliding, sinuous camera movements on the shady back lawn of the castle -- lush trees and grass all around and a table buried in flowers and fresh fruit.
La Belle Noiseuse is extremely beautiful and once a viewer accepts it languorous, if hypnotic, pacing, very gripping. The scenes of Frenhofer painting (which feature the hands of the French artist, Bernard Dufour) are like images of mortal combat -- the stakes are unbearably high and the sound of the brush against the canvas is amplified until it sounds like a cannonade. The interaction between model and artist is scrupulously observed -- each manipulates the other. Marianne's nudity becomes casual -- it's her uniform, just as Frenho is always wearing the same levis and turquoise work shirt. The vast and ancient castle is remarkably palpable and the color scheme is coherent and stunning. Michel Piccoli as Frenhofer is suitably intimidating and passionate. Emmanuelle Beart (Marianne) is exquisitely beautiful, her face always stricken as if with dismay at her own beauty. Liz is haggard and frightening -- there's poison in the house and she controls it. Nicolas is a cipher and I don't understand his sister's motivations at all. Porbus is sinister -- there's a slight anti-Semitic tinge to the character: he's clearly a Jew and here represents the seductions of money and finance. His toasts,L' Chaim, are ironic because the film's last half-hour emphasizes that the completion of Frenhofer's invisible masterpiece is also his death. The film explores the notion that representing something requires killing it: Liz, the taxidermist says, that "you (Frenho) painted me out of love and, then, once you really loved me, you stopped painting me" -- the idea being that Frenhofer's work is like her taxidermy: it requires that the subject die. Liz has warned Marianne in the opening scenes: don't ever let him paint your face. The movie, which seems autobiographical to Rivette, is about the high cost of making art. And the pursuit of a masterpiece may destroy not only your marriage but you entire life. To love an artist, Marianne says is to love someone who will never put you first. La Belle Noiseuse is not without flaws -- the scenes with Julienne didn't make sense to me -- but it's odd to watch a four-hour movie and wish that it were longer. (DVD is now the ideal format to watch this film -- the movie was shot in Academy ratio, that is, 1:33. Very few movie theaters can project the film in the format in which it was shot. Using a 1:66 ratio, now customary, the top and bottom of the very carefully composed and painterly composed images will be cut off.)
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