Filmmaker Jacques Rivette, one of the leading lights of French New Wave film movement of the 1960s who revelled in cinematic improvisation, died Friday aged 87. Among the best known of his languid, intellectual movies is fantasy drama "Celine and Julie Go Boating" (1974), which lasts more than three hours and is replete with literary and film allusions.
Rivette, whose 28 films also included 1991 hit "La Belle Noiseuse" (The Beautiful Troublemaker) and "Paris Nous Appartient" (Paris Belongs to Us), was born in Rouen, northern France, on March 1, 1928, the son of a pharmacist. He started out as a film critic, like other future French New Wave pillars Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer, writing for the "Cahiers du Cinema" magazine, becoming its editor-in-chief from 1963-65. French President Francois Hollande's office hailed Rivette as "one of the greatest filmmakers, (who) marked several generations". He said Rivette was a "woman's director... offering major roles to actresses who made cinema history" such as Anna Karina, star of "The Nun", a 1966 film that was initially banned because of its cynical view of the Roman Catholic Church.