Jacques Rivette (; 1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French
film director and
film critic most commonly associated with the
French New Wave and
Cahiers du Cinéma. He made twenty-eight films, including
Le Coup de Berger,
Paris Belongs to Us,
L'amour fou,
Out 1,
Celine and Julie Go Boating,
Le Pont du Nord,
La Belle Noiseuse and
Va savoir. Rivette, inspired by
Jean Cocteau to become a filmmaker, shot his first short film at age twenty. He moved to
Paris to pursue his career, frequenting
Henri Langlois'
Cinémathèque Française and other
ciné-clubs; there, he met
François Truffaut,
Jean-Luc Godard,
Éric Rohmer,
Claude Chabrol and other future members of the New Wave. Rivette began writing film criticism, and was hired by
André Bazin for
Cahiers du Cinéma in 1953. He expressed a critical admiration for American films, especially for those by genre directors such as
John Ford,
Alfred Hitchcock and
Nicholas Ray, and was deeply critical of mainstream French cinema. Rivette's articles, admired by his peers, were considered the magazine's most aggressive and best written, particularly his 1961 article "On Abjection". He continued making short films, including
Le Coup de Berger (often cited as the first New Wave film), and Truffaut credited Rivette with developing the movement.