A stripped-back expression of his fascination for the labyrinthine and conspiratorial, Jacques Rivette’s Le Pont du Nord represented a clearing of the air after recent creative difficulties. Filmed almost entirely en plein air on the streets of Paris, it brought together Bulle Ogier and her daughter Pascale as a recently-released, claustrophobic ex-con and an eccentric youth pursuing a mystery structured as a life-sized board game. Named for a bridge that doesn’t exist, Le Pont du Nord is one of Rivette’s most playful films as well as one of his most political, infused with a sense of melancholy and anger at the death of the post-68 dream. 

In Out 1, Rivette had given Jean-François Stévenin one of his first roles, a memorable one-scene part as a biker who menaces Juliet Berto’s Frédérique. In Le Pont du Nord, Stévenin reunited with the director to play a mysterious, leather-clad mercenary, one of the many characters in the film called Max. The film’s climax, inspired by Stévenin’s beloved extracurricular hobby, is one of the most sublime sequences in either man’s career.