Out One:Noli me tangere was always too long to get any type of commercial screening so it was edited down to this four hour version,not short by any means unless it is compared to the sprawling original.But this is not just a condensed version,it is rather a reorganisation,out of which another film emerges,clarifying certain points while obscuring others,shining a light on some characters while pointedly neglecting others.
While the long version takes several hours for the narrative to spring into life with the passing of the message to Colin/Jean-Pierre Léaud,here this pivotal event takes place within the first thirty minutes,and so the conspiracy begins.Now all of Rivette's favourite themes (the theatre,conspiracy,paranoia,all set in a Paris far from the usual tourist haunts) which were crystallised in his first film,"Paris nous apparteint" come into play.The very long and gruelling theatre rehearsals are necessarily curtailed and various sets of characters are introduced who are usually kept apart from each other but at various junctures like pawns on a diabolical chessboard they can suddenly interact.The literary influences are,clearly,Balzac's "Histoire de treize" and Lewis Carroll although the presence of Borges,a favourite author of Rivette,with his stories of conspiracy and parallel worlds,is also apparent.The end too is much more satisfactory,infinitely more spine-tingling than that of the long version.And when it is over we want nothing more than to relive the whole maddening experience again.
