Pierre Rissient (1936-2018)

Pierre Rissient (left), Jacqueline Ury, the future « grande dame de la gastronomie » and Michel Mourlet, at a historical Présence du Cinéma lunch in honour of Vittorio Cottafavi, on 17 December 1961. Photo from French Wikipédia.

Pierre Rissient was a Grand Ambassador of cinema, a Cannes scout and a man behind the festivals, always on the lookout for new talent. For artists he discovered such as King Hu, Lino Brocka, Hou Hsiaou-hsien and Abbas Kiarostami he was always a loyal friend and promoter. Rissient was also important in promoting Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood (as a director), John Boorman, Mike Leigh, Jane Campion, Charles Burnett and Quentin Tarantino. An early coup of Rissient's was promoting King Hu's A Touch of Zen in Cannes in 1971.

Already as a teenager in the 1950s he was a self-described "ardent film buff", active in Parisian film societies. He was also a key "mac-mahonien" together with Michel Mourlet, Michel Fabre, Jacques Serguine, Bertrand Tavernier, Bernard Martinand, Alfred Eibel and Patrick Lourcelles. Their bastion was the cinema Mac Mahon on n:o 5 de l'avenue Mac-Mahon. Their four aces were Raoul Walsh, Otto Preminger, Joseph Losey and Fritz Lang. They attacked the predominance of the screenplay. "Tout est dans la mise en scène".

Rissient had the courage of his convictions, he often swam against the current, and his motto was “It is not enough to like a film, you have to like it for the right reasons.”

Rissient may have been the first critic to discover the distinction of Joseph Losey as an auteur, and he certainly published the first monograph on him, in 1965. Rissient never lost his admiration for Losey as an artist, but Losey in person disappointed him. It was his first lesson that the greatest artists are not necessarily the greatest human beings. Rissient also promoted other artists blacklisted in 1950s Hollywood such as Jules Dassin, John Berry and Dalton Trumbo. 

In our last meetings Rissient enthused over Alfred Hayes (1911-1985) , in his early days the lyricist of "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night" (1930), during WWII serving in the U.S. Army Special Services, staying in Rome as co-screenwriter in neorealist classics (Paisà, Ladri di biciciletti), then in Hollywood a screenwriter of Teresa, Clash by Night, Lusty Men, Human Desire, Island in the Sun and These Thousand Hills, but Rissient valued Hayes most as a novelist, some of whose best work appeared posthumously.

Together with Bertrand Tavernier, Rissient promoted in France in the 1960s late works of Hollywood veterans such as Raoul Walsh, John Ford, Howard Hawks and Fritz Lang.

Rissient also worked in interesting films such as Les Cousins (Claude Chabrol), À bout de souffle (second unit director), L'Anglaise et le Duc (Éric Rohmer) and In the Cut (Jane Campion). In the 1990s, Rissient joined the French company Ciby 2000 where he was in charge of Campion's The Piano. 

Pierre's favourite garment was the t-shirt. Every day he wore a different one and was always eager to add to his collection.

A true Frenchman and a Parisian, Pierre put high priority to a great meal. In his opinion, 10-20 Euros more for a better meal was always worth the investment, whereas a cheap and inferior meal was never worth the price. In Paris I mentioned to him the farewell article of the Paris restaurant critic of The New York Times (and International Herald Tribune, which ceased publication in 2013), where she stated that in the beginning in the early 1960s it was difficult in Paris to find a bad restaurant, but now, in the 2010s, it was hard to find a good one. Why? Because Paris had become a victim of its own success, and because of the trend of pre-prepared meals in restaurants, shipped from central cuisines, only heated up for patrons on site. Rissient fully agreed with the verdict, and he had his own set of favourites, sometimes nondescript places with brilliant food.

Pierre may have been to some extent an old school male chauvinist. During the great 2011 Alice Guy retrospective in Bologna's Il Cinema Ritrovato, he questioned in the presence of a major female film historian the fact that Alice Guy was a film director in the early days - in those days, there were no credits in film prints. Yet we had just seen Alice Guy tourne une Phono-Scène (FR 1907) where it is indisputable who is calling the shots.

At Telluride Film Festival, one of the cinemas is now called Le Pierre. I first met Pierre at the 1993 edition of the Telluride Film Festival. I next met him at the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankylä, and after that often in Bologna and Paris. I even visited him at his Paris hospital in the company of a distinguished American friend from the film archive world. Pierre's most important question to him: have we found The Honor System yet? (Reportedly Raoul Walsh's best film, long believed lost).

When Tom Luddy learned that Pierre was in Bologna, he guessed that Pierre is  "pontificating", and it is true that he held a Papal court in a chair in the shade of Piazzetta Pasolini, from an apparently endless stock of anecdotes, certainly pursuing his convictions but also entertaining as an old world raconteur who was interested in artists' private lives and the passionate side of fabulous French film actresses.

...

See also: 

Todd McCarthy: Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient (US 2007).

Todd McCarthy: Pierre Rissient obituary in The Hollywood Reporter, 6 May 2018, a key source in the remarks above.