Letter to the void

Pedantry is irresistible but always runs the risk of more precise pedantry. Is this why The Guardian wouldn't publish the following missive?

While the Coens (‘Stars and Gripes’, The Guardian Weekend, Saturday October 13) would like Jacques Rivette’s Out 1: Spectre (1971-1972, but released in 1974) to be remade in order, they quip, to be shortened (from its actual 255 minutes), they seem to be unaware that the director got there first, his 1972 film being itself already a ‘remake’ (or, more precisely, re-edited version) of his Out 1: Noli me tangere (1971) which, in its rare public screenings, comes in at 12 hours and 40 minutes. At its first public screening in Le Havre in 1971 and at the NFT’s retrospective in 2006 the longer work was presented over two days (the work was at first intended by Rivette for television broadcast). According to Rivette specialist Jonathan Rosenbaum, Rivette cut 10 minutes from the film after a 1989 Rotterdam screening, which would mean he has ‘remade’ the 1971 original not once but twice.