“Very rarely seen, this is the ‘short' version of the 12-hour Out One which has never been released commercially. In editing out a more modest film, Rivette tried to make something as unlike the original as possible. Nevertheless, Spectre is one of the greatest achievements in the cinema of duration and narrative pattern. As much an admirer of Lang as of Renoir, Rivette sought to combine ‘storyness' with the most evident virtues of real time. His films begin to respond to the affinity between real life and movie--going on, nearly forever, free and open to any event--while gradually guiding this mass of material towards the kinds of design that we, the viewers or the readers, cannot help but see. Out One: Spectre begins as nothing more than scenes from Parisian life; only as time goes by do we realize that there is a plot--perhaps playful, perhaps sinister--that implicates not just the thirteen characters, but maybe everyone, everywhere. Real life may be nothing but an enormous yarn someone somewhere is spinning.
“By definition, all people are equal in Out One. Rivette sees acting as a model for living: the theatrical rehearsals in his films are not professional but forms of spiritual devotion. Out One was always meant as an opportunity for actors, who were encouraged to write and improvise their parts. We are on the verge here of seeing that the world is full of small-part players, and that they are small only because of the degree of our attention.” David Thomson