During the 1970s, Jacques Rivette worked with producer
Stéphane Tchalgadjieff on
Scènes de la vie parallèle, a projected four-film series which focused on enigmatic, supernatural stories. Of the four films, only the first two,
Duelle and
Noroît, were completed, with Rivette suffering a nervous breakdown on the second day of filming the third one,
Histoire de Marie et Julien (which he eventually
remade in 2003).
Merry-Go-Round was conceived, again with Tchalgadjieff's backing, in the aftermath of this project's collapse, once Rivette had recovered and decided that he needed a project to start over. Rivette and
Maria Schneider had already considered working together before; the idea of
Merry-Go-Round emerged after Schneider told Rivette that she would be interested in working with
Joe Dallesandro. Though Rivette had met Scheider before starting this project, he didn't really know either of the actors one month before shooting began. Principal photography began in 1977. The story was largely improvised and aspects were developed due to the difficult shooting conditions. Both lead actors were struggling at the time with drug addictions, with Schneider also undergoing severe emotional problems. Rivette himself was on the verge of a second nervous breakdown. Dallesandro later said, about this part of the production : "They kept shooting these scenes where I was running. Running, running, running. It got so bad that I wasn't even aware Maria had left the picture. She was so far away during those endless scenes that I had no idea they'd replaced her with a double. That's when I really understood that this movie could go on forever. If they'd have replaced me with a double, they'd still be out there shooting." Rivette kept filming improvised material with no end in sight. Eventually, Dallesandro injured himself by falling from a motorcycle. Even though the actor was willing to keep on working, the producers decided to use his injury as a pretext to stop filming, later claiming insurance in order to pay everyone involved. Rivette managed to edit the footage he had shot into a 2h30 film, but the finished product was found unsuitable for release by
Gaumont. The film was only released in 1981 in Germany, and did not receive a general release in France - to lukewarm reviews - until 1983. At that point, Rivette had already rebuilt his career thanks to the release of
Le Pont du Nord (1981). Rivette later commented that though the improvised storyline may have given
Merry-Go-Round "a certain vagabond charm", it was "a film with a first half-hour that's quite coherent, and then it searches for itself three times." ==Home media==