When Alain Robbe-Grillet made Eden and After in 1970 he was actually shooting two movies simultaneously. One, Eden and After, was intended for theatrical release. The second, N. Took the Dice (N. a pris les dés…), was to be a TV-movie for French television. Both movies were made with the exact same crew and the exact same cast. Most of the footage used in both films is identical. What Robbe-Grillet then did was to take the footage he’d shot and edit it into two entirely different movies.
The cast members are the same and they wear the same costumes and often they’re performing in the exact same scenes but they’re not necessarily playing the same characters. And often the dialogue has been changed.
We see many of the same scenes in both movies but they have entirely different meanings. There’s a scene in which a character is being chased around a cafe. In one version that character is in real danger, in the other the two people are clearly engaged in good-natured horseplay.
The footage has been radically re-edited. The entire sequence of shots and events has been shuffled around. Scenes that appear at the end of Eden and After appear at the beginning of N. Took the Dice. Which totally changes the meaning and the significance of those scenes. The meaning of a shot comes from the context. Change the context and you change the meaning.
In both movies a young woman played by Catherine Jourdan owns a very valuable painting. She looks the same but she may not be the same woman in both movies. In one version the painting is by a famous artist, in the other it was done by one of her fellow students.
At one point there’s the exact same shot in both movies but in one version a man is killed, in the other he’s totally uninjured.
In both versions the woman played by Catherine Jourdan is kidnapped in Tunisia, by the same actors wearing the same costumes in the same shots, but the kidnappers are different people in the two versions.
There’s no real plot in Eden and After, just a succession of themes and images with only tenuous connections. N. Took the Dice has even less of a plot.
In N. Took the Dice the technique used by Robbe-Grillet is made more overt. We get a man named N. throwing dice, with the sequence of the scenes clearly determined by the random fall of the dice.
In both movies we’re left to wonder how much is dream, how much is drug-induced hallucination, how much is a movie within a movie. N. Took the Dice adds the suggestion that some of the events are in fact part of a television game show.
Robbe-Grillet was a very playful director and that comes cross in both these movies. There’s plenty of artiness and complexity but there’s fun as well.
Being a TV-movie N. Took the Dice naturally has most of the nudity removed although some of the hints of sadomasochism remain. This movie is so far removed from reality that it’s difficult to see how anyone could take offence.
N. Took the Dice is typical Robbe-Grillet which means it’s highly recommended.
The BFI have released this film on DVD and Blu-Ray. Eden and After and N. Took the Dice are both on the same disc. The transfer is extremely good. I have also reviewed Eden and After.
