121/2-hour French film is finally here

The long wait for cineastes is over -- New Wave French director Jacques Rivette’s 1971 film “Out 1,” which clocks in at 12 1/2 hours, is finally having its Los Angeles premiere this weekend at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum.

The landmark serialized drama examines counterculture life in post-1968 Paris and had become “a legendary film” over the decades, says Robert Koehler, critic for Variety and Cinema Scope magazine, who will introduce the work. “It was up there with Erich Von Stroheim’s [original version of] ‘Greed,’ of movies we were not going to see.”

Then last year the National Film Theater in London “almost out of nowhere said they were screening the print with electronic subtitles.” Demand for the print was so strong after the screening that “Out 1” is now on a tour of Europe and North America. This weekend’s stop in Westwood is being presented under the auspices of the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Assn.’s “The Films That Got Away” series, the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Filmforum.

But with that 12 1/2 -hour running time, can your posterior make it through? No worries: The film is being divided into two parts -- Episodes 1 through 4 are on tap for Saturday, with Episodes 5 through 8 set for Sunday. Each program will feature two intermissions and a dinner break so you can keep up your strength.

“Out 1,” Billy Wilder Theater, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. $10 per day. (310) 206-FILM, www.cinema.ucla.edu