Eric Rohmer’s Tales of the 4 Seasons

WHEN ERIC ROHMER died earlier this year there was a host of tributes, much talk of his “talky” films and remarks about watching paint dry. My tribute was to watch his films again, including the ones I had not seen, and review them here, over three posts. I have a very strong attachment for some of his films, and have had one for 20 years. Before discussing his films however I should add a bit of context.

Firstly about me. Why is my opinion of value? Well, it’s not. I’m just a viewer. My taste in films obviously influences my judgment of Rohmer’s films. Heading my list of great films are two character driven epic films, The Seven Samurai and Les Enfants du Paradis. Relationship comedies follow, Annie Hall, then the frenetic Howard Hawks comedies Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, as well as Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise. Then there’s a lot of 30s screwball comedy, including the work of Jean Harlow. Then come some early films of Satyajit Ray, Coline Serreau’s La Crise and then Citizen Kane. I like Costa-Gavras, Preston Sturges and Sunset Boulevard. Here’s the bottom line: I can’t watch anything by George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese (all too sentimental). Obviously “talky” films seem pretty normal to me.

Then, about Rohmer. He was a writer first of all, a novelist, then a film theorist. He learnt his craft in television as a maker of documentaries. Many of his film scripts would work as plays, and I don’t know why no-one has staged My Night at Maud’s. Rohmer was a literary man, and some of his films are based on the work of other writers, such as Kleist and Chrétien de Troyes. He helped form a group that added enormous energy to French cinema, la nouvelle vague, but paradoxically he had a great admiration for some of the directors that movement swept arrogantly aside, such as Marcel Carné. In his astonishingly vivid creation of landscape and context for his films’ characters, Rohmer has always reminded me of Georges Simenon, one of the greatest 20th century French writers and a major influence on French cinema. And one of the precursors of la nouvelle vague was Jean Eustache, creator of La maman et la putain, a four hour film of conversations between Jean-Pierre Leaud and Bernadette Lafont and Françoise Lebrun which I think one of the greatest French films ever made. Rohmer was of course a good businessman, able to produce small budget/films-on-a-shoestring that made tenable his career, as did many of la nouvelle vague directors, and Ingmar Bergman and Satyajit Ray as well. Most of all he was a moralist, someone who felt strongly that to live well one has to have values that are worthwhile, and his films are designed to make us think of those values, though presented in an unobtrusive and utterly charming way.

Great French film directors? In my view they include Marcel Carné, Coline Serreau, Jean Eustache, Alain Resnais, Rene Clement, Louis Malle, Jean Renoir, Jacques Audiard, Claude Sautet – and Eric Rohmer.

Finally, talk of literary influences and film movements should not obscure the fact that Rohmer had a command over many of the traditional elements of film making. Much has been said of his evocation of landscape, and of figures within that landscape. He is known for his mastery of set design and colour, and rarely needed an art director. He worked hard with his framing and cutting to create a natural effect, a kind of candid camera effect, that took hours and sometimes years of planning. And he was probably one of the best directors of actors ever, getting marvellous performances from inexperienced actors again and again. Because he wasn’t flamboyant or technically intrusive, as Godard was for instance, there are some who don’t notice this competence (hence the “nothing happens, people just sit around and talk” kind of comment). In fact Rohmer was technically innovative right through his career, more so than any other French director. And the this-is-not-a-film ambiance he created is just as deconstructive as Godard’s this-is-a-film approach.

So on to the films of Eric Rohmer, who asks you, not “what if an evil force was trying to control the universe and only one man could save humanity from a fate worse than death”, but “what if a group of people were able to express their thoughts and feelings, in an elegant and subtle language, how accurate would they be in describing their real situation, and what would we learn about human nature by listening to this?”

The Four Seasons
Rohmer liked to film in series, and his last one was Tales of the Four Seasons. Although filmed when Rohmer was in his 70s, these films show no falling off, and in fact include one of his best films, still using the diary cue cards that make you think it’s a home movie, and still eliciting great performances from unknown actors.

Conte de printemps (A Tale of Springtime) 1990
A Tale of Springtime is a slice of life about two couples in unsatisfactory relationships, and the daughter of one of them who ineptly tries to improve the situation through a bit of matchmaking. It’s extremely naturalistic, and the story has no real beginning, no resolution to the events portrayed, and no real ending. It’s just like my life in this respect, in fact, and perhaps like yours.

Many of Rohmer’s film making characteristics are here: the unobtrusive camera work, the subtle and assured use of colour, the script which deftly reveals personality traits in small actions and everyday phrases. The central character is a musician as well as a matchmaker, and music plays a part in the story, and is also played on the soundtrack, which is rare to hear in a film by Rohmer.

Where the film falls down in my opinion is with the actors. Though the script is good (but not great), and the actors present it well, none of them are Rohmer actors, which means they are not natural and at ease. I was never in doubt throughout the film I was watching a performance. While it didn’t stop me enjoying the film, I never found it involving.
Conte d’hiver (A Winter’s Tale) 1992
A Winter’s Tale is a moving account of how a young woman comes to live the story of the Shakespeare play, with a little encouragement from Pascal. These aren’t musty cultural figures from the past for Rohmer but relevant commentators on everyday living. A cautionary tale that teaches that if you want to receive a blessing you must first be in a state of grace.

The film is built around the character of Félicie, played by Charlotte Véry. If you can fall for her, the film is absorbing: I thought her portrayal brilliant, one of the best acting jobs in any Rohmer film (if you haven’t seen a film by Rohmer, that means it’s world class). Félicie has a holiday romance that’s with the love of her life, loses touch with the man, has a daughter, and lives in Paris in an uneasy relationship with two men. She loves both men, but there’s love, and there’s love. Félicie comes to see, through chance encounters and conversations with friends, that if you want something to happen you have to believe it will. In a conclusion that cynics will deplore, she finds that miracles happen, but only to people who believe they exist.

Another atypical Rohmer film with a musical score. And, as usual, superb realisations of place, streets, apartments and shops of Nevers, Paris, with characters seemingly always on the move in trains and buses. It has part of a good performance in French of The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare as well. Félicie is inarticulate, unsure what she wants, irritating in her indecision, she makes mistakes, acts stupidly and hurts the ones who love her, but she’s a lover who keeps that love alight in her heart, and anyone who’s ever loved will surely understand what she’s going through before her epiphany.

Rohmer, now aged over 70, has produced yet another example of the Rohmer paradox: a literate, well balanced construction with characteristics of a stage play, played in superb naturalistic style by gifted actors, and filmed and edited using effectively and with great skill all the resources of cinema. For some reason his films seem difficult for viewers who accept unhesitatingly that a man can blow up a building with a hand gun, and prompt critics to apologise for pointing out his merits as a director. I think he’ll be disparaged, after the obituaries settle, but will come back as one of the masters of cinema, when his colleagues of the New Wave have all been forgotten. And because he examines you and me he’ll always be uncomfortable for viewers who want to live forever in never-never land. So be it.
Conte d’été (A Tale of Summer) 1996
A Tale of Summer looks at the other side of summer romance to the lyrical beauty that glows from the beginning of Rohmer’s previous seasonal tale, Conte d’hiver. Here a young man, on holiday in Brittany, has not one but three romances, and finds it necessary to put his song writing career first, for which his feelings for the three girls provide inspiration, because they all present him with problems he can’t solve.

Now in most films there’s a plot, and the plot is always about possession, of land, of money, of a woman. Because the story is melodramatic, it is always unrealistic. Rohmer attempts something much more ambitious in his films, to portray real feelings in real people, in all their ambiguity and state of flux.

In A Tale of Summer it’s probably this emotional current running through the gestures and actions of all the characters that is the real subject of the film, and it is shown in its ambiguity and state of constant change. It’s something we’re not comfortable with, preferring to give labels such as ‘love’, ‘friendship’ and so on to what is after all the motor that drives us through life, and is frequently unknowable and disquieting.

Gaspard, played convincingly by Melvil Poupaud as a gangling, introverted and sensitive misfit who pours his emotion into his songwriting, mets Margot, who’s an ethnologist and part time waitress. Margot is played by the wonderful Amanda Langlet from Pauline at the Beach, an actress seemingly born to act in Rohmer films but who was only in three. These two develop a friendship, which is “more important than love”, and we see it mutate slowly into love, with attendant jealousy, until it is restrained on one side by duty and on the other by diffidence. With superb irony, we see the couple don’t realise it is love until after they part at the end of the film. Instead, Gaspard is obsessed by a girl he thinks he loves but who clearly doesn’t love him, and then by another he lusts for but who demands a level of commitment he can’t rise to.

Such a neatly constructed story could be trite, and would be trite in other hands. But Rohmer as usual creates three dimensional characters, who exist in a fully realised landscape and express themselves through natural dialogue which is only a little bit more clever than you or I would use. And the dialogue is so well written, and the acting so perfect, we can see deep into the emotional wellspring of each person, deeper in fact than they can see themselves or others. I see the film as a revisit to one of Rohmer’s earliest and greatest films, My Night at Maud’s, where an unobservant man meets the love of his life and doesn’t know it. Here, such is Rohmer’s artistry, the same psychic pattern is repeated, and seems totally original.

As seems his intention for the Seasons series, Rohmer links the scenes through music, and here it is songs about seafaring, about travelling vast distances and missing those left behind. I wonder if Rohmer had in mind that one day Gaspard might sit down and make a film about Margot?

Conte d’automne (An Autumn Tale) 1998
Like a Tale of Springtime, this is another matchmaking story in which Isabelle (Marie Rivière) and Rosine (Alexia Portal) try to find a partner for Magali (Béatrice Romand). If this seems a slim story to occupy 112 minutes of screen time, it is. Matters are drawn out by a series of contrivances that never delve too deeply into the participants’ feelings. In short, a relatively superficial story from Rohmer.

It is also a story of friendship between Isabelle and Magali, and two of Rohmer’s favourite actresses bring a warm tone to the ups and downs of their relationship as it is affected by the plot to find a partner for Magali. There’s always fine acting from Riviére and Romand, and Romand especially shows herself still to be one of the world’s best actresses, a magnetic presence in every scene she’s in. A well constructed if slightly too symetrical script from Rohmer, a fine picture of the French countryside, well acted by all the lead actors, yet, atypically for Rohmer, somewhat shallow, at least in comparison to his best work.

But still a comfort to watch, a film about normal people in plausible situations, a refuge from the torrent of films out of America about serial killers, vampires, superheroes, vendettas, revenge murders, corrupt cops, urban violence, psychotics, and the cult of violence that has taken over American cinema, and American society, over the last 30 years.

Experimental films
Rohmer is known for his naturalistic tales of relationships, but a third of his film output is of a completely different nature. Many of these show Rohmer pushing the conventions of cinema to their limits, and he is in this respect the most experimental of directors. Most of these non series films have not been commercially successful, but obviously were important to Rohmer in some other way.

There are the literary adaptations. Kleist’s La Marquese d’O (1976), characterised by natural lighting, the most beautiful set designs in the world, and scenes that are reminiscent of paintings by David or Ingres come to life. Rohmer, with a plot that demands ignorance of the female reproductive system, highlights the period of the story by using period acting conventions. L’Anglaise et le duc (2001) is an adaptation of Grace Elliott’s memoir about the French Revolution. For some reason Rohmer’s depiction of the terrorism practised at that time has got him labelled as ‘conservative’: he is in fact showing his usual maturity of judgment. This time the sets are even more beautiful than La Marquese d’O‘s, hand painted, and I think very great works of art in their own right. Unfortunately the natural lighting does not work, as most scenes are indoors or at night, making the ‘action’ somewhat obscure. Rohmer’s ‘Last Supper’. These two films are cinematic painting rather than conventional film dramas. Catherine de Heilbronn (1980) is from a Kleist play, and is similar in spirit to La Marquise d’O, though set in the middle ages. It was premiered on French television. I have not seen it.

Perceval le gallois (1978) is a faithful adaptation of a 12th century poem by Chrétien de Troyes. Spoken and sung in verse, in the incomplete form of the original (presumed left unfinished at Chrétien’s death) and accompanied by music of the period played on authentic instruments, it is presented in a style more familiar from opera than cinema. Non naturalistic sets, colours reminiscent of medieval painting and with a similar lack of perspective, it will be unsettling to the Rambo crowd, but riveting for anyone interested in the myth of Arthur, the Grail legend, and medieval music and poetry. Les amours d’Astrée et de Céladon (2007), Rohmer’s last film, made when he was 86, is an adaptation of a novel by Honoré d’Urfé: both are an exposition of a now unfashionable genre, pastoral, a highly stylised and artificial treatment of romantic love featuring nymphs and shepherds in a she-loves-me, she-spurns-me, we-are-reconciled cycle that now looks idiotic. It does give Rohmer a chance to celebrate the undefiled countryside, one of his great loves. I have not seen it.

Rohmer revisits recent French history in Triple Agent (2004), about White and Red Russian agents in Paris during the German occupation. Scrupulously accurate, though with some details added for Rohmer’s own purpose, and given a documentary feel by the inclusion of newsreel footage, it is a film about the erosion of trust, the impossibility but necessity of political choice, and the degree to which we control those choices or not, seen through an examination of the effects of political involvement on a marriage. L’arbre, le maire et la médiathèque (1993) is a comedy about local politics which treats of matters not that different to those that agitate my local council and cause a storm of controversy, revealing that everyone has an opinion but nobody knows what to do. An expression of Rohmer’s concern for conservation. Interesting to see Rohmer examining politics with the same penetration he brings to bear on personal politics.

Closer still to Rohmer’s trademark comedy drama is Le signe du lion (1959), his first feature. Here an expatriate American loses a fortune in Paris and survives as a hanger-on in rich society, trying to compose music but not getting very far. The camera follows Jess as he wanders around Paris trying to survive. Very audaciously ‘new wave’ as it was, your reception of the movie depends on how you like Paris. 4 aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle (1987) is just as the title says. I find it very similar to his Comedies and Proverbs, but far more humorous, with a humor I just can’t appreciate. The same goes for Rendez-vous in Paris (1995), which I saw years ago but was not able to re-view for this survey. Three tales of almost love, set in Paris, the star of the film (as in so many Rohmer films).
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In a 50 year period Rohmer produced 24 feature films, and the remarkable thing about his films is how watchable most are. In writing my review I looked at what other people had to say about the films, and found that there were many who went to print to say how they disliked and despised Rohmer’s films. Some even said he was incompetent, though this comment wasn’t made by a film maker. Some said he just made the same film again and again (but, hey, Porkys 10 is OK, and here comes Freddy for the umpteenth time and that’s OK. By the way, have you noticed that everything by Mozart sounds the same? So unoriginal, some composers. Now, Megadeath…) Let’s say that there is space in film for all tastes, and perhaps Rohmer just surprised some viewers who had limited experience of the variety possible in film making. Among those who liked Rohmer’s films I noted there were those who singled out the films I found least interesting as his best, and those who disparaged and disliked the films I thought the best. That’s the way it goes.

Despite what anyone says, I would not like to be without the tragedies of lost opportunities, My Night at Maud’s, Love in the Afternoon and A Summer’s Tale, nor the tender comedies of foibles such as A Good Marriage and The Aviator’s Wife, nor the inspiring comedy of A Winter’s Tale, nor the lyrical romanticism of My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend or The Green Ray. All these films exhibit insight and compassion, and it would be a pity if the unobtrusiveness of their achievement caused them to be overlooked for films more strident and pyrotechnical. How many other directors have made eight films that can plausibly be called great?

©2010 Original material copyright Phillip Kay. Images and other material courtesy Creative Commons. Facts courtesy IMDB. Please inform post author of any violation.

Eric Rohmer’s 6 Moral Tales

ERIC ROHMER’S Six Moral Tales series of films is a fascinating way to watch a major talent develop seemingly from nothing. They are available from Criterion in the USA and in a complete Rohmer set from Hong Kong (which includes the Criterion release minus most of the extras).

The Bakery Girl of Monceau (La Boulangere de Monceau) 1962
The Bakery Girl of Monceau is Rohmer’s first attempt to turn a book of short stories – the Moral Tales – into film. It is a simple film running for 20 minutes, photographed in black and white, with non professional actors, natural sound, and the dialogue and commentary synchronised not too convincingly during post production. The streets of the city, the shops and the passers-by seem to get more attention than the central characters. The film has a strong documentary feel to it.

A young student is attracted to a girl he sees in the street, strikes up an acquaintance with her, then, during her mysterious disappearance, spends his time trying to seduce the bakery girl of the title, on the grounds that she doesn’t matter to him. He finally wins her confidence, but drops her abruptly when the girl he has been looking for suddenly reappears.

The theme of the series makes its appearance. A man finds himself attracted to a woman, gets involved with another whom he regards as ‘unsuitable’, frees himself from the second woman and goes back to the first. In thinking of how or if the second woman is unsuitable the audience can reflect on the choices one makes in a relationship and what factors should or should not be taken into consideration.

Le Carrière de Suzanne (Suzanne’s Career) 1963
Suzanne’s Career, a 50 minute black and white film, continues the theme. This time two students insult and exploit a girl they have met in a cafe. Guillaume is the more unscrupulous, who both seduces the girl then steals from his friend. The other student, Bertrand, gradually builds up a relationship with Suzanne while being in love from afar with another girl, Sophie. Bertrand and his friend are unable to feel respect for Suzanne, and Bertrand gradually loses contact with his love Sophie. Suzanne, generous to both men, finally falls in love and marries another man.

In this case Bertrand is unable to make contact either with Suzanne, the girl he undervalues, or Sophie, the girl he loves. The ‘unsuitable’ girl, Suzanne, like the Bakery girl in the first film, appears to have more to offer, but the central male character is too misled by fixed ideas to see it. Hand held cameras, uninspired street scenes (rare in Rohmer), grainy stock and poorly dubbed post production dialogue make for difficult viewing. The device of ‘commentary’, common to both films, has a distancing, uninvolving effect on the viewer.

La Collectionneuse (The Collector) 1967
The third film in the series, La Collectionneuse, made in colour and a full length feature, shows three rather immature people at a holiday chateau by the sea. Two men alternately insult and try to seduce a teenage girl, who seems to respond first to one, then the other, before going off to Rome with some friends without a backward glance.

Adrian, a would-be art dealer,  is on holiday. His true affections are engaged by his fiancée, yet he appears to find himself attracted to the girl Haydée staying at the chateau. After much too much commentary on how he feels, most of which bears no relation to what he feels, he goes back to his fiancée. Adrian and his friend Daniel, shallow and arrogant as egotists often are, are consistently shown as refusing experience. The dialogue given the two men, and Adrian’s commentary, is clever, but superficial and a substitute for their emotional life. The teenager Haydée, seemingly not too bright, fritters her life away in casual love affairs. Though ‘unsuitable’ for the dealer Adrian, she is no more so than his fiancée Carole. The three of them are stalled, and so is the film. On the other hand the landscape, so important in later films by Rohmer, makes its first significant appearance. As he was so skilfully to do later in his career, Rohmer here uses colour to significantly highlight his story. Filmed in natural light however, the interiors are as murky as Daniel and Adrian’s philosophising.

It takes a moment’s adjustment from the defects of these films to see Rohmer’s irony, directed towards unperceptive male characters whose intellectual rigidity and fear of emotional involvement cause them to bungle their relationships, both with women they admire and those they don’t, and treat these women with real though unaware cruelty.
My Night at Maud’s (Ma nuit chez Maud) 1969
Three films, and not much to show for it. But things were about to change. Rohmer is a master of construction, and the three films mentioned so far show the drawback to this mastery, which gives the films a mechanical, over-intellectual feel. With such a cinema of ideas, Rohmer needs actors of some skill, able to give emotional depth to the parts they play, often of people unaware of their feelings. A layered style of acting is required, which only an actor of considerable power can give. Rohmer was next to work with two of France’s greatest actors, and the resulting film made him recognised around the world as a major artist of cinema.

Jean-Louis Trintignant had acted in movies for more than 12 years when he joined the cast of My Night at Maud’s. He had leapt to fame two years earlier as the lead in Lelouche’s A Man and a Woman, and earlier in 1969 had played the investigator in Costa-Gavras’ Z. Most people will know him as the judge in Kieslowski’s Three Colours: Red. Trintignant was almost 40 when he played in the Rohmer film, and the part was rewritten to suit him: instead of a student, or an uncommitted society loafer, Jean-Louis is a professional who has travelled the world and had many relationships. Françoise Fabian was a couple of years younger than Trintignant and had been working in film since 1960, with directors such as Malle and
Luis Buñuel. As the Maud of the film’s title she is a divorcée and single parent with a talent for choosing the wrong man.

The difference these actors make to My Night at Maud’s is immediately apparent. Rohmer drops the distancing commentary of the first three films: Jean-Louis speaks only a sentence of commentary on two separate occasions. Néstor Almendros, on his second assignment with Rohmer and working this time in black and white, first shows his mastery: the camera in this film is almost a character in its own right and the photography adds immeasurably to the impact of the film. Rohmer, with two such skilled actors, is not hesitant about using close up, and what’s achieved, sometimes without a word of dialogue, is something that richens and deepens the film, adds its emotional content.

Yet the dialogue in the film is extraordinary. Rohmer’s films are often disparaged as “talky”. Haven’t you ever met someone with whom you connected with quite deeply? What did you do? Chances are you talked the night away, and this is an inherently dramatic situation. In Rohmer’s films characters are always meeting and talking the night away, and you have to understand this is because they love one another – even though they might not know it. The talk is central to a real situation, and the adrenalin, special effect laden excitement we’re used to in films can be seen after viewing this film to be the bizarre oddity it is.

The film’s argument is coherent, complex and very challenging. It concerns faith and is quite subversive because it challenges the very foundation of faith. Building on Pascal’s wager, it suggests that most people have a faith because they want to get something by it. Wouldn’t it be perfect, suggests Rohmer, if you could have faith without believing in god? Perhaps on the grounds that the concept is so beautiful it deserves belief, whether it is true or not. Wouldn’t it be perfect if you could just love someone, without expecting to be loved in return?

The ‘action’ is similar to the earlier three films: two men, Jean-Louis and Vidal, treat a woman, Maud, with unperceptive cruelty, too busy constructing their own world from intellectual concepts and negotiating their own advancement through egotistical complacency and self satisfaction and unawareness of others. There is an important difference between the two men. One, Vidal, is an atheist, and close to despair, and not taken seriously by either Jean-Louis or Maud. His shallowness is its own punishment. Jean-Louis is given a ray of hope: he is idealist enough to have faith – but his faith serves his self-interest. Jean-Louis has already made his choice of woman by the time he meets the ‘unsuitable’ Maud, someone who fits nicely into the rational security system he has constructed. And Maud? She is the generous, emotionally responsive female of the other films, able to love despite her heartbreaks. Of course this is a gross simplification of what any woman really is, but it is the contrast Rohmer is interested in, and simplification helps make things clearer. And Maud is played by Françoise Fabian, who can give the character depth, essentially by adding ambiguity to the role, so that any viewer can enrich their interpretation by adding from their own experience when watching the film.

In the epilogue to the film Rohmer adds some concepts that were only implicit in the earlier films. That you can love someone without having a relationship with them, as Maud loves Jean-Louis. That possession, as Jean-Louis possesses Françoise, is a poor second to trust, which was what Maud offered him. That awareness of the situation, which Jean-Louis has for a moment when he meets Maud at the beach, will be something he soon erases from his mind, for we all seek to be comfortably numb rather than painfully aware.

My Night at Maud’s is a film I’ve grown up with. I first saw it when I was 20. I went to the little Gala cinema in Pitt Street in Sydney, where European films were shown, and where I discovered films like Mon Oncle, Les Enfants du Paradis and The Seventh Seal, a whole new world for someone who then thought film was Tony Curtis playing Ali Baba or Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin not being very funny. The film touched me, and still does, in that part of me which mourns the things and people I’ve lost. I felt like Demios, up from Eleusis for the Dionysia in ancient Athens and sitting through one of Agathon’s lesser efforts when suddenly Sophocles walks on the stage and introduces Oedipus Rex.

At first the dialogue impressed me, and I thought it very clever that a film maker could show people having a conversation about Pascal and making it involving, just as I was impressed that Ingmar Bergman could make a film, The Seventh Seal, about the imminence of death and why that makes life futile, or not, and why not. These things just had not been done before, to my knowledge, in film. I realised that Maud was a film about what did not happen, about things that could have happened, just as much as it chronicles the petty details of what actually does happen. I thought this masterly then, and still do today. Thanks to video and DVD I had opportunities to watch Maud half a dozen times again, and gradually came to understand the understated, or not stated, emotional issues of the film, as I grew up, lost opportunities I was unaware of at the time, reflected on that, and gradually built up the background to appreciate the immense understanding and compassion for human beings that motivated Eric Rohmer to first write stories, then make films.

Claire’s Knee (Le genou de Claire) 1970
Claire’s knee is not really the subject of this film (the knee, and Claire, make their appearance after more than one half of it has passed). It’s a sly and amusing study of desire, and the self-deceit we have about it, played out in the person and actions of Jerome, a 35 year old diplomat who finds himself attracted by an old friend and two teenage girls but finds it inconvenient to admit it.

Jerome explains to a friend, Aurora, that he is getting married to a woman he feels no desire for, but whom he knows he can live with for that reason. His friend doesn’t believe him, and neither do we. For the first half of the film Jerome demonstrates his lack of desire for his friend Aurora. Jerome then attempts to prove he is sincere by allowing the 16 year old Laura to fall in love with him, and then pursuing the 18 year old Claire in order to touch her knee, and then do no more. As the movie progresses we see he has many illusions about himself, and the desire he doesn’t feel may be only atrophied and repressed through fear of rejection, or shyness.

The part played in the earlier movies by a male friend to the central character in this movie is played by a woman, Aurora (Aurora Cornu), who sets in motion the events that occur in the film. The woman Jerome intends to marry remains offscreen, and the ‘unsuitable’ woman is played by not one but three women. The wrong that Jerome does to Claire is to try to break up her relationship with her boyfriend, and this is comically ineffective. Compared to the earlier films all this is much lighter and more whimsical.

Jean-Claude Brialy, an experienced and very popular actor in France who had worked earlier with Truffaut and Godard, plays Jerome so we can see the contradictions behind his ever so slightly fatuous self appraisal. Béatrice Romand, one of the best actresses to have worked with Rohmer and only 18 at the time the film was made (it was her first film) yet able to look as young as 14 in some scenes, plays Laura and virtually steals the movie with her virtuoso portrayal of adolescent sophistication, which shows considerably more self knowledge than the ostensibly older and wiser Jerome has. Aurora Cornu, a non actor playing herself (you can see her smile self consciously a couple of times at Rohmer where he directs beside the camera), has an important part as the character Aurora, perhaps as the woman Jerome really loves.

Rohmer uses close up of these three faces, a shot he uses sparingly in his films, as he tries to delve deeper and deeper behind the many layers of self deception we all (Rohmer wants us to believe) use to protect us from experience and the change it brings. As in the later Pauline at the Beach there is a contrast between the convoluted reactions of the adults and the more direct responses of the teenagers, suggesting we may be learning the wrong things as we grow up. Perhaps the most subtle of the Tales, it concerns the morality of self deceit.
Love in the Afternoon (L’amour l’après-midi) 1972
Love in the Afternoon is the most heartfelt and moving of the Moral Tales, and has an effect that resonates long after the movie is finished. Frédéric is a corporate attorney who is happily married and with a young child. Though he loves his wife he doesn’t share his thoughts with her. In fact he feels a little trapped in marriage. It’s what he wants but not all he wants. In a wish fulfillment sequence early in the film he imagines having all the women passing in the street, who just happen to be six of the actresses in earlier films in the series. Then he meets Chloé, an old acquaintance he is at first wary of. The two become closer, and build up an intimacy, and soon his fantasy looks like becoming a reality. But how sincere is love built to fill an empty space in an afternoon? The need to choose has a shattering effect on Frédéric. He seems forced to make a choice, and cannot.

Frédéric’s dilemma is an almost universal one. Into any relationship, perhaps soonest into the best ones, comes an unwelcome visitor: boredom. Solutions vary. Some make a fetish of duty and morality, others fantasize, others cheat on their partner, some become cynical about ‘men’ or about ‘women’, some become serial monogamists – there’s no effective solution, except to keep reinventing the relationship, have a new one with the new people each couple have become over time. But here’s a film that looks at the problem three ways. From the point of view of a pregnant woman full of uncertainty about her attractiveness (something many pregnant women go through); from the point of view of a man who wants to live as a polygynist but with a strong sense of justice that makes him unwilling to hurt another person (he is a lawyer after all); and from the point of view of a woman unsuccessful in her relationships, with a strong sense of liberty and contempt for traditional attitudes, who yet wants to hang onto real love and affection when she finds it. Three divergent and incompatible sets of needs, and the way Rohmer weaves these into a narrative makes for fascinating viewing. It amazes me that so many people say nothing happens in Rohmer’s films just because there are no explosions. Plenty happens, but you do have to have some knowledge of human nature to see it.

Bernard Verley stars as Frédéric, acting with an effective mix of charm and staidness that make the conflict Frédéric is experiencing plausible, while not making his final choice a foregone conclusion. Frédéric’s wife Hélène is played by Françoise Verley, a non-professional actor in a small part which yet is pivotal. It is remarkable that in the series the suitable women all have small parts or are off screen, while the ‘unsuitable’ women are usually the centre of each film. The movie also stars pop icon, model, singer and actress Zouzou (aka Danièle Ciarlet) as Chloé. Zouzou was idolised in the 60s in France as one of the most beautiful (and trendy) women in the world, whose career bore an uncanny resemblance to Andy Wahol protegée Nico’s. Zouzou’s past and existential problems were pretty much the same as Chloé’s, which make her authentic in the part.

This time around Rohmer reintroduces the commentary of the first few films, whereby Frédéric explains his motivations. I found it redundant. Rohmer is a highly observant and subtle film maker, and his character’s motivations are there to see. Perhaps increasing fame and a growing overseas market led him to add a commentary to ‘explain’ his film to all the bored, restive viewers used to passively watching scenes of men chasing each other with guns. It wouldn’t have helped.

Watching the series in order allows you to see Rohmer developing as a film maker, and experimenting with variations of the theme. It also lets you see how the different treatments add resonance to each other. In the treatment of romantic love, Rohmer looks at the spectrum: lust, affection, tenderness, companionship, passion, love and other variants. But he also shows how all these emotions lose out in the ever present conflict between liberty – and the results, self indulgence, self deception – and morality.

The films inspire many to talk at length about how much talk there is in a film by Rohmer. My advice to these folk is not to pay so much attention to what is being said, which admittedly is often clever and sophisticated, but to watch the space between what the characters feel and what they say. You can learn a lot doing that. The people who complain of Rohmer’s films being talky are ignoring, too, how masterly he uses silence, and how much the intellectual content of the dialogue is influenced by the emotional subtext that motivates it. It’s just like real life, and we tend to be a bit unperceptive about our real life.

A remarkably consistent film maker, Eric Rohmer has made more good films than most directors, and quite a few great ones. In this series I would include two such: My Night at Maud’s and Love in the Afternoon. I’ve thought both were pretty wonderful for about 20 years now, and I watch a lot of films. Rohmer was now about to embark on a series of films which he called Comedies and Proverbs which would see him reach his peak as one of cinema’s greatest directors (and inspire a multitude of viewers to think his films were about the conversations they contain).

©2010 Original material copyright Phillip Kay. Images and other material courtesy Creative Commons. Facts courtesy IMDB. Please inform post author of any violation.

Eric Rohmer’s Comedies and Proverbs

WHEN ERIC ROHMER (1920-2010) died the comment on everyone’s lips seemed to be that from Arthur Penn’s Night Moves in which private eye Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), says: “I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry.” This was actually a way of delineating the character of Moseby, but it brings up the concept of ‘action’ in cinema in a useful way. People want to believe that action, say a car chase scene, is more cinematic than, say, a love scene, which is static. Behind that is the wish to restrict film to be the conveyor of the emotion of excitement. This probably comes about because most Hollywood films are in fact remakes of The Great Train Robbery, Edwin S Porter’s 1903 film and the first action film. But the scope of film is much broader, and covers much of human behaviour. And incredible as it may seem, we reveal most of our deepest emotions simply by talking about them, even if in an imperceptive, indirect way.

Rohmer’s films are all about the gap between the mundane things that happen to us – and falling in love is one of these – and the tragic stature these events have merely because they happen to US. When your girl tells you she doesn’t want you the invasion of the Star Troopers and the impact of the Death Star suddenly fade into insignificance, even if you tell your friends it’s alright, you didn’t really love her anyway. It’s a question of perspective. The conversations in Rohmer are the most important thing in life – to the characters having them. Listening to the conversation in an action film, by contrast, is like watching paint dry.

Anyone who doesn’t think filmed conversation can be essentially cinematic needs to watch Malle’s My Dinner with Andre. For a refinement of this, they should watch Satyajit Ray’s Charulata, where intense drama is evoked by what the characters do NOT say.

Comedies and Proverbs
After a hiatus of some years Rohmer returned to film with what he called “Comedies and Proverbs”, a series similar in some ways to the earlier “Six Moral Tales”. As one of these six, My Night at Maud’s, is ostensibly concerned with Pascal, it might be relevant to remember Pascal’s famous saying from his 1671 Les Pensées, “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point,” or, “The heart has its reasons that Reason knows nothing of.”

The films I watched (yet again) are part of an eight DVD release by England’s Arrow Films, and include conversations with Rohmer about each film which are as good as the films themselves and reason enough for buying the set. Although it is true all these films are variations on a theme, they are also mostly different to one another in style, manner and viewpoint, and the humour is by turns wry, sarcastic, satirical and burlesque. Like the novelist he is Rohmer never presents a bad character, just confused, troubled and imperceptive human beings.

The Aviator’s Wife (La femme de l’aviateur) 1981
The proverb “On ne saurait penser à rien” (You can’t think of nothing) could be interpreted “You can’t think of others when you think of yourself”.

This delicate depiction of youthful jealousy has much of its humour in its observation of how absurd it is to expect certainty in romantic love. Yet, at the age of François, the main protagonist, most likely the only real experience of love he has would have been that of parental love. It’s much more fostering than romantic love: a good parent is always there for their child. François is about to learn that falling in love is a very risky business indeed.

The age of the characters is important. The three main characters are 15, 20 and 25. Marie Rivière (Anne) was that age (24) when the film was made (she was to make 9 films with Rohmer); Philippe Marlaud (François) was 20 (he was to die the following year from burns suffered in a camping injury); Anne-Laure Meury (Lucie) looks 15, but I can’t find her birthdate (she made 3 films with Rohmer). Also in the film is Fabrice Luchini, who made 6 films for Rohmer. Many of the actors here first came together for Rohmer’s 1978 film Perceval le gallois.

Paris is a main character: the environment in which people exist is just as important to Rohmer as what they say or do. Rohmer takes the viewer on an exciting and evocative travelogue of Paris streets, shops and apartments and somehow it helps make sense of the mess the characters get themselves into. Also important is the actor’s body language and facial expression: a moué, a twitch of the lips, a shrug all add to what is being expressed, give it a certain colour. Rohmer was 60 when he made the film, able to write incredibly accurate dialogue for his 20 something actors, and elicit perfect delivery from them.

The film is also a reflection on the intersection of romantic love and so-called real life. The aviator’s wife never appears, but, offstage, she controls the action. She becomes pregnant, her husband sees it is time to end his philandering ways and settle down, and breaks off with one of his girlfriends. And so the film begins. The girl, Anne (Marie Rivière), disturbed and distraught, finds the insecurity of her young lover oppressive. He, jealously watching the movements of the aviator, finds himself attracted to a young girl, only to find that she has a boyfriend. And so the plot unfolds, with the precision of Mozart’s Figaro or The School for Wives (L’école des femmes) by Molière, and also with the naturalness of a pebble thrown in a pond and sending out ripples in ever widening circles.

These are real people, and if you cannot feel for them – then: “you can’t think of nothing”. Watching other people can tell us a lot about ourselves, especially when guided by such a master dramatist and wise observer as Rohmer, who knows that watching others grow up helps us attain a certain maturity ourselves.

A Good Marriage (Le beau mariage) 1982
The proverb is from La Fontaine: Can any of us refrain/from building castles in Spain? The comedy is that in fulfilling our dreams we first have to adapt them to reality, and this is the story of someone who doesn’t.

Unlike many of Rohmer’s films this one is a comedy of manners, and the acting is mannered, not naturalistic. Instead of eavesdropping on characters who seem to be speaking their thoughts aloud, here we have actors delivering epigrams and bon mots sometimes facing an angle between the character they are ostensibly addressing and the camera, as though commenting to us about their own motivations.

A young woman, Sabine, (Béatrice Romand, an actress from Algeria who appeared in 6 of Rohmer’s films) tires of being the other woman and decides to marry. Unlike other women however, she does not choose among suitors, but arbitrarily selects a man. There are plenty of candidates, she feels, and none of them will be able to resist her. Of course she selects a man just like herself, and he has decided NOT to have a relationship, and to complicate matters, she falls in love with him.

As Sabine moves between her pied-à-terre, her mother’s house, her workplace, her friend’s studio, we see the various milieux she inhabits, and some of the class advantages of a good marriage that could have affected her but don’t. Her decision is solely an act of will. But can one person decide on an action that involves two? Obviously not, and this makes Sabine an absurd figure, a type rather than a character. The acting is a tour de force from Romand: you may not like this girl, but you are forced to live in her absurd world for the duration of the film.

Comedy is tragedy that happens to others, tragedy is comedy that happens to us.

Pauline at the Beach (Pauline à la plage) 1983
The proverb is: he who speaks too much bites his own tongue. The comedy is that EVERYONE here speaks too much (as though Rohmer is satirising his critics, who all say his films are too much based on conversation – and say so at length) except the teenager Pauline, who can still listen.

Fourteen year old Pauline (Amanda Langlet) gets a lesson in love from the adults around her on vacation at the beach resort of Granville. Teased by her cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle) about boyfriends, Pauline meets a boy, finds him easy to talk to, they find each other physically attractive – voilà, she has a boyfriend! Meanwhile the adults around her behave in a convoluted and more and more ridiculous way as they negotiate their own relationships. Marion has divorced her husband, and declares she wants a man whom she can burn for. She meets an old flame, Pierre (Pascal Greggory, here cast as the hopeless lover as he was so memorably in Zulawski’s over-the-top La fidélité). Pierre burns for Marion, but that doesn’t work for her. Instead she’s attracted by Henri (Féodor Atkine), another divorcé who is now cautiously playing the field. Could it be that Marion just wants exciting sex, and Henri desperately wants to fall in love but is too scared to do so? Every one of them is hopelessly out of touch with their feelings, and Pauline watches and wonders.

How long will it be before Pauline herself starts making relationship mistakes and develops the misconceptions that prevent people from enjoying the simple things of life, like love.

In the commentary Rohmer reveals he is a frustrated novelist (“why make a film if you can write”) and that his films mainly come from notes for novels he wrote long ago.

Full Moon in Paris (Les nuits de la pleine lune) 1984
The proverb is: He who has two women loses his soul, he who has two houses loses his mind.

The story of a man who wants a secure relationship and ends up with two women, and a woman who wants freedom within a relationship and ends up with a broken heart, this is the most schematic of the Comedies and Proverbs, and the least comedic. Despite superb acting from Pascale Ogier (who died the same year of a heart attack) and Fabrice Luchini, I was never able to believe in these characters, who seem to exist only so Rohmer can examine the gamut between trust and independence, security and personal fulfillment, within a romantic relationship. It hardly needs demonstrating that trust is the most delicate component in a relationship (taking your partner for granted is the usual substitute), nor that possession and ownership is no substitute for commitment, though much more obvious. Every point that Rohmer makes in the film is a valid one; but I wish the characters had a life of their own, or at least evoked the sparkling wit of the earlier films in the series.

The Green Ray/Summer (Le rayon vert) 1986
The proverb: Ah for the days/that set our hearts ablaze

With a musical theme contributed by Rohmer, and dialogue contributed by Marie Rivière and her family as well as other actors, this is a further step away from the comedy of the first three films in the series. It is in fact one of the most romantic movies I’ve seen, perhaps one of the most romantic movies ever made.

This is the story of Delphine (Marie Rivière), a young woman in a state of desolation, who feels abandoned by friends and lover alike, and how she comes to know her own feelings at last. In a remarkable performance by Rivière, Delphine is played warts and all, with her difficulties, her diffidence and her self pity, but in such a way we can also see the extreme honesty she brings to her self consideration and the appraisal of the people about her, and the charm this honesty gives her.

It is a story also of fruitless journeys, as Delphine resolutely sets out on a holiday, accompanied only by her sense of being abandoned. But behind the holiday resorts she visits and flees is the play of primal forces of nature, to which Rohmer suggests we all must respond: the snow left behind in a glacial sheet, the wind storm in the mountains, the sun on the sea at the beaches, the tempestuous surge of the waves, and the bounteous gifts of the fruits and flowers of spring.

This is the film above all his others where you feel Rohmer has used a candid camera, hidden away from the non actors, who all speak as though they are not on film. Only when you realise this is pre-eminently the case with Marie Rivière, who is on screen most of the time, can you appreciate the subtlety and skill with which Rohmer directs the film. The green ray? Forget the scientific explanation. It’s when something reaches out and touches you, when you go with the flow, it’s god talking, it’s magic. It’s joy. A film as light as a pavlova, as delicate and well judged as a pirouette, a rare attempt to show some of the insubstantial shadows with whom we dance our lives away.

My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend (L’ami de mon amie) 1987
The proverb: the friend of my friend is my friend (too). The ‘friend’ was ‘enemy’ in the original saying (my enemy’s enemy is my friend), and Rohmer draws attention to the permutations of this kind of relationship: ally, rival, companion, confidant, friend and supplanter.

As always, the environment is a character in its own right, and in this film it’s a new, bland, beautifully laid out garden suburb of Paris (without the garden). The predominant colour is white, and it symbolises sterility. Blanche (another name for white), whose quest for love is examined in the film (beautifully played by Emmanuelle Chaulet) stands for a dilemma common in modern city living: she has everything, except love and emotional fulfillment.

The film is very much a variation of the previous film in the series, The Green Ray, as shy and lonely Blanche hangs back from committing herself to a man until she finds the one she really wants. Her ‘friend’ Lea (Sophie Renoir, descendant of the famous painter) – only young women have friendships of this nature – takes the opposite approach: she goes with the best choice of the moment rather than be alone.

The film charts with amazing credibility the growing attraction between Blanche and her friend Lea’s boyfriend Fabien (Eric Viellard), which perhaps too conveniently is helped by Lea’s promiscuity and attraction to another man. It is a romance pure and simple, and is enormously charming. Blanche is perhaps a bit gentler than Delphine in The Green Ray, and very lovable.

The sparkling comedy of the first three films was followed by the heartbreak (tragedy is too strong a word) of the fourth, and the series ends with two enchanting romances. For me the two Marie Rivière films were the standout contribution in the series. (The Arrow set also contains The Marquise of O, an excursion into the archaeology of theatre which reproduces an 18th century novella in the style of 19th century melodrama, filmed in natural lighting and with unnatural gestures and exclamations from the cast, and possibly the best set design and frame composition of all time. Requires an ignorance of the female reproductive system to be enjoyed thoroughly).

One appreciates after a series of films by Rohmer the unobtrusive camera work, the medium shots, the long takes and the always insightful dialogue, and realises just how hysterical Hollywood films are, with their loud soundtracks, fast cuts and short takes, melodramatic dialogue and over acting. But then, Rohmer has something to say. Not everybody does, in the rush to part the audience from its money.

Films can be divided into three main and overlapping categories: action, fantasy and drama. The first are for those obsessed with machines, characterised by stylised violence achieved through special effects and similar in practice to going to the circus or a ball game. The second are for those suffering from frustrated or thwarted emotions, characterised by melodrama and wish fulfillment, a bit like going to Coney Island. The third are for those interested in how human beings function, and what makes up their own behaviour, and are based on traditional media such as literature and the theatre. People are always being misled by the fact that all three are referred to as ‘films’: it is extremely rare for the same person to like all three types. Most often a viewer will disqualify at least one of the types as ‘bad’, or even as not film at all.

Rohmer’s films: perfectly executed observations about trivialities or profound insights into human nature? Which is greater, the novels of Jane Austen or War and Peace? A fugue by Bach or the Choral Symphony by Beethoven? Hint: what is the sound of one hand clapping?

©2010 Original material copyright Phillip Kay. Images and other material courtesy Creative Commons. Facts courtesy IMDB. Please inform post author of any violation.