Eric Rohmer

[papeetepatrick]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/movies/1...?ref=obituaries

Eric Rohmer died today. This was a unique and special film director. I've seen most of the major films, perhaps some 15 of them, and many of them have made a strong impression on me, esp. 'A Tale of Winter', 'Rendezvous de Paris', 'Summer', 'Chloe a l'Apres-midi', 'Claire's Knee', and others. I like very much the sound in some of these films, in which he makes sure that you are hearing the real city sounds, as in 'Rendezvous de Paris', which is later, I think about 1996.

Rohmer was also very important in the French resistance to certain cultural aspects of the GATT agreement. This was couragepis and good stubbornness, and may have made it possible for certain French filmmakers to do films they wouldn't have otherwise, as Hanneke, Techine and others. I always saw it as a defiance of homogenization, and it worked.

[kfw]

Thanks for posting, Patrick. I saw Claire's Knee at the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid-seventies and it was my first "art film."

[Alexandra]

I've been sad since I read this. My first Rohmer was "Ma Nuit Chez Maude." I loved it. Saw it about 10 times, and I think I've seen all of his films over the years. Heck, I haven't gotten over Truffaut's death yet....

[Helene]

My favorite was "L'ami de mon amie".

Rest in peace, Mr. Rohmer.

[Petra]

I saw the Four Seasons' films as a teenager / young adult and they were hugely influential in shaping my ideas and ideals with respect to art, romance and relationships, all the things that are important in life. Thank you, Mr. Rohmer.

[Quiggin]

I was sorting old newsclippings and found an interview -- not available online -- between Nigel Andrews and Eric Rohmer from the Financial Times. An excerpt:

The visible world has no better representative. Rohmer’s best films are a canon of delight, a corpus of enchanted enlightenment: the teasing moral-romantic paradoxes of “My Night with Maude,” the duel of faith and infidelity in “Clarie’s Knee,” the Shakespearean love imbroglios of his “Tales of the Seasons.”

These is such a beguiling bombardment of reality and ambient truth in Rohmer’s cinema -- of time, place, weather, season, passing people -- that one can forget that his stories are often about falsity; about delusion and self-deception, about people arguing with themselves tortuously in and out of amorous choices, philosophical beliefs, moral positions. As a critic Rohmer once provocatively wrote, “There are not enough lies in cinema.”

“It’s true. It’s the influence of literature on me ... In Dostoevsky the characters don’t know -- nor does he -- whether they’re talking the truth or telling a lie.”

What is special or unique about film?:

“The movie camera is at once a machine that records the real automatically -- that’s very important and not to be despised -- and at the same time an art that demands interpretation ... Reality is a friend to the filmmaker, it allows him to introduce the subjective. The originality of film is that what is in conflict in other arts is not a conflict in cinema.”

Nigel Andrews, The Arts Interview: Eric Rohmer, Financial Times, June 22/June 23 2002

It's also interesting to note -- and gives more depth to the story -- that in the early sixties there was a schism at "Cahiers du Cinema" between the younger "group of five," led by Jacques Rivette, and Rohmer, resulting in Rohmer's dismissal from editorship. Here's Emilie Bickerton's account in her "Short History":

Rivette was the leading figure who charged Rohmer with allowing a confort de caste, or complacency of thought, to set in that left Cahiers isolated from the dynamic present. Rivette wanted to attend to alternative sources of innovation -- Bertolucci, Pasolini, the Polish 'workshops', Brazilian cinema novo and Direct Cinema from around the world ... Bunuel's mockeries of bourgeois mores, Antonioni's "L'Eclisse."

Rohmer's aloof high classicism had also resulted in the journal's resistance to the New Wave; "Breathless" was given "a measly two stars."

After the failed attempts by Francois Truffaut and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze in 1962 to encourage Rohmer to reassess some of the old Cahiers tenets, Rivette mounted an alternative team. The end of Rohmer's reign was undignified for a man of such elegance in writing an directing. It was also cruel. Rohmer put together number 144 at the same time as Rivette's competing team worked on their number 145 issue, and in a lonely final flurry, Rohmer wrapped up his version in his pyjamas after a white night at the office.

[papeetepatrick]

These are literally keenly interesting, Quiggin. Thanks for posting them. They have made come to the surface what I really feel about Rohmer: I like the weather, I like the 'pretty Rohmerish young people', and I think the whole body of work is important, and I even like some individual films quite a lot. But he never quite moves me, except in the visceral feel you can get of either urban or rural landscape, in the way that Resnais or Techine or Truffaut or certaintly, to go earlier, Carne do. It is always a recognizable 'Rohmer world' and there have been those who have said the films are indistinguishable one from the other. Well, that's not true literally, ir only because of 'Percival' (which I can't stand, which is rare for me) and 'Marquise of O'), but in fact, the ones I do like most are in that atmosphere, which becomes (I think, not exactly sure of this) a little more defined after 'Ma Nuit Chez Maud' with 'Claire's Knee'. There's an annoying over-politeness about rudeness and meanness that he always infuses his characters with. Can you imagine Deneuve in one of these, all of a sudden bursting out in a rage of the sort you find toward the Auteuil character in 'Ma Saison Preferee', or the passion in 'Les Voleurs' or even in 'Indochine'. and certainly in the 2004 'Les Temps Qui Changent'. That's just an example. The characters seem to be bourgeois in the extreme, like the girl from Geneve in the 'Les Rendezvous de Paris' segment in the artist's atelier, she walks around in this condescending way, clinically evaluating his paintings, his literal life-blood, and while pretending to be 'realistic' by refusing to even let the boy kiss her as she is leaving, is even miserly about that, saying 'For what? I have my man, I am going back to him'. She is humourless, mediocre and yet appears to have 'won the point'. But she hasn't. She is the conclusion of the scene, in which she has been dismissive and ungracious in every possible way to the artist, and yet she feels as though she have been 'sensible'; but knowing that is was obvious they'd never see each other again was why anyone with real refinement would have allowed the little kiss on the cheek, not the reverse. I suppose my much-delayed annoyance at this scene (although I always disliked her) might never have occurred had she been the receiver of the epithets that would have been perfectly justified by the young man. If Deneuve calls her brother in 'Ma Saison Preferee' (played by Auteuil) "cold and contemptuous!", you still don't believe he is beyond redemption for some of his failings. This girl is like a contemporary automaton, and you know that one day if she has any sensibilites at all, she will regret such truly contemptible and stingy behaviour--if she ever reflects at all, and it's hard to imagine that she would. In the same way, in 'A Tale of Winter', the 'second boyfriend', after the young woman who's husband is still missing has left her 'second husband', is subject to constant insults by her, and he just sits there and takes it, as if this is a 'civilized' way of disccusing things. Rohmer has his great talents, but he is stuffy and stingy in his way, and i can't think of a single film which has even one moment to compare with what Techine achieves in every film I've seen of his. There was something in 'Chloe in the Afternoon', perhaps--Chloe at one moment lectures her boyfriend for 'trying to destroy someone else's pleasure', I've always remembered that line--and Chloe IS a stronger-profile female character than Rohmer's usual 'little-girl types'. But there's that snitty, whimpering girl in 'Le Rayon Vert', who is unable to figure out 'how to do an enjoyable holiday', this was a beautiful movie (esp. the Biarritz section and its sounds), but looking back, the premise is a little silly, what with her harsh judgments of every young man she meets until she finally meets one who will act as her analyst/parent/matinee idol/right-on-the-beach-like-in-the-movies, as 'the green ray' appears to them and turns it into a fairy tale (and someone pointed out that Rohmer does like the 'winning male' to be the best-looking as well; that's not a bad touch, and he does that in 'Tale of Winter' too.)

I did once use 'Ma Nuit Chez Maud' for practising French once. I had been out of practice for many years with my French, and I watched the film with subtitles first, although I could understand much of it (my problem with French was always in understanding the speaker and the speed of it, not in knowing the grammar and in being able to at least form some comprehensible sentence), then turned the television around and just listened to it. It worked to a degree, but not like going back to French-speaking countries did, of course. I used some Robbe-Grillet novels for the same purpose, reading first in English, then easily sliding though the French and hearing it, but somehow Robbe-Grillet's coldness and serialization doesn't annoy me the way Rohmer's bourgeois attitude does, and I don't think he ever goes beyond it. Robbe-Grillet is using his techniques to open up new fields of play and sensation and creation and writing and skewed narrative, but Rohmer always seems stuck in certain kinds of characters as being sympathetic when they're merely whining. And he's self-righteous about some of them to an absurdly precious degree. In 'Le Rayon Vert', in Delphine's first attempt at a sojourn, she meets this ever-so-slightly racy boy and refers to him as being 'a sort of hustler'. Well, you know, nobody else who ever heard that term before, and knows what it means to most people, would have ever recognized him as such--he just wasn't going to be a good shoulder to cry on, and that's all that tiresome character was looking for. You find this mountain-out-of-a-molehill 'emotional crisis' in a lot of Rohmer's characters.

Thanks again for putting these up, Quiggin, and it looks like you had to type them in as well. Although I've veered from some of their themes, they are responsible for making me go into this reverie about Rohmer. I suppose I probably see him as an important filmmaker, but ultimately way too precious for my taste. I never think of wanting to see any of the films a second time, although I have known people in real life very much like Rohmer's characters (my publisher's girlfriends are almost all straight out of Rohmer, which is to say--a bit spoiled. And he had to get over several of them the hard way)

[dirac]

I was sorting old newsclippings and found an interview -- not available online -- between Nigel Andrews and Eric Rohmer from the Financial Times. An excerpt:

The visible world has no better representative. Rohmer's best films are a canon of delight, a corpus of enchanted enlightenment: the teasing moral-romantic paradoxes of "My Night with Maude," the duel of faith and infidelity in "Clarie's Knee," the Shakespearean love imbroglios of his "Tales of the Seasons."

These is such a beguiling bombardment of reality and ambient truth in Rohmer's cinema -- of time, place, weather, season, passing people -- that one can forget that his stories are often about falsity; about delusion and self-deception, about people arguing with themselves tortuously in and out of amorous choices, philosophical beliefs, moral positions. As a critic Rohmer once provocatively wrote, "There are not enough lies in cinema."

"It's true. It's the influence of literature on me ... In Dostoevsky the characters don't know -- nor does he -- whether they're talking the truth or telling a lie."

What is special or unique about film?:

"The movie camera is at once a machine that records the real automatically -- that's very important and not to be despised -- and at the same time an art that demands interpretation ... Reality is a friend to the filmmaker, it allows him to introduce the subjective. The originality of film is that what is in conflict in other arts is not a conflict in cinema."

Nigel Andrews, The Arts Interview: Eric Rohmer, Financial Times, June 22/June 23 2002

It's also interesting to note -- and gives more depth to the story -- that in the early sixties there was a schism at "Cahiers du Cinema" between the younger "group of five," led by Jacques Rivette, and Rohmer, resulting in Rohmer's dismissal from editorship. Here's Emilie Bickerton's account in her "Short History":

Rivette was the leading figure who charged Rohmer with allowing a confort de caste, or complacency of thought, to set in that left Cahiers isolated from the dynamic present. Rivette wanted to attend to alternative sources of innovation -- Bertolucci, Pasolini, the Polish 'workshops', Brazilian cinema novo and Direct Cinema from around the world ... Bunuel's mockeries of bourgeois mores, Antonioni's "L'Eclisse."

Rohmer's aloof high classicism had also resulted in the journal's resistance to the New Wave; "Breathless" was given "a measly two stars."

After the failed attempts by Francois Truffaut and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze in 1962 to encourage Rohmer to reassess some of the old Cahiers tenets, Rivette mounted an alternative team. The end of Rohmer's reign was undignified for a man of such elegance in writing an directing. It was also cruel. Rohmer put together number 144 at the same time as Rivette's competing team worked on their number 145 issue, and in a lonely final flurry, Rohmer wrapped up his version in his pyjamas after a white night at the office.

Thanks for locating those and taking the time to post them, Quiggin.

What I say, I do not say with words. I do not say it with images, either, with all due respect to partisans of pure cinema, who would speak with images as a deaf-mute does with his hands. After all, I do not say, I show. I show people who move and speak. That is all I know how to do, but that is my true subject.

From Letter to a Critic. I don't know that I agree with him necessarily but it makes perfect sense in terms of his own work.

(Thanks for starting the topic, papeetepatrick.)

[Helene]

There's an annoying over-politeness about rudeness and meanness that he always infuses his characters with. Can you imagine Deneuve in one of these, all of a sudden bursting out in a rage of the sort you find toward the Auteuil character in 'Ma Saison Preferee', or the passion in 'Les Voleurs' or even in 'Indochine'. and certainly in the 2004 'Les Temps Qui Changent'.

In my favorite of Rohmer's, "Boyfriends and Girlfriends", the smart guy is allowed an occasional logical cutting remark, while the women are allowed the occasional emotional burp. I always feel I'm being let in to see a peep world I didn't think existed, and that peep is enough.

[Quiggin]

Patrick:

this was a beautiful movie (esp. the Biarritz section and its sounds), but looking back, the premise is a little silly

I too liked "Rayon Vert" and was in the right mood for it at the time I saw it. It was done on a shoestring budget and a shoestring script that was improvised for the most part -- so it never quite knew where it was going to land.

Yes, Rohmer's world is bourgeois and land-locked but I think he's enough of an enthnographic filmmaker to realize where it stands in the scheme of things. Yet in his little films, he dares to go against the grain of his narrative and change tone in a way that would be unthinkable in Hollywood.

(A recent Rohmer-scaled film, Claire Denis' "Thirty-five Shots of Rum," also challenges the Hollywood vision of life in its quiet way.)

Anyway I think it's interesting to let the New Wave films stand together -- that's why I cited the Cahiers event -- which include those of Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc Godard (whose Rohmer film would be "Masculine Feminine"), and Jacques Rivette -- with those of the more formally conservative Rohmer, the best student of the radical Catholic Andre Bazin, a little off to the side.

[papeetepatrick]

I too liked "Rayon Vert" and was in the right mood for it at the time I saw it. It was done on a shoestring budget and a shoestring script that was improvised for the most part -- so it never quite knew where it was going to land.

Glad you stayed on this one, because it was vivid despite my dislike of the heroine's 'crisis' (this may be my problem with Marie Riviere, though, I don't care for her in 'Automne' either, she always seems petulant and rude--isn't that the one where she tells her gracious hosts how horrible they are for not being vegetarians?). So now returns the memory of that Swedish girl Delphine meets in Biarritz. Well, my impression is that she is supposed to be vapid and insensitive according to Rohmer (after all, the film is about Delphine's near-nervous-breakdown about not being able to get her vacation right--shrinks in Bruce Wagner novels never had it this bad), but then I thought this 'suedoise' was the normal, healthy, plucky girl who knew how to have fun at the beach. Terrible to be non-neurotic, eh?

Helene- I just realized I saw 'L'ami de Mon Amie' but had forgotten the name of it, and well, the later Rohmer 'young people movies' really do start blending together. I liked this one too, but still remember primarily that it was the nicest possible way to see Parisian banlieue real estate of the nice sort.

Yet in his little films, he dares to go against the grain of his narrative and change tone in a way that would be unthinkable in Hollywood.

And sometimes this does bring unusual characters that might never be emphasized elsewhere. In Tale of Winter, that hairdresser 'second husband' with whom the heroine moves to a smaller city (Nivers? can't remember) is especially odious, as it is only days upon their arrival that she is being treated like a mere employee in the salon. The sensation is very stifling, and Rohmer executes that part of the film perfectly.

I think that, ultimately, I like 'Claire's Knee' the best, it's just been so long since I saw it, I have a hard time remembering it, except that Claire is somewhat enigmatic, but always summery and desirable, not some little tedious scold like that girl in 'Rendezvous de Paris' (although she is a good Swiss character, no question--and perhaps Rohmer really 'likes' her little more than I do.) 'Claire's Knee' stands out in my memory as being more than 'just another Rohmer film'. I respect 'Ma Nuit Chez Maud' and some of the others too, but I suppose 'Claire's Knee' actually does have a pastoral loveliness that moves one, a bit like Delius, say. But also, the charm of Laurance de Monaghan as Claire, who says very little, as I recall, and it is her secrets that you want to know. Strange, it just occurs to me that this actress would have been just right for Eula Varner if a real film of Faulkner's Snopes trilogy were ever properly made (they call the Lee Remick character in 'The Long Hot Summer' Eula Varner, but I think that's based on a short story.) Eula was the character that shook up the entire town, everybody worshipped her as a kind of Helen of Troy beauty. Mlle. de Monaghan exuded some of this kind of sensuality.

Thanks, all, for your comments.