Filmmakers

Eric Rohmer

Born Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer in Tulle (in the Corrèze region in the center of France) in 1920, Eric Rohmer is the most “private” of the famous French film directors. As regards his private life outside of the cinema, we only know that he married in 1957, that he has two sons, and that he was a French professor in a number of Parisian high schools. Rohmer long refused even to allow his picture to appear in the press. As Joël Magny reports, he shouted one day at a photographer, “No, I won’t have it! No photos, ever. I’m against the star system. I want to remain in the shadows […]. The author only exists by his work.” It is said that Rohmer’s decision to adopt a pseudonym and to avoid publicity was an effort to hide his profession as a filmmaker from his mother, who would have been scandalized at the thought of her son, a respectable professor, “lowering himself to make films.” If Rohmer indeed stayed in the shadows during the first part of his career, his role in the world of cinema was no less important, as the chronology offered by Philippe Molinier, summarized below, bears witness.

Ten years older than the “young Turks” — Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, and Rivette, notably — whom he will join on the staff of the film review Cahiers du cinéma, Rohmer began a career as a film critic at the end of the forties. Between 1948 and 1963 he published around a hundred articles in various Parisian film magazines. In 1950 he created his own review, La Gazette du cinéma, which disappeared after five issues for financial reasons. He was a member of the editorial staff of the Cahiers du cinéma from their inception in 1951 and became editor-in-chief in 1958 after the death of André Bazin. (It was at this time that Rohmer finally abandoned his career as a high school teacher.) As early as 1950 he began making short fiction films, none of which have survived other than two films in the Charlotte and Véronique series, Charlotte and Her Steak (1951, 1961) and Véronique and Her Dunce (1958). He also wrote the screenplay for J.-L. Godard’s short in the same series, All The Boys Are Named Patrick (1957).

Rohmer didn’t make his first feature film, The Sign of Leo (Le Signe du Lion) until 1959, the same year that Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour appeared. Rohmer met considerable difficulty finding a distributor, which prevented the film from coming out until 1962. Unlike Truffaut’s and Resnais’s first films, which were both highly acclaimed and commercially successful, The Sign of Leo was a financial failure, despite very good critical reviews. Undiscouraged, Rohmer launched into a series of films that he baptized Six Moral Tales (Six Contes moraux). The first two films, The Girl at the Monceau Bakery (La Boulangère de Monceau, 1962, 26 mins.) and Suzanne’s Career (La Carrière de Suzanne, 1963, 52 mins.) were made in the most rudimentary conditions. Shot in 16 mm, they were never distributed and remain unknown to the broad public. In 1963 the Cahiers du cinéma underwent a dramatic upheaval. The majority of the critics wanted the review to adopt a more politicized (left-leaning) orientation. Since Rohmer was strongly opposed, he was replaced as editor-in-chief by Jacques Rivette.

To make a living, and to be able to continue his career as a filmmaker, Rohmer began making pedagogical films for public television. From 1964 to 1970 he directed around twenty films intended for distribution in the French schools. These works include Diderot’s Salons (art criticism), Cervantes’s Don Quixote, La Bruyère’s Characters, and — especially notable as regards My Night at Maud’s — A Conversation About Pascal (in 1965). In 1965 he also directed a short subject, La Place de l’Etoile, for a collaborative film (with several episodes by different directors) entitled Paris, seen by… This film marked the beginning of a long collaboration with a highly talented director of photography, Nestor Almendros, who will be responsible for the shooting of every Rohmer film from that point on.

In 1966 Rohmer had his first taste of success, both critical and commercial, with his third “moral tale,” The Collector (La Collectionneuse), a feature film which won the Silver Bear Award for the Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival. This success, combined with financial help from Truffaut, permitted him in 1969 to make My Night at Maud’s.

After the Moral Tales, Rohmer made two historical films, The Marquise von O… (1976) and Perceval le Gallois (1978), before beginning, in the eighties, a new series of seven films, Comedies and Proverbs. The most succesful of the latter include Pauline at the Beach (1983), Full Moon in Paris (1984), Summer (1985), and My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend (1987). During the following fifteen years, Rohmer made a last series of four films, the Tales of the Four Seasons. Among his most popular works, these latter films, like so many others by Rohmer, explore the complicated sentimental relationships between men and women, seen especially from the viewpoint of the female characters.

Filmography

1959 The Sign of Leo
1962 The Girl at the Monceau Bakery ( 26 min., Six Moral Tales I)
1963 Suzanne’s Career (52 min., Six Moral Tales II)
1965 Place de l’Etoile (in the collective film Paris seen by…)
1967 The Collector (Six Moral Tales IV)
1969 My Night at Maud’s (Six Moral Tales III)
1970 Claire’s Knee (Six Moral Tales V)
1972 Chloe in the Afternoon (Six Moral Tales VI)
1975 La Marquise d’O…
1978 Perceval le Gallois
1980 The Aviator’s Wife (Comédies et proverbes)
1981 A Good Marriage (Comédies et proverbes)
1982 Pauline at the Beach (Comédies et proverbes)
1984 Full Moon in Paris (Comédies et proverbes)
1985 Summer (Comédies et proverbes)
1986 Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Comédies et proverbes)
1987 My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend (Comédies et proverbes)
1989 A Tale of Springtime (Tales of the Four Seasons)
1991 A Tale of Winter (Tales of the Four Seasons)
1992 The Tree, The Mayor and the Mediatheque
1995 Rendezvous in Paris
1996 A Summer’s Tale (Tales of the Four Seasons).
1998 Autumn Tale (Tales of the Four Seasons)
2001 The Lady and the Duke
2004 Triple Agent