Eric Rohmer turns 100, something to talk about

Fellini is not the only auteur celebrating his 100th birthday this year. This past March 21st was the centennial of Eric Rohmer, my personal favorite director from the French New Wave. Rohmer’s simple, nearly plotless films filled from start to finish with wall to wall dialogue are revelations on human behavior, on our relationships, sex, friendships, desires, and, over all, our conversations. His brilliant writing and subtle, unassuming cinematography make the seemingly mundane entertaining and cinematic.

The New Wave is interesting in that it encompasses directors whose styles and content vary radically from each other. What they do have in common is a love hate relationship towards Hollywood cinema, referencing it, and breaking all it’s rules at the same time. Many of these directors, including Rohmer and the two giants of the movement, Jean Luc Godard and François Truffaut, worked for film theorist Andre Bazin’s film publication Cahiers du Cinéma. After Bazin, Rohmer worked as editor of the magazine and he along with his staff critics, all soon to be directors themselves, deemed that the likes of Hitchcock, Ford, Hawks, and Sirk found a way to make auteurist cinema, in other words, make interesting, worthwhile, and personal films with their own individual voices, despite the restrictions of the Hollywood studio system. They were the first to take these directors seriously as artists, directors that are now widely recognized among the greatest in film history.

Funnily enough, these critics would join the ranks of their idols after they began experimenting in filmmaking themselves. Rohmer is lesser known than Godard and Truffaut, whose films were respectively cool, radical, and political, and fun, heartfelt, and human. Rohmer’s style, though equally revolutionary for its time, understandably stood out less than his contemporaries whose first films Breathless and The 400 Blows literally blew the world of international cinema away, changing it for the better forever. While Jean Paul Belmundo was running from the cops and Jean Pierre Leaud was running away from his parents and society, Rohmer’s characters were talking away in cafe’s, country houses, and apartments. Everything in Rohmer’s films, his characters, dialogue, and plots, is purposefully ordinary, a word could never describe the work of Truffaut or, especially, Godard.

A bit in the shadows of his contemporaries, Rohmer’s filmography is nevertheless packed with treasures to be discovered. Though nearly all of his films are the same in style, each character, problem, and conversation feels new and original. The ‘plot’ of almost all of his films is about a man or a woman who is wrestling with his or her love life. They struggle to begin or continue a romantic relationship which will develop or not throughout the film.

Rohmer won international recognition for the first time for his first series of films, Six Moral Tales. In each of these films, he would focus on a male protagonist and how he convinces himself that he is making a moral decision by not sleeping or not entering into a relationship with a woman. The style he would develop throughout the series would stick with him the rest of his career. He would go on to make two similar series with disconnected films but an encompassing title called Comedies and Proverbs and Tales of the Four Seasons.

His films are immediately identifiable by their relaxed, unshowy camera work, long conversation scenes, and good looking, often young, protagonists. It is quite a feat that Rohmer’s characters are so fresh and different considering he practically made the same film again and again through his career. The content -- protagonists search for love and their discussions about it taking place over a limited time period sometimes one day, sometimes a few months -- is always the same. All that changes is the setting, the actors, and the characters. While his films have a beginning, middle, and end, the end does not have the finality that most films have. One gets the feeling that his characters are still out there, that they really exist, and that their romantic problems and endeavors continue.

Rohmer’s big ‘break out’ film was My Night at Maud’s, the fourth of the Six Moral Tales. The film would be nominated both for the Palme d’Or and the Academy Award for best foreign film. It also starred two of France's biggest actors at the time, the alluring Francoise Fabian as Maud, and the serious faced Jean Louis Trintignant, an actor more commonly known for tough guy gangster roles cast against type as the stern Catholic Jean Louis. In the film, Jean Louis is presented to Maud by a friend and invited to dinner at her house. After his friend leaves them alone, Maud very forwardly offers her bed to him. However, having already made up his mind on an unknown blonde he saw at church and having stated his days of one night stands were behind him, he spends the night in her bed, but resists her advances.

There is a wonderful natural flow to Rohmer’s films. Though spending up to 2 hours in a film composed of nothing more than banal conversations about other people’s relationships may seem boring, Rohmer’s dialogue and steady camerawork and editing make the time fly by. One feels as if one is eavesdropping on strangers’ conversations, but the process is not as simple as it seems. There is a script, the dialogue is not improvised, and everything from choreography and body language of the characters to the editing and shots are carefully and thoughtfully put together.

One such wonderfully composed scene is when Maud gets into her bed and Jean Louis talks with her and debates whether to leave or to stay. He moves from a bedside chair to the window to sit sensually on the bed next to Maud. The dialogue is invigorating, but equally so is Rohmer’s composition of Jean Louis’ movements edited together with shots of Maud’s sexual presence in her bed, her large, open and inviting eyes taking in everything Jean Louis does. As he switches positions we see the inner struggle going on in his mind physically represented.

In the end, Jean Louis makes the ‘moral’ decision not to sleep with Maud, and he does end up marrying the blonde Catholic he imagined for himself. In the final scene, Jean Louis and his wife and son happen to bump into Maud leaving a beach, a wonderfully coincidental meeting that was mathematically explained earlier. It turns out neither of them frequent the beach, but since in their normal routines it would be impossible for them to cross, it is only when they do something that differs from their normal comings and goings that they have a possibility of seeing each other. The two exchange pleasantries and update each other on their lives. It leaves the audience wondering if Jean Louis’ decision really was moral, or what would have happened had he slept with Maud. He seems happy and content with his life with his wife and child, but could he have had something similar or ever greater with Maud? Would they have clashed or prospered together?

When Jean Louis meets his wife on the beach he notices that she looks somewhat upset but tries to hide it. He realizes that it was with Maud’s ex husband whom she had an affair with before their marriage. Instead of telling her about his realization, he pretends he knows nothing and instead lies that he had a fling with Maud. This is Jean Louis’ second moral decision. His wife quickly perks up, thinking her secret is left uncovered and that her husband is just as much of a sinner as her. Again, these actions are not universally moral, but are moral decisions made according to the protagonist’s personal idea of morality. The audience can either agree or disagree with the protagonist. Sometimes they are doing nothing more than convincing themselves that they behaved in a moral way in order to accept the result of their actions. This is probably a realistic representation of what we all do, try to think that we always make moral decisions for ourselves and others for the greater good of all of us.

In the last of the Six Moral Tales, Love in the Afternoon, Frederic makes an equally ‘moral’ decision, leaving Chloe, a vivacious and exciting woman he has been flirting with for months, alone in her bed, instead running back home to his wife and two young children. The film constantly questions monogamy, and though Frederic regularly meets with Chloe in the afternoon, all their excursions amount to are coffee, shopping, and the occasional sensual graze or touch, or a half repressed kiss. As Frederic confesses his love to his wife after leaving Chloe, both of them are clearly shaken. He is stuttering and nervous as she tries to hold in her tears. His wife’s tears remain a mystery. We never saw what she did in her free time. Is it possible she knew about Chloe, or was she too seeing someone else? The film leaves us with several unanswered questions. Though Frederic never slept with Chloe, was what he did really faithful to his wife? Did he return home because he really realized how much he loved her, or did Chloe’s proposition of a more liberal sex life just scare him? He is convinced he made the right decision, but perhaps he only did it because he was afraid of what leaving the comfort of a simple married life would bring. That’s not to say it was the wrong decision, as Chloe certainly seems no happier than he is, but the film leaves it open.

These decisions on whether to have sex with or reject someone are the moral conflicts of Rohmer’s protagonists. His subjects are much more mundane than the grandiose doubts engaged in by someone like Bergman, but no less interesting.

Though Rohmer’s next series Comedies and Proverbs may sound like a departure from the Six Moral Tales, their structure remains the same. In The Aviator’s Wife, taking place over a single day, a woman juggles being dumped by her pilot lover, and a somewhat too persistent mail worker who studies. In Pauline at the Beach, the gorgeous Pauline is pursued by an old flame and a new interesting man as her niece has her first flirtatious experiences. And in The Green Ray, a depressed woman unlucky in love believes in the legend from a Jules Verne story, that if she sees a green ray at sunset it has a magical effect.

The Aviator’s Wife features a wonderful mystery, as one male lover follows the other. It may seem like an exaggerated comedy caper reading the plot, but it is a Rhomer film like all the others. Francois, the mail worker, happens to spot the pilot Christian in a cafe and decides to follow him and a woman that accompanies him. On a bus he makes eye contact with a young girl who coincidentally gets off at the same stop as Christian. Francois ends up starting a casual conversation with her in the park that leads him to explain what he is doing. They innocently flirt and eventually part ways after talking about the mystery of the woman Christian is with and their own love lives.

In The Green Ray we are left with another protagonist who defines their love life based on a personal belief they have convinced themself of. Delphine, partly due to her own lack of self confidence, is disappointed again and again by the men she meets while on vacation. When she overhears people talking about The Green Ray she happens upon yet another man. They sit and watch the sunset together, and lo and behold, they see the green ray. She is now convinced that this man is the one. Though, as seen in Rohmer’s Moral Tales, the ‘one’ seems to be the person we do love, yet must force ourselves to believe is our one true love, but is really just the one we ended up with, for better or worse.

In his final series, Tales of the Four Seasons, Rohmer’s style remains the same, this time set around the different times of the year. My personal favorite is A Summer's Tale. It was the first Rohmer film I ever watched and I have been hooked ever since. It follows a young good looking musician who is spending his summer in the beautiful coast of Brittany. During his summer he meets 3 girls, his girlfriend, who seems interested in loosening their relationship, a waitress who he becomes friends with, and a seductive local girl who tempts him. He spends his time doubting between the three of them and waiting by his phone to receive their calls, reminding us of how communication was before cell phones. In the end he has opportunities with all three of them, and they have opportunities of their own, many of them missed, or simply not taken. Our protagonist returns home after a call about his music production without the time to tell any of them ahead of time. Did he waste his summer hesitating between the three girls, or were none of them right for him? Maybe he will regret it one day, but for now he is young and spontaneous, and does not seem to give it much thought he quickly packs his things away and moves on.

In one scene of Love in the Afternoon, Chloe listens to two middle aged women talking and says she would never like to have their lives. Interestingly, as an audience we have the role of Chloe, of eavesdropping and judging. All of his films feel as if Rohmer entered a random cafe and started recording a couple talking. As his protagonists talk sometimes he cuts to give us a quick glimpse of another table or passerby. It makes one wonder what is happening in this stranger’s life as well. This is what Rohmer really does for us, he gives us a secret window into the lives of those strangers’ tables across the restaurant who are so engaged in conversation. We are invited to see and hear their romantic troubles for a brief moment. They are intriguing, funny, pathetic, annoying, self indulgent, philosophical - in short, they feel a bit like our own conversations, but this is the magic of Rhomer. As natural as his scenes are, they are our own lives exaggerated and made more interesting. Maybe on our best day our coffee side conversations are half as interesting.