Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer | |
---|---|
Born | Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer or Jean Marie Maurice Schérer 21 March 1920 Tulle, France |
Died | 11 January 2010 Paris, France | (aged 89)
Occupations | |
Years active | 1945–2009 |
Spouse |
Thérèse Schérer (m. 1957) |
Children | 2 |
Jean Marie Maurice Schérer or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer (French: [eʁik ʁomɛʁ]; 21 March 1920[a] – 11 January 2010), was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and teacher.
Rohmer was the last of the
Rohmer gained international acclaim around 1969 when his film My Night at Maud's was nominated at the Academy Awards.[1] He won the San Sebastián International Film Festival with Claire's Knee in 1971 and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for The Green Ray in 1986. Rohmer went on to receive the Venice Film Festival's Career Golden Lion in 2001.
After Rohmer's death in 2010, his obituary in The Daily Telegraph described him as "the most durable filmmaker of the French New Wave", outlasting his peers and "still making movies the public wanted to see" late in his career.[2]
Early life
Rohmer was born Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer (or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer)[3] in Nancy (also listed as Tulle), Meurthe-et-Moselle department, Lorraine, France, the son of Mathilde (née Bucher) and Lucien Schérer.[4] Rohmer was a Catholic.[2][5] He was secretive about his private life and often gave different dates of birth to reporters.[6] He fashioned his pseudonym from the names of two famous artists: actor and director Erich von Stroheim and writer Sax Rohmer, author of the Fu Manchu series.[7] Rohmer was educated in Paris and received an advanced degree in history, though he seemed equally interested and learned in literature, philosophy, and theology.[8]
Career as a journalist
Rohmer first worked as a teacher
In 1950, he co-founded the film magazine La Gazette du Cinéma with Rivette and Godard, but it was short-lived. In 1951 Rohmer joined the staff of
Rohmer's best-known article was "Le Celluloïd et le marbre" ("Celluloid and Marble", 1955), which examines the relationship between film and other arts. In the article, Rohmer writes that in an age of cultural self-consciousness, film is "the last refuge of poetry" and the only contemporary art form from which metaphor can still spring naturally and spontaneously.[8]
In 1957 Rohmer and Claude Chabrol wrote Hitchcock (Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1957), the earliest book-length study of
By 1963 Rohmer was becoming more at odds with some of the more radical left-wing critics at Cahiers du Cinéma. He continued to admire US films while many of the other left-wing critics had rejected them and were championing
Film career
1950–1962: Shorts and early film career
In 1950 Rohmer made his first 16mm short film, Journal d'un scélérat. The film starred writer Paul Gégauff and was made with a borrowed camera. By 1951 Rohmer had a bigger budget provided by friends and shot the short film Présentation ou Charlotte et son steak. The 12-minute film was co-written by and starred Jean-Luc Godard.[8] The film was not completed until 1961. In 1952 Rohmer began collaborating with Pierre Guilbaud on a one-hour short feature, Les Petites Filles modèles, but the film was never finished. In 1954 Rohmer made and acted in Bérénice, a 15-minute short based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. In 1956 Rohmer directed, wrote, edited and starred in La Sonate à Kreutzer, a 50-minute film produced by Godard. In 1958 Rohmer made Véronique et son cancre, a 20-minute short produced by Chabrol.
Chabrol's company AJYM produced Rohmer's feature
1962–1972: Six Moral Tales and television work
Rohmer's career began to gain momentum with his Six Moral Tales (Six contes moraux). Each of the films in the cycle follows the same story, inspired by F. W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927): a man, married or otherwise committed to a woman, is tempted by a second woman but eventually returns to the first.[14]
For Rohmer, these stories' characters "like to bring their motives, the reasons for their actions, into the open, they try to analyze, they are not people who act without thinking about what they are doing. What matters is what they think about their behavior, rather than their behavior itself."[15] The French word "moraliste" does not translate directly to the English "moralist" and has more to do with what someone thinks and feels. Rohmer cited the works of Blaise Pascal, Jean de La Bruyère, François de La Rochefoucauld and Stendhal as inspirations for the series.[16]: 292 He clarified, "a moraliste is someone who is interested in the description of what goes on inside man. He's concerned with states of mind and feelings."[15] Regarding the repetition of a single storyline, he explained that it would allow him to explore six variations of the same theme. Plus, he stated, "I was determined to be inflexible and intractable, because if you persist in an idea it seems to me that in the end you do secure a following."[16]: 295
The first Moral Tale was The Bakery Girl of Monceau (1963). This 26-minute film portrays a young man, a college student, who sees a young woman in the street and spends days obsessively searching for her. He meets a second woman who works in a bakery and begins to flirt with her, but abandons her when he finally finds the first woman. Schroder starred as the young man and Bertrand Tavernier was the narrator.[8] The second Moral Tale was Suzanne's Career (1963). This 60-minute film portrays a young student who is rejected by one woman and begins a romantic relationship with a second. The first and second Moral Tales were never theatrically released and Rohmer was disappointed by their poor technical quality. They were not well known until after the release of the other four.[8]
In 1963 Les Films du Losange produced the New Wave omnibus film
Rohmer and Schroder then sold the rights of two of their short films to French television in order to raise $60,000 to produce the feature film
The fourth Moral Tale was
The fifth Moral Tale was
The sixth and final Moral Tale was 1972's Love in the Afternoon (released as Chloe in the Afternoon in the US). Molly Haskell criticized the film for betraying the rest of the series by making a moral judgment of the main character and approving of his decision in the film.[8]
Overall, Rohmer said he wanted the Six Moral Tales "to portray in film what seemed most alien to the medium, to express feelings buried deep in our consciousness. That's why they have to be narrated in the first person singular...The protagonist discusses himself and judges his actions. I film the process."[8]
1972–1987: Adaptations and Comedies and Proverbs
Following the Moral Tales Rohmer wanted to make a less personal film and adapted a novella by Heinrich von Kleist, La Marquise d'O... in 1976. It was one of Rohmer's most critically acclaimed films, with many critics ranking it with My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee. Rohmer stated that "It wasn't simply the action I was drawn to, but the text itself. I didn't want to translate it into images, or make a filmed equivalent. I wanted to use the text as if Kleist himself had put it directly on the screen, as if he were making a movie ... Kleist didn't copy me and I didn't copy him, but obviously there was an affinity."[8]
In 1978 Rohmer made the Holy Grail legend film Perceval le Gallois, based on a 12th-century manuscript by Chrétien de Troyes. The film received mostly poor critical reviews. Tom Milne said that the film was "almost universally greeted as a disappointment, at best a whimsical exercise in the faux-naif in its attempt to capture the poetic simplicity of medieval faith, at worse an anticlimatic blunder" and that it was "rather like watching the animation of a medieval manuscript, with the text gravely read aloud while the images — cramped and crowded, coloured with jewelled brilliance, delighting the eye with bizarre perspectives — magnificently play the role traditionally assigned to marginal illuminations."[8] In 1980 Rohmer made a film for television of his stage production of Kleist's play Catherine de Heilbronn, another work with a medieval setting.[20]
Later in 1980 Rohmer embarked on a second series of films: the "Comedies and Proverbs" (Comédies et Proverbes), where each film was based on a
The third "Comedy and proverb" was Pauline at the Beach in 1983. It won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival. It was based on an idea that Rohmer had in the 1950s, originally intended for Brigitte Bardot. Rohmer often made films that he had been working on for many years and stated "I can't say 'I make one film, then after that film I look for a subject and write on that subject...then I shoot.' Not at all...these are films that are drawn from one evolving mass, films that have been in my head for a long time and that I think about simultaneously."[8]
The fourth "Comedy and Proverb" was
The fifth "Comedy and Proverb" was
The Sixth "Comedy and Proverb" was Boyfriends and Girlfriends (L'Ami de mon amie) in 1987.
1987–2009: Tales of the Four Seasons and later film career
He followed these with a third series in the 1990s: Tales of the Four Seasons (Contes des quatre saisons). Conte d'automne or Autumn Tale was a critically acclaimed release in 1999 when Rohmer was 79.[9] The previous titles of the series were A Tale of Springtime (1990), A Tale of Winter (1992), and A Summer's Tale (1996).
Beginning in the 2000s, Rohmer, in his eighties, returned to period drama with
In 2001, his life's work was recognised when he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.[21][22]
In 2007, Rohmer's final film, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon, was shown during the Venice Film Festival,[21] at which he spoke of retiring.[9][21]
Style
Rohmer's films concentrate on intelligent, articulate protagonists who frequently fail to own up to their desires. The contrast between what they say and what they do fuels much of the drama in his films. Gerard Legrand once said that "he is one of the rare filmmakers who is constantly inviting you to be intelligent, indeed, more intelligent than his (likable) characters."[8] Rohmer considered filmmaking to be "closer to the novel—to a certain classical style of novel which the cinema is now taking over—than the other forms of entertainment, like the theater."[8]
Rohmer saw the full-face closeup as a device that does not reflect how we see each other and avoided its use. He avoids extradiegetic music (not coming from onscreen sound sources), seeing it as a violation of the fourth wall. He has on occasion departed from the rule by inserting soundtrack music in places in The Green Ray (1986) (released as Summer in the United States). Rohmer also tends to spend considerable time in his films showing his characters going from place to place, walking, driving, bicycling or commuting on a train, engaging the viewer in the idea that part of the day of each individual involves quotidian travel. This was most evident in Le Beau Mariage (1982), which had the female protagonist constantly traveling, particularly between Paris and Le Mans.
Rohmer typically populates his films with people in their twenties and the settings are often on pleasant beaches and popular resorts, notably in La Collectionneuse (1967), Pauline at the Beach (1983), The Green Ray (1986) and A Summer's Tale (1996). These films are immersed in an environment of bright sunlight, blue skies, green grass, sandy beaches, and clear water. He explained that "people sometimes ask me why most of the main characters in my films are young. I don't feel at ease with older people ... I can't get people older than forty to talk convincingly."[8]
Rohmer preferred to use non-professional actors in his films. He usually held a large number of rehearsals before shooting and would shoot his films very quickly. He spent little time editing his films. He usually shot his films chronologically, and often shot scenes during the time of day in which they took place. He explained that "my films are based on meteorology. If I didn't call the weather service everyday, I couldn't make my films because they're shot according to the weather outside. My films are slaves to weather."[8]
Similarly, Rohmer's films all have a strong sense of place. Whether shot in Paris, Clermont-Ferrand, or elsewhere, his films clearly show where they are and how the characters are part of that place. Characters travel or walk past signposts or monuments, or converse about these places. The locations in which the characters exist are as important an element in his films as what his characters are saying and doing. For this reason, Rohmer has been called a "poet of place".[23]
The director's characters engage in long conversations—mostly talking about man–woman relationships but also on mundane issues like trying to find a vacation spot. There are also occasional digressions by the characters on literature and philosophy as most of Rohmer's characters are middle class and university educated.
A Summer's Tale (1996) has most of the elements of a typical Rohmer film: no soundtrack music, no close-ups, a seaside resort, long conversations between beautiful young people (who are middle class and educated) and discussions involving the characters' interests from songwriting to ethnology.
Rohmer said he wanted to look at "thoughts rather than actions", dealing "less with what people do than what is going on in their minds while they are doing it."
Beginning in the late 1970s during the production of Perceval le Gallois Rohmer began to reduce the number of crew members on his films. He first dispensed with the script supervisor, then (controversially) cut out the assistant director, then all other assistants and technical managers until, by the time he shot The Green Ray in 1986, his crew consisted only of a camera operator and a sound engineer. Rohmer stated that "I even wonder if I could work in the usual conditions of filmmaking."[8]
His style was famously criticised by Gene Hackman's character in the 1975 film Night Moves who describes viewing Rohmer's films as "kind of like watching paint dry".[9]
Rohmer was a highly literary man. His films frequently refer to ideas and themes in plays and novels, such as references to Jules Verne (in The Green Ray), William Shakespeare (in A Winter's Tale) and Pascal's wager (in Ma nuit chez Maud).
Personal life and death
Rohmer's brother was the philosopher René Schérer. In 1957, Rohmer married Thérèse Barbet.[2] The couple had two sons.[2] The elder, René Monzat (b. 1958), is an author and investigative journalist at, most recently, Le Monde and Mediapart.[24] His work focuses on the French far-right.[25][26]
Rohmer was a devout Catholic,
Rohmer died on the morning of 11 January 2010 at the age of 89[9][21][22] after a series of strokes.[28]: 1345 He had been admitted to hospital the previous week.[19]
The former Culture Minister
Rohmer's grave is in district 13 of Montparnasse Cemetery.
At the
I'm going to read a remarkable text written by Jacques Fieschi, writer, director, creator of "the cinematographe", challenger of Les cahiers du cinéma, which recently published a special edition on Eric Rohmer. Truffaut once said he was one of the greatest directors of the 20th century, Godard was his brother, Chabrol admired him, Wenders couldn't stop taking photos of him. Rohmer is a tremendous international star. The one and only French director who was in coherence with the money spent on his films and the money that his films made. I remember a phrase by Daniel Toscan Du Plantier the day Les Visiteurs opened, which eventually sold 15 million tickets: "Yes but there is this incredible film called L'arbre, le maire et la médiathèque that sold 100,000 tickets, which may sound ridiculous in comparison, but no, because but it was only playing in one theater for an entire year." A happy time for cinema when this kind of thing could happen. Rohmer. Here is a tribute from Jacques Fieschi: "We are all connected with the cinema, at least for a short time. The cinema has its economical laws, its artistic laws, a craft that once in a while rewards us or forgets us. Éric Rohmer seems to have escaped from this reality by inventing his own laws, his own rules of the game. One could say his own economy of the cinema that served his own purpose, which could skip the others, or to be more accurate that couldn't skip the audience with its originality. He had a very unique point of view on the different levels of language and on desire that is at work in the heart of each and every human being, on youth, on seasons, on literature, of course, and one could say on history. Éric Rohmer, this sensual intellectual, with his silhouette of a teacher and a walker. As an outsider he made luminous and candid films in which he deliberately forgot his perfect knowledge of the cinema in a very direct link with the beauty of the world." The text was by Jacques Fieschi and it was a tribute to Éric Rohmer. Thank you.
On 8 February 2010, the
Awards and nominations
Filmography
Features
- The Sign of Leo(1962)
- The Collector (1967)
- My Night at Maud's (1969)
- Claire's Knee (1970)
- Love in the Afternoon (1972)
- The Marquise of O (1976)
- Perceval le Gallois (1978)
- Catherine de Heilbronn (1980, television film)
- The Aviator's Wife (1981)
- A Good Marriage (1982)
- Pauline at the Beach (1983)
- Full Moon in Paris (1984)
- The Green Ray (1986)
- Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987)
- Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)
- Le trio en mi bémol (1988)
- A Tale of Springtime (1990)
- A Tale of Winter (1992)
- The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (1993)
- Rendezvous in Paris (1995)
- A Summer's Tale (1996)
- Autumn Tale (1998)
- The Lady and the Duke (2001)
- Triple Agent (2004)
- The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2007)
Notes
- ^ Rohmer was obsessively private and gave out different dates of birth; other dates that appear in sources include 4 April 1920, 1 December 1920 and 4 April 1923.
- ^ Tied with Carlos Saura for Cría Cuervos
- ^ Tied with Erden Kıral for A Season in Hakkari
References
- ^ "The 42nd Academy Awards (1970) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 16 November 2011.
- ^ a b c d e "Eric Rohmer". The Daily Telegraph. 11 January 2010. Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 11 January 2010.
- ^ Dave Kehr "Eric Rohmer, a Leading Filmmaker of the French New Wave, Dies at 89", New York Times, 11 January 2010
- ^ Eric Rohmer Biography (1920?-), Film Reference
- ^ The religion of director Eric Rohmer, Adherents.com
- OCLC 02185582
- ^ a b c d "French filmmaker Eric Rohmer dies at 89". CBC News. 11 January 2010. Retrieved 11 January 2010.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am John Wakeman, World Film Directors, Volume 2, 1945-1985. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1988. pp. 919-928.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Ruadhán Mac Cormaic (11 January 2010). "Film-maker Rohmer dies in Paris". The Irish Times. Retrieved 11 January 2010.
- ISBN 978-0-299-21704-4. Retrieved 3 June 2011.
Eric Rohmer, who began writing for Cahiers at age 31
- Mubi Notebook.
- ^ a b c James Monaco. The New Wave. New York: Oxford University Press. 1976. p. 287.
- ^ Agnès Poirier "Eric Rohmer: un hommage", The Guardian, 12 January 2010
- ^ Glòria Salvadó Corretger, "Object/Subject: The Films of Eric Rohmer," Formats (2005), http://www.upf.edu/materials/depeca/formats/arti8_ing.htm Archived 14 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine .
- ^ JSTOR 1211422.
- ^ a b c James Monaco. The New Wave. New York: Oxford University Press. 1976.
- ^ James Monaco. The New Wave. New York: Oxford University Press. 1976. p. 288.
- ^ James Monaco. The New Wave. New York: Oxford University Press. 1976. p. 303.
- ^ a b "French film maker Rohmer dies at 89". Philippine Daily Inquirer. 12 January 2010. Archived from the original on 13 January 2010. Retrieved 11 January 2010.
- ^ Review of Éric Rohmer coffret intégrale (Éditions Potemkine, 2013). Cathérine de Heilbronn is included as a supplement to the DVD disk Die Marquise von O. Retrieved 10 January 2015.
- ^ a b c d e f "French film-maker Eric Rohmer dies". BBC. 11 January 2010. Retrieved 11 January 2010.
- ^ a b "French director Eric Rohmer dies". The New Zealand Herald. 12 January 2010. Retrieved 11 January 2010. [dead link]
- ^ "A Summer's Tale (1996) for SAM films". The Dark Lady of American Letters. 12 March 2020. Retrieved 15 March 2024.
- ^ "Le blog de René Monzat Le Club de Mediapart". Club de Mediapart (in French). 20 June 2022. Retrieved 20 June 2022.
- OCLC 26931441.
- ^ "René Monzat". data.bnf.fr. Retrieved 20 June 2022.
- ^ Brody, Richard (24 March 2021). "Looking Behind Éric Rohmer's Cinematic Style". The New Yorker.
- ^ Anoine de Baecque and Noël Herpe Éric Rohmer : a biography. New York: Columbia University Press. 2016.
- ^ Godard on the Death of Róhmer, Cinemasparagus blog
- ^ "Berlinale: 1983 Prize Winners". Berlin International Film Festival. Archived from the original on 8 April 2011. Retrieved 20 November 2010.
- ^ "Berlinale: 1992 Programme". Berlin International Film Festival. Retrieved 22 May 2011.
Bibliography
- de Baecque, Antoine and Herpe, Noël. Éric Rohmer. Stock. 2014. ISBN 978-2234075610.
- Montero, José Francisco & Paredes, Israel. Imágenes de la Revolución. La inglesa y el duque/La commune (París, 1871). 2011. Shangrila Ediciones. https://web.archive.org/web/20140421082451/http://shangrilaedicionesblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/imagenes-de-la-revolucion-intertextos.html
- Eric Rohmer: Realist and Moralist (Midland: 22 June 1988) ISBN 978-0253204738[1]
External links
- Éric Rohmer at IMDb
- extensive biography of Eric Rohmer
- Éric Rohmer at AlloCiné (in French)
- Éric Rohmer — critical essay at Kamera
- Interview with 'The French Revolutionary - Eric Rohmer
- Tom Milne Obituary: Eric Rohmer, The Guardian, 11 January 2010
- Christopher Hawtree "Eric Rohmer: Prolific film-maker, critic and novelist whose pioneering work homed in on romantic tangles", The Independent, 13 January 2010
- "Eric Rohmer: director whose films included Le genou de Claire", The Times, 12 January 2010
- "On Eric Rohmer" in memoriam from n+1
- "The Grave of Eric Rohmer (Maurice Scherer), Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris."