Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer or Jean Marie Maurice Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher.
Background
Rohmer was born Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer (or Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer) in Tulle in south central France, the son of Mathilde (née Bucher) and Lucien Schérer. Rohmer was a Catholic. He was secretive about his private life and often gave different dates of birth to reporters. 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.
Education
Rohmer was educated in Paris and received an advanced degree in history. He also studied literature, philosophy and theology as a student.
Career
Rohmer first worked as a teacher in Clermont-Ferrand. In the mid-1940s he quit his teaching job and moved to Paris, where he worked as a freelance journalist. In 1946 he published a novel, Elisabeth (AKA Les Vacances) under the pen-name Gilbert Cordier. In about 1949, while living in Paris, Rohmer first began to attend screenings at Henri Langlois's Cinémathèque Française, where he first met and befriended Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and other members of the French New Wave. Rohmer had never been very interested in film and always preferred literature, but soon became an intense lover of films and switched from journalism to film criticism. He wrote film reviews for such publications as Révue du Cinéma, Arts, Temps Modernes and La Parisienne.
In 1950, he co-founded the film magazine La Gazette du Cinéma with Rivette and Godard, however its existence was short-lived. In 1951 Rohmer joined the staff of André Bazin's newly founded film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, of which he would eventually become the editor in 1956. There, Rohmer established himself as a critic with a distinctive voice; fellow Cahiers contributor and French New Wave filmmaker Luc Moullet later remarked that, unlike the more aggressive and personal writings of younger critics like Truffaut and Godard, Rohmer favored a rhetorical style that made extensive use of questions and rarely used the first person singular. Rohmer was known as being more politically conservative than most of the staff at Cahiers and his opinions were highly influential on the direction of the magazine during his time as editor. Rohmer first published articles under his real name, but began using "Éric Rohmer" in 1955 so that his family would not find out that he was involved in the film world, of which they would have disapproved.
Rohmer's best-known article was "Le Celluloid et le marbre" ("Celluloid and Marble") in 1955, which examines the relationship between film and other arts. In the article, Rohmer states that in an age of cultural self-consciousness, film is "the last refuge of poetry" and the only contemporary art form from which metaphor could still spring naturally and spontaneously.
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 35mm short film Présentation ou Charlotte et son steak. The 12-minute film was co-written by and starred Jean-Luc Godard. 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.
Rohmer's career began to gain momentum with a cycle of films that he titled Six Moral Tales. Each tale follows the same story, inspired by F. W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927): a man, married or otherwise committed to a woman, is tempted by a second woman but eventually returns to the first woman.
These films are "subtle psychological investigations about what characters think about their behavior than about their behavior itself." The French word "Moraliste" does not translate to the English word "moral" and has more to do with what someone thinks and feels. Rohmer has cited the works of writers Blaise Pascal, Jean de La Bruyère, François de La Rochefoucauld and Stendhal as inspirations for the series of films. Rohmer explained that "I persuaded myself that the best thing would be to treat the subject six times over...I was determined to be flexible and intractable, because if you persist in an idea it seems to me that in the end you do secure a following." The first "Moral Tale" was The Bakery Girl of Monceau in 1963. This 26 minute film portrays a boy who sees a girl in the street and spends days obsessively searching for her. He meets a second girl in a bakery and begins to flirt with her, but abandons her once he finally finds the first girl. Schroder starred as the young man and Bertrand Tavernier was the narrator. The second "Moral Tale" was Suzanne's Career, made in 1963. This 60-minute film portrays a young student who is rejected by one woman and begins a romantic relationship with a second woman. 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 "Moral Tales".
In 1963 Les Films du Losange produced the New Wave omnibus film Six in Paris, in which Rohmer's short "Place de l'Etoile" was the centerpiece. After being driven out of his editor position at Cahiers du Cinema, Rohmer began making short documentaries for French television. Between 1964 and 1966 Rohmer made 14 shorts for television through the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF) and Télévision Scolaire. These films included episodes of Filmmakers of Our Time on Louis Lumiere and Carl Theodor Dreyer, educational films on Blaise Pascal and Stéphane Mallarmé, and documentaries on the Percival legend, the industrial revolution and female students in Paris. Rohmer later said that television taught him how to make "readable images". He later stated "When you show a film on TV, the framing goes to pieces, straight lines are warped...the way people stand and walk and move, the whole physical dimension...all this is lost. Personally I don't feel that TV is an intimate medium." In 1964 Rohmer made the 13-minute short film Nadja à Paris with cinematographer Nestor Almendros.
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."
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." 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.
Later in 1980 Rohmer embarked on a second series of films: the "Comedies and Proverbs", where each film was based on a proverb. The first "Comedy and proverb" was The Aviator's Wife, which was based on an idea that Rohmer had had since the mid-1940s. This was followed in 1981 with Le Beau Mariage (A Perfect Marriage), the second "Comedy and Proverb". Rohmer stated that "what interests me is to show how someone's imagination works. The fact that obsession can replace reality." In his review of the film, film critic Claude Baignères said that "Eric Rohmer is a virtuoso of the pen sketch...He had not been at ease with the paint tubes that Persival required, but in this film he created a tiny figurine whose every feature, every curl, every tone is aimed at revealing to us a state of soul and of heart." Raphael Bassan said that "the filmmaker fails to achieve in these dialogues the flexibility, the textual freedom of The Aviator's Wife. A Perfect Marriage is only a variation on the spiritual states of the petty bourgeoise who go on and on forever about the legitimacy of certain institutions or beliefs confronted by problems of the emotions. Quite simply, this is a minor variation on this central Rohmerian theme."
He followed these with a third series in the 1990s: Tales of the Four Seasons. Conte d’automne or Autumn Tale was a critically acclaimed release in 1999 when Rohmer was 79.
Beginning in the 2000s, Rohmer, in his eighties, returned to period drama with The Lady and the Duke and Triple Agent. The Lady and the Duke caused considerable controversy in France, where its negative portrayal of the French Revolution led some critics to label it monarchist propaganda. Its innovative cinematic style and strong acting performances led it to be well received elsewhere.
In 2001, his life's work was recognised when he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
In 2007, Rohmer's final film, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon, was shown during the Venice Film Festival, at which he spoke of retiring.
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Personality
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." 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."
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 movies 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 waters. 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."
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."
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 closeups, 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 of 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."
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".
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).
Connections
In 1957, Rohmer married Thérèse Barbet. The couple had two sons. Rohmer was a devout Catholic and "ecological zealot". For years Rohmer had no telephone and refused to even get into cars, which he called "immoral pollutors." For many years he was known to jog two miles to his office every morning. He was well known for his need for personal privacy and sometimes wore disguises, such as wearing a false moustache at the New York premiere of one of his films. Rohmer's mother died without ever knowing that her son Maurice was in fact a famous film director named Éric Rohmer. He stated that his favorite film director was Jean Renoir.