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The book aims to provide a balanced appraisal of Eric Rohmer's oeuvre in historical context. Although interpretation of individual films will not be its main objective, representative examples from the director's twenty-five features and fiction shorts will be presented throughout. The focus is on production history and reception in the mainstream French press. This key stylistic editing trait cannot be appreciated without reference to André Bazin's concept of ontological realism, of which Rohmer was a major exponent at
motifs. For all their formal rigour, his Contes moraux (1962–72), Comédies et proverbes (1981–87), and Contes des quatre saisons (1990–98) are unburdened by programmatic constraints of the kind that Krzysztof Kieslowski, a selfdeclared admirer of Rohmer, employs in his ten-part Dekalog (1988), inspired by the Holy Commandments (Amiel 1997 : 100). Rohmer’s series titles themselves are inviting and capacious: in place of the restrictive genres
auteurism further than most, creating cycles that endlessly rearrange basic motifs in patterns both familiar and unique. While any given series instalment may fall short of what most cinema-goers construe as ‘greatness’ – a threshold attained perhaps only in Ma Nuit chez Maud –, what matters ultimately is its place in an interlocking whole. Consequently, the Contes moraux, Comédies et proverbes, or Contes des quatre saisons
coherence. The six Contes moraux (Moral Tales, 1962–72), six Comédies et proverbes (Comedies and Proverbs, 1981–1987), and four Contes des quatre saisons (Tales of the Four Seasons, 1990–98), together with sketch films (4 Aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle, 1987), literary adaptations (Die Marquise von O…, 1976; Perceval le Gallois, 1979), and costume dramas (Triple agent, 2004) present a
appear weighty and anachronistic by comparison. The third series: Contes des quatre saisons As he neared the end of his seventh decade, Rohmer embarked on his ‘homage to meteorology’, the Contes des quatre saisons . He made no secret that this third cycle responded as much to commercial logic as to artistic imperatives, noting that he preferred to work for ‘une assistance réduite mais fidèle, plutôt que
la pleine lune, where Pascale Ogier’s character cruises the Paris streets with the lanky musician played by Christian Vadim, is an exception to the values of stasis and gentle accompaniment ordinarily upheld by Rohmer’s camera. The zoom, or ‘travelling optique’ as it is also known in France, has nonetheless found favour with the director, especially in the Contes des quatre saisons. Zooms in those pictures are measured
versions of literary classics, by Heinrich von Kleist and Chrétien de Troyes respectively; L’Anglaise et le Duc (2001), produced after the Contes des quatre saisons , brings to the screen a nineteenth-century memoir by Scottish aristocrat Lady Grace Elliott, while Triple agent (2004) draws on historians’ narratives, newspaper articles, and legal documents related to a little-known espionage case of 1937, the
’, and then embarked on ‘Contes des quatre saisons’. Both collections concentrate on women as desiring subjects, inverting the premise of the ‘Contes moraux’. Rohmer’s heroines during this period tend to embark on a rather melancholy search for a male object of desire, a search which is ultimately rewarded with a crucial revelation: Delphine’s glimpse of the green ray in Le Rayon vert (1986), Léa’s awakening to her emotions