Eric Rohmer

Eric Rohmer was the last of the major French New Wave directors to establish himself.  Whilst the big names like Chabrol, Truffaut and Godard came to prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s Rohmer was primarily a writer in this period, editing the prestigious journal “Cahiers du cinéma”.  He didn’t really achieve an international reputation until 1969 with “My Night at Maud’s”, which was nominated for an Oscar.

“Maud’s” was the third part of a cycle of work entitled “The Six Moral Tales”.   Beginning with a short, “The Bakery Girl of Monceau”, in 1963, and concluding with “Chloe in the Afternoon”, released nine years later, the films all take their lead from the 1927 silent classic “Sunrise”.  In each a man is caught between two women, one whom he either truly loves or is better suited to and another who is more a diversion, erotic or otherwise.

Of course reducing the cycle to such a simple formula does it a gross disservice.  Delicately structured dramas, shot on location - usually the streets and cafes of Paris - the films are all about the complexity of human relationships.  Packed with small but knowing incident, Rohmer sustains a brisk pace, usually keeping non-diegetic music to a minimum but often driving the narrative with voice-over narration supplied by his if not unreliable then at least highly subjective lead character.

After the conclusion of “The Six Moral Tales” Rohmer produced a new cycle in the 1980s, “Comedies and Proverbs”, comprising a further half dozen film and then a third in the decade that followed, “Tales of the Four Seasons”.  The fourth and concluding movie in the last series, “A Tale of Autumn”, made in 1998 as the director approached the age of 80, was a world wide popular and critical hit.

For a man in his eighth decade of life Rohmer showed uncanny insight into the emotional lives of teenagers and twenty-somethings, sustaining an accessibility and commercial appeal in his work far beyond that of any of his New Wave peers.

Auteur House stocks “The Six Moral Tales” in its entirety and individual episodes from each of the subsequent cycles.  Whilst Rohmer’s films would not appeal to everybody - the Gene Hackman character in the 1970s neo noir “Night Moves” infamously compares watching them to “watching paint dry” - they are warm, humanistic and universal in their inquiries into the mysteries of romance and friendship.