Éric Rohmer

Jean Marie Maurice Schérer or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer (; 21 March 192011 January 2010), was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and teacher. Rohmer was the last of the post-World War II French New Wave directors to become established. He edited the influential film journal Cahiers du cinéma from 1957 to 1963, while most of his colleagues—among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut—were making the transition from critics to filmmakers and gaining international attention.

Rohmer gained international acclaim around 1969 when his film My Night at Maud's was nominated at the Academy Awards. 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. In 2001, Rohmer received the Venice Film Festival's Career Golden Lion. After his death in 2010, his obituary in The Daily Telegraph called him "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.

Early life Rohmer was born Jean-Marie Maurice Schérer (or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer) in Nancy (also listed as Tulle), Meurthe-et-Moselle department, Lorraine, 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.

Career as a journalist Rohmer first worked as a teacher 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 more politically conservative than most of the Cahiers staff, and his opinions were highly influential on the magazine's direction while he was 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, as they would have disapproved.

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. In 1962 Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder co-founded the production company Les Films du Losange (they were later joined by Pierre Coltrell in the late 1960s).

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.

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." 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. 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." The film's budget went only to film stock and renting a house in St. Tropez as a set. Rohmer described it as a film about l'amour par désoeuvrement ("love from idleness"). La Collectionneuse won the Jury Grand Prix at the 17th Berlin International Film Festival and was praised by French film critics, though US film critics called it "boring". The film centers on Pascal's Wager and stars Trintignant, Françoise Fabian, Marie-Christine Barrault and Antoine Vitez. My Night at Maud's was Rohmer's first successful film both commercially and critically. It was screened and highly praised at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival and later won the Prix Max Ophüls. It was released in the US and praised by critics there as well. It eventually received Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Film.

Later in 1980 Rohmer embarked on a second series of films: the "Comedies and Proverbs" (Comédies et Proverbes), with each film based on a proverb. The first of these is The Aviator's Wife, which is based on an idea Rohmer had had since the mid-1940s. This was followed in 1981 by Le Beau Mariage (A Perfect Marriage). Rohmer said: "what interests me is to show how someone's imagination works. The fact that obsession can replace reality." Even though the protagonists are different from each other, all are shown over a one- to two-week period grappling with uncertainty and change. That seasons themselves are impermanent highlights the films' themes. This is most easily observable in films such as Pauline at the Beach and A Summer's Tale, which begin with their protagonists arriving and end with their protagonists leaving in the same manner in which they arrived.

Rohmer saw the full-face closeup as a device that does not reflect how we see each other and avoided it. He avoided non-diegetic music (music not from in-story sound sources), seeing it as breaking the fourth wall, but inserted occasional soundtrack music in The Green Ray. Rohmer also tended to spend considerable time in his films showing his characters going from place to place, walking, driving, bicycling or commuting on a train, conveying that mundane travel is part of the most people's days. This is most evident in (1982), in which the protagonist constantly travels, 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, Pauline at the Beach, The Green Ray, and A Summer's Tale. These films are immersed in bright sunlight, blue skies, green grass, sandy beaches, and clear water. He said: "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's characters engage in long conversations—mostly about man–woman relationships but also mundane issues like trying to find a vacation spot. Characters also occasionally digress on literature and philosophy; most of them are middle-class and well-educated.

A Summer's Tale has most of the elements of a typical Rohmer film: no soundtrack music, no closeups, a seaside resort, long conversations between beautiful, young, middle-class, educated people, and discussions of the characters' interests. Melvil Poupaud, who plays the protagonist, said that no other filmmaker could write dialogue like that and make it ring true.

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. On the set of A Summer's Tale, he even made the sandwiches himself. His work focuses on critiquing the French far-right.

Rohmer was a devout Catholic, monarchist, and "ecological zealot". after a series of strokes. He had been admitted to hospital the previous week.

The former Culture Minister Jack Lang called Rohmer "one of the masters of French cinema".

Legacy Rohmer's depictions of Paris are the subject of Richard Misek's 2013 documentary Rohmer in Paris.

Éric Rohmer: A Biography, by and , was published in French in 2014 and English translation in 2016.

Marco Grosoli's 2018 book Eric Rohmer's Film Theory (1948–1953) analyzes and reevaluates Rohmer's early writings on cinema.

Awards and nominations Year Award Category Nominated work Result 1967 Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear La Collectionneuse Silver Bear Extraordinary Jury Prize Best Feature Film Suitable for Young People 1969 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or My Night at Maud's 1970 Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Prix Méliès National Society of Film Critics Best Screenplay Sant Jordi Awards Best Foreign Film 1971 Academy Awards Best Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced New York Film Critics Circle Award Best Screenplay Louis Delluc Prize Claire's Knee National Society of Film Critics Awards Best Film Best Director Best Screenplay San Sebastián International Film Festival Golden Shell 1972 Golden Globe Awards Best Foreign Film (Foreign Language) French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Prix Méliès New York Film Critics Circle Awards Best Screenplay 1976 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or The Marquise of O Grand Prix 1977 National Society of Film Critics Award Best Director 1979 Valladolid International Film Festival Golden Spike Perceval le Gallois Honorable Mention 1980 French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Prix Méliès 1983 César Awards Best Original Screenplay Le Beau Mariage Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear Pauline at the Beach Silver Bear for Best Director FIPRESCI Prize OCIC Award – Honorable Mention 1984 Boston Society of Film Critics Award Best Screenplay French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Prix Méliès 1985 César Awards Best Film Full Moon in Paris Best Director Best Original Screenplay French Syndicate of Cinema Critics Prix Méliès 1986 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion The Green Ray FIPRESCI Prize Golden Ciak 1988 César Awards Best Original Screenplay or Adaptation Boyfriends and Girlfriends 1990 David di Donatello Luchino Visconti Award 1992 Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear A Tale of Winter FIPRESCI Prize Prize of the Ecumenical Jury – Special Mention 1995 Chicago International Film Festival Best Feature Rendezvous in Paris 1998 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion Autumn Tale Golden Osella for Best Original Screenplay Sergio Trasatti Award – Special Mention 1999 National Society of Film Critics Best Foreign Language Film 2000 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards Best Foreign Language Film 2001 European Film Awards Best Director The Lady and the Duke Venice Film Festival Career Golden Lion 2004 Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear Triple Agent 2007 Louis Delluc Prize The Romance of Astrea and Celadon Venice Film Festival Golden Lion Queer Lion

Filmography

Directed 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)