Beginning Friday, the Film Center will screen a 13-movie, two-month retrospective of French filmmaker Eric Rohmer, who turned 80 last week. Though he’s directed almost three dozen films since his first feature in 1959, Rohmer has often labeled these works as serials. And aside from the inexplicable omission of Perceval–his greatest film–this retrospective certainly does justice to his major periods: it includes all of his “Six Moral Tales,” five of the six “Comedies and Proverbs,” and a third entry from the “Tales of the Four Seasons” that has never been shown here.
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Born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, Rohmer taught high school literature during the Nazi occupation and wrote a novel, Elizabeth (1946), under the name Gilbert Cordier. In 1948, he arrived in Paris, where he contributed essays and criticism to several prominent film publications. Along with Godard, Rivette, Truffaut, and Claude Chabrol, Rohmer wrote for the seminal film journal Cahiers du Cinema. In 1951, the same year Cahiers was founded, Rohmer wrote and directed his first short, Charlotte and Her Steak, which showcased Godard as a lone actor attempting to seduce two women who are never shown. He also worked in television and made educational and industrial films.
The Film Center retrospective opens with two widely known films–My Night at Maud’s (1969) and Claire’s Knee (1970)–but Rohmer’s early works are more revealing, laying out the style and themes he would go on to explore in his later movies.
In the first film, whose alternate title is “One Can’t Think of Nothing,” a 20-year-old postal worker (Philippe Marlaud) is unconvinced that a handsome pilot has ended his affair with the sophisticated 25-year-old woman (Marie Riviere) the postal worker is nominally involved with. The movie’s point of view shifts from Riviere to Marlaud with the inventive use of an iris shot, and the dominant perspective suddenly becomes the fractured, tormented psyche of the young man, who now obsessively follows the pilot (Mathieu Carriere) and his mysterious companion. His tortured state is further complicated by the appearance of another romantic interest, a relaxed and confident young girl (Anne-Laure Meury). The movie turns on a remarkable 30-minute sequence between Marlaud and Riviere inside her cramped apartment where they tentatively unravel the difficulties of their relationship. Rohmer’s cinema seems predicated on observation, conversation, and social milieu, but this scene illustrates the rigor and daring of his best work. He constantly finds ways to play off the physical space between them; the cutting and camera movement draw out their fear, regret, and possessiveness. “You’re doing nothing but talking, but you’re not saying anything,” Riviere says.
