Éric Rohmer
Filmmakers discuss the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock and the book “Hitchcock/Truffaut” (“Le cinéma selon Hitchcock”), written by François Truffaut and published in 1966.
What was your first desire? What did you long for most? Arielle Dombasle put these questions to a wide circle of famous people.
In an enchanted forest, back in the time of the Druids, the shepherd Céladon and the shepherdess Astrée share a pure and chaste love. Fooled by a suitor, Astrée dismisses Céladon, who throws himself into a river out of despair. She thinks he's dead, but he's been secretly rescued by some nymphs. Faithful to the promise he made to Astrée to never appear before her again, Céladon must overcome many obstacles to break the curse. Mad with love and despair, coveted by the nymphs, surrounded by rivals, and obliged to disguise himself as a woman to be near the one he loves, will he manage to make himself known without breaking his oath? A romance filled with doubt, hazards, and delicious temptations.
How to stay at your lover's side (who's married to another woman) all day long without anyone noticing...
The Popular Front wins elections, the Spanish Civil War begins, and Hitler and Stalin are manipulating and spying. The brilliant exile, Fiodor Voronin, a general at 20, is the deputy at the White Russian Military Union, probably slated to replace the aging Général Dobrinsky soon. Fiodor's Greek wife, Arsinoé, paints and stays away from politics, befriending Communist neighbors. Her health declines; the attentive Fiodor arranges care and, against the backdrop of Stalin's Great Purge, considers his options. He plays a chess game in which love of country, love of Arsinoé, ideology, petty jealousies, and the machinations of power roil in matters of life and death.
This breathtaking, visually experimental film from New Wave director Eric Rohmer tells the true story of Grace Dalrymple Elliot (Lucy Russell), a British aristocrat trapped in Paris during the French Revolution. Determined to maintain her stiff upper lip and pampered life despite the upheaval, Grace continues her friendship with the Duke of Orléans (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) while risking her life and liberty to protect a fugitive.
Magali, forty-something, is a winemaker and a widow: she loves her work but feels lonely. Her friends Rosine and Isabelle both want secretly to find a husband for Magali.
A shy maths graduate takes a holiday in Dinard before starting his first job. He hopes his sort-of girlfriend will join him, but soon strikes up a friendship with another girl working in town. She in turn introduces him to a further young lady who fancies him. Thus the quiet young lad finds he is having to do some tricky juggling in territory new to him.
Three stories of love and coincidence around the theme of dates in Paris.
Documentary overview of the life of French filmmaker François Truffaut.
The socialist mayor of a small village in France dreams of building an arts center but he runs up against some opposition.
Felicie and Charles have a whirlwind holiday romance. Due to a mix-up on addresses they lose contact, and five years later at Christmas-time Felicie is living with her mother in a cold Paris with a daughter as a reminder of that long-ago summer. For male companionship she oscillates between hairdresser Maxence and the intellectual Loic, but seems unable to commit to either as the memory of Charles and what might have been hangs over everything.
The story of an introverted young girl just reaching adulthood who takes a liking to an older woman she meets at a party and determines to match her off with her father, despite the latter's already having a lover of his own.
Cut into six parts, this film Rohmer gives us the opportunity to discover a foultitude of pledges to be made between friends (the famous kiss to the Capucine or that of hare that, not dog , I give you pictures), hairy anecdotes on the Colin Maillard with small children, verbal exercises of high fly such as I love my lover by A. where you have to fiddle the brain to find words ... In "a", the game of the Fly where poor Alexandra Stewart finds herself surrounded by actors whom Rohmer had to find in a retirement home, the game of Kings and Queens adapted from the unavoidable Game of Robin and Marion d ' Adam de la Halle, who should bring back good memories to friend Gols (I, who in my time was a demi-god in old French, I had to poke a word out of twelve ... everything is lost, by God ) Or the mega bamboche charades game with a Pascal Greggory under acid
Paul and Adèle were once lovers and separated but are still good friends, one year after everything seems to take them away from each other. The key of E may be the key of true friendship, but it is Mozart that pushes them apart.
Middle-class Parisian suburbs: Blanche and Lea, office worker and student, meet and become friends. Lea is going out with Fabien, but is thinking of leaving him. Blanche falls for Lea's handsome and witty friend Alexandre, but is tongue-tied whenever she meets him. Lea goes on holiday and Blanche, still smitten with the dashing Alexandre, begins to get to get know Fabien. A classic Rohmer moral tale.
Two young girls meet, Reinette from the countryside and Mirabelle from Paris, and decide to take a flat together in Paris where they attend University. Four successive stories about their daily lives illustrate the very different views, characters and relation to the world of these two friends.
Set to music, a couple's struggle with rising in the morning for coffee. First draft of "Bois ton café", filmed on Super 8.
A lonely Parisian woman comes to terms with her isolation and anxieties during a long summer vacation.
Set to music, a couple's struggle with rising in the morning for coffee. First version filmed in Super 8
Louise is dissatisfied with her mundane life in a bleak Parisian new-town. She rents a pied-à-terre in the city so she can experience independence.
Marion is about to divorce from her husband and takes her 15-year-old niece, Pauline, on a vacation to Granville. There, she meets an old love...
Passionate about music, Julien nevertheless works with a sculptor. One day, he meets young Hermine at a religious bookseller.
A short film made by Eric Rohmer dealing with the drawings of Raphael.
Sabine vows to give up married lovers, and is determined to find a good husband. Her best friend Clarisse introduces her to her cousin Edmond, a busy lawyer from Paris. Sabine pursues Edmond, with the encouragement of Clarisse, but Edmond does not seem very interested.
A film by Haydée Caillot with Eric Rohmer, Anne Rouanet, Jean-Pierre Caminade, et al.
A student is devastated when he finds that his girlfriend is cheating on him. In order to find out why she did it, he decides to spy on her and her airline pilot lover. Then he sees the pilot with a blonde woman and he begins to follow them…
A film by Haydée Caillot with Rosette, Eric Rohmer, Françoise Bécam et al.
In the Middle Ages, the earl Wetter von Stahl is accused of having bewitched Catherine, the daughter of the gunsmith of Heilbronn, the earl tries to be exonerated by proceeding himself to the interrogation of the young woman. —Wikipedia
A German Marquise has to deal with a pregnancy she cannot explain and an infatuated Russian Count.
How is a planned city designed? What consequences does creating one has on the environment? What are the living conditions in such areas ? Such are the questions asked by Eric Rohmer in this first part of a TV documentary series, through the particular case of Cergy-Pontoise, near Paris.
Second part of a French TV series about the creation and building of the town of Cergy-Pontoise.
Fourth part of a French TV series about the creation and building of the town of Cergy-Pontoise.
Third part of a French TV series about the creation and building of the town of Cergy-Pontoise.
The last of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales. Frederic leads a bourgeois life; he is a partner in a small Paris office and is happily married to Helene, a teacher expecting her second child. In the afternoons, Frederic daydreams about other women, but has no intention of taking any action. One day, Chloe, who had been a mistress of an old friend, begins dropping by his office. They meet as friends, irregularly in the afternoons, till eventually Chloe decides to seduce Frederic, causing him a moral dilemma.
Out 1: Spectre begins as nothing more than scenes from Parisian life; only as time goes by do we realize that there is a plot—perhaps playful, perhaps sinister—that implicates not just the thirteen characters, but maybe everyone, everywhere. Real life may be nothing but an enormous yarn someone somewhere is spinning...
Round table on the teaching of secondary school.
A reflection on the french language, done for french TV by Eric Rohmer.
Debate about the natural process of acquiriing a language for the child.
On the eve of his wedding, on holiday on the Lake Annecy shore, a career diplomat visits an old acquaintance, perhaps a former girlfriend. Through her he meets an intense teenager, Laura, and then lusts after her sister, Claire. Whilst Laura attempts to flirt with him, his fantasy becomes focused on wanting to caress Claire's knee.
French television program discussing Jean Renoir's 1932 film "Boudu Saved from Drowning".
In this short film made for french TV, Eric Rohmer discusses the architecture that influenced Victor Hugo.
Rohmer films a discussion between Claude Parent, Paul Virilio and François Loyer about the usage of concrete in architecture.
The rigid principles of a devout Catholic man are challenged during a one-night stay with Maud, a divorced woman with an outsize personality.
This is a short film reviewing Tire-au-Flanc by Jean Douchet and Eric Rohmer.
An episode of the educational French television series "Aller au cinéma" in which filmmaker Eric Rohmer and critic Jean Douchet discuss the social implications of Jean Renoir's 1932 film "Boudu Saved From Drowning."
Eric Rohmer leads a conversation with Jean Renoir and Henri Langlois on the art of filmmaker Louis Lumière.
Stéphane Mallarmé is one of the many educational documentaries that Éric Rohmer did for the television during the 1960’s. At the beginning of the film, Rohmer states that he has placed in Mallarmé’s mouth words taken from an interview with the writer by Jules Heuret published in 1891.
A documentary about the construction and aesthetics of Nancy Stanislas, King of Poland.
A bombastic, womanizing art dealer and his painter friend go to a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohemian Haydée, accused of being a “collector” of men.
In just a few simple lines, a picture of the French countryside in the 1960s: the last moments of a disappearing, changing world. The simplest documentary images are there to make us aware of the raison d’être of agriculture, harvesting the fruits of a cyclical and repetitive nature.
“Rohmer traveled to the island of Jersey to find and film, alone and with a small Paillard 16mm camera, the places that had inspired some of his favorite poems…. […] Victor Hugo’s “Les Contemplations,” a work reread, walked, and filmed by Éric Rohmer, is in fact one of the filmmaker’s most poetic miniatures.” –Antoine de Baecque & Noël Herpe
Eric Rohmer directs this short documentary that narrates the presence of women in French universities as of the time of its release -- 1966. During the film's short run, the narrator continues to point out that during the advent of World War II, only 21,000 women attended college and made only a 30 % of the student body, a number that by the 1964-1965 school year had passed the 120,000 mark. Instead of opting to live according to what was expected of them, now they were joining the work force, trading in aprons for lab jackets and becoming professionals even after getting married.
Celluloid and Marble is based on Rohmer's own articles published in "Cahiers du cinéma", discussing film in relation to the other arts, maintaining that, in an age of cultural self-consciousness, cinema was “the last refuge of poetry” - the only contemporary art form from which metaphor could still spring naturally and spontaneously.
This is a short film for French TV, En Profil dans le Texte, directed by Rohmer.
Six vignettes set in different sections of Paris, by six directors. St. Germain des Pres (Douchet), Gare du Nord (Rouch), Rue St. Denis (Pollet), and Montparnasse et Levallois (Godard) are stories of love, flirtation and prostitution; Place d'Etoile (Rohmer) concerns a haberdasher and his umbrella; and La Muette (Chabrol), a bourgeois family and earplugs.
Documentary on “Perceval, the Story of the Grail”, written by Chrétien de Troyes in the 12th century.
Éric Rohmer's short for the portmanteau film Paris vu par (Six in Paris, 1965), concerning a haberdasher and his umbrella. Convinced he has killed a man, Jean-Marc flees and spends an anxious few days waiting for the death of the stranger to be reported in the newspapers...
Actors embody different portraits from the Characters by Bruyere, in a castle setting.
A short film made for french TV, En Profil dans le Text, by Eric Rohmer. Dealing with the salons of Diderot.
Nadja is a guest student, who stays at Cité Universitaire and visits the Sorbonne, while preparing a thesis on Proust; she also likes to stroll about Paris.
A look at scientific practice during the 18th century, featuring recreations of five experiments from the era.
A sophisticated and beautifully constructed account of landscape change in and around Paris in the early 1960s. The film raises complex issues about the meaning and experience of modern landscapes and the enigmatic characteristics of features such as canals, pylons and deserted factories. Rohmer also explores the role of landscape within different traditions of modern art and design and refers to specific architects, artists and engineers.
Early new wave effort from Rohmer which was the first of his six moral tales. It concerns a young man who approaches a girl in the street, but after several days without seeing her again, he becomes involved with the girl in the local bakery. Eventually he has to choose between them when he arranges dates with them on the same day.
In the second of Rohmer's moral tales, he examines the relationship between two friends and a girl who at first appears easily exploited. It is a complex tale of feelings and misconceptions, acted out within the head of the main character, as part of Rohmer's attempt to more easily simulate the mindscape quality of literature within a film.
This short film was made for TV by Eric Rohmer, it deals with the urban landscape.
An American in Paris lives by sponging off his working friends, and throws a party using borrowed money when his rich American aunt dies, believing firmly in his horoscope.
Two young people, Walter and Charlotte, are walking through a small village in Switzerland a snowy winter day. Walter introduces Charlotte to Clara, hoping to make Charlotte jealous. After saying good-bye to Clara, Walter accompanies Charlotte into her house, although she doesn't want him to. Charlotte is hungry and cooks a steak. She asks Walter if he wants a piece of it. He says no, but she gives him a small piece anyway. He wants a kiss, and she says no. She starts to compare herself with Clara, who Walter agrees is more beautiful. In spite of this, Walter says he likes Charlotte much more, but she thinks he is lying. She notices that he is cold and shivering. She hugs him, he kisses her, and she starts kissing him. After leaving the house he accompanies her to the train.
A pickup artist/womanizer named Patrick inadvertently pursues two young women who happen to be roommates.
Véronique gives a mathematics lesson to a dunce who answers the prepared questions with disconcertingly sound answers.
La Sonata à Kreutzer is a 16mm film based on a Tolstoy story and was written and directed by Eric Rohmer and produced by Jean-Luc Godard. The film follows a man (Rohmer) whose wife starts to fall for a another man (Jean-Claude Brialy). The film is a great look into the Nouvelle Vague in 1956, with Godard in a supporting role and a scene shot in the offices of Cahiers du cinema, with cameos by Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, and Andre Bazin. It was in reference to this film when Truffaut called Rohmer the master of 16mm.
Les Contes Secrets ou les Rohmériens features interviews with 16 actors who have appeared in Rohmer's films, and they talk on camera about his unusual working methods, his personality, and his spare but evocative signature style. Among the thespians who share their memories are Jean-Louis Trinitignant, Marie-Christine Barrault, Zouzou, Jean-Claude Brialy, Béatrice Romand, Françoise Fabian, and Andre Dussolier; the film also includes rare footage of Rohmer himself at work on the set of his 1978 effort Perceval.
