Along with Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer was one of the founding contributors to the influential film magazine, Cahiers du Cinema, where he also served as editor from 1956 to 1963. Born Jean-Marie Scherer, he had written a novel during the Occupation under the name Gilbert Cordier and went on to write film criticism in the 1950s under the name Eric Rohmer. Among his critical writings were a monograph on Alfred Hitchcock (co-written by Chabrol) and a dissertation on F.W. Murnau, whose "rich imagination" he expressly admires. Rohmer tested his own talent in short films through the 1950s, abandoning his first feature, "Les Petites filles modeles", in 1952. Chabrol's company produced Rohmer's first feature, "La Signe du lion" (1960), but it was hardly a revolutionary manifesto in terms of cinematic language. Indeed, Rohmer took a more literary, philosophical turn in his art, conceiving his "Six Moral Tales," not as the moralistic fables implied in the English translation, but as stories which, as Rohmer describes them, "deal less with what people do than with what is going on in their minds while they're doing it. A cinema of thoughts rather than actions."
The first two of the six "Tales" films, "La Boulangere de Monceau" (1962) and "La Carriere de Suzanne" (1963), were minor efforts, but the third, "My Night at Maud's" (1969), a talkative chamber drama dealing with ethics, religion and hypocrisy, was a surprise hit that garnered Rohmer an Oscar nomination for best screenplay. The fourth to be released in the series (but third to be filmed) was "La Collectionneuse" (1967). Though not as successful as "Maud," it is nevertheless an engaging tale about a young woman "collecting" one-night-stands. "Claire's Knee" (1970) and "Chloe in the Afternoon" (1972) completed the cycle and established Rohmer, and his cameraman Nestor Almendros, as creators of a unique cinematic world firmly rooted in ethical concerns and suffused by the director's devout Catholicism.
In the mid-1970s, Rohmer turned to literary adaptations and historical subjects with "The Marquise of O..." (1975), a well-received tale of unrestrained passion; "Perceval le Gallois" (1978), his interpretation of medieval codes of gallantry; and a TV film, "Catherine de Heilbronn".
For the 1980s Rohmer embarked on a new series of six films, "Comedies and Proverbs," launched by "The Aviator's Wife" (1980). These droll, intimate stories, set in ever-shifting contemporary French society, revolve around quirky characters whose emotional problems almost overwhelm them but who finally discover the resources for survival. "Le Rayon vert/Summer" (1986) is about a young girl on vacation hoping for a romantic revelation without compromise. She struggles idealistically against a companion's more relaxed approach, until at the end she is rewarded with the indescribably beautiful, ephemeral "green ray" of a perfect sunset. This fragile study of youthful yearning and confusion won the Golden Lion prize at the Venice Film Festival.
"Quatre aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle/Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle" (1987) was a fine successor to Rohmer's morality tale tradition, depicting a winning innocent Provincial and her more worldly cosmopolitan counterpart (although they both seem sunny and innocent), and their various engagements together.
"Conte de printemps/Tale of Springtime" (1990) and its companion film "Conte d'hiver/A Winter's Tale" (1992) received accolades in what is projected to be a quartet of season-related films. "Tale of Springtime" mined a wealth of philosophical and emotional resonance from what seemed like grounds for romantic comedy, as a young woman tries to match her father with an older friend she recently made. "A Winter's Tale" featured both a hairdresser who hopes for a near-magical reuniting with the missing father of her daughter and delicate allusions to the Shakespeare play of the same name.
Youth continues to be the preoccupation of this aging director, although his attention is focused on the struggle to grow up--or, at least, to behave that way. This focus has broadened Rohmer's audience, yet he still makes talky, spare, low-budget films with unknown actors and little background music, preferring to shoot in sequence at the place and during the season of the narrative. In 1987, when the Montreal Film Festival honored him for his entire "Comedies and Proverbs" series, he announced, "I'm lucky to have practically complete independence, which is rare. That's because I make films in which there is no waste." An elegant simplicity is his achievement.
