Rohmer's Films - Case Study Example

Rohmer Eric Rohmer’s set of six films known as his Contes Moraux (Moral Tales), based on a set of short stories grouped together into novel form, mark a distinct point in the history of the cinema because they begin to assert a particular approach which is designed and delivered purely with cinema in mind. It departs from earlier theatrical types of presentation, in which directors used techniques borrowed from the stage, and from the literary tradition, based on the narrative and characterization techniques of novels, which aimed to turn famous literature into films. Rohmer ventures into a mature and truly cinematic treatment of major moral issues through the lives of very ordinary middle class men and women. Monaco notes that the first two films in the series, La Boulangère de Monceau and La Carrière de Suzanne are shorter, of poorer technical quality than the last four, and should be regarded as “little more than introductions to the themes of the last four films” (1976, p. 296). The focus of attention for this innovation in cinema history is therefore the series of four films Le Genou de Claire, La Collectionneuse, Ma Nuit chez Maud and L’Amour, l,après-midi. Each film presents a set of relationships, centering on one male protagonist, and largely depicting the scenarios from that point of view. The women and the other men in the films are all acquaintances of the protagonist, and they provide conversation partners with which the protagonist debates major moral issues, mainly to do with human love relationships and the choices which we have to make in love and in life. There is plenty of opportunity, however, and increasingly so as the film series develops, to perceive things briefly from the point of view of the female characters. Their vivacity and the men’s relative inability to negociate a successful love relationship with tem leaves the viewer to question the dominant angle of the films and wonder if perhaps the men have missed something, or misunderstood something vital, which the women have known all along. When viewed from a post-feminist perspective the films are somewhat dated, but they do cast light on the period in the late sixties and early seventies when men and women were beginning to renegociate the social arrangements of dating, fidelity and marriage and so this makes them historically as well as cinematically interesting. The lessons that the men are painfully trying to verbalise in the films are not necessarily the lessons that the films leave behind, as Rohmer is keen to point out: “My characters’ discourse is not necessarily my film’s discourse.” (Rohmer, “Letter.” 1971, p. 1). He goes on to make the point that in his film he does not say, but he shows. This means that the actions and the words of the characters in the film are only parts of this spectacle, and everything must be taken as whole, in order to interpret what the film maker is showing the viewer. This requires a certain effort on the part of the viewer, to disentangle contrasting, or even contradictory elements in the films, and work out what the overall message is. A good example of this is found in the film Ma Nuit chez Maud, where “the protagonist views himself from an angle which is distinctly different from ours.” (Monaco, 1976, p. 301). The first person narrator is no omniscient presenter of the truth, but an actor in the drama, along with all the other characters and the film presents his views for the audience to consider alongside many other pieces of information that build up the story. Rohmer himself was very conscious of the power that the narrator figure wielded in every one of his films: “My intention was not to film raw events, but the narrative that someone makes of them… everything happens in the head of the narrator.” (Rohmer, quoted in Monaco, 1976, p. 305). In the film Ma Nuit chez Maud, for example, the unnamed narrator is given a very large portion of the available space in which to talk to the other characters, or to the audience, but he is precisely not the bearer of the film’s deepest insights. Crisp notes that Rohmer places him alongside two rather wittier and more perceptive characters: “Vidal is always more perceptive about him than he is himself; so is Maud.” (Crisp, 1988, p.52) The narrator is thus called into question by a Marxist and by a woman, but this does not mean that Rohmer is arguing for one or other philosophical or social perspective to prevail. He is simply allowing a context of other views around the narrator’s own position to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of that position. It is a multi-dimensional vision that only cinema fully exploits. Sometimes a dialogue is carried on, but the real meaning not contained in the words that are being spoken. It can be found in some other space, such as an image or an action, as for example when the narrator finds Francoise on the beach after he has been talking to Maud. The narrator is sent off to find his wife and Maud says “ Now run along, before your wife comes to the conclusion that I’m filling your head with all sorts of awful stories”. The film cuts to Francoise on the beach, and the text goes on: “Francoise, to conceal that she was troubled, had picked up a handful of sand and was letting it trickle between her fingers. I didn’t know what to say next, to end her silence.” (Rohmer, Moral Tales, p. 32). The surface dialogue is about the chance meeting with Maud, but the sand falling through his wife’s fingers is symbolic of all the brief seconds in all their lives, running out now as husband and wife come to a crucial understanding about one another. The gesture with the sand is a hint at mortality, and the futility of human intrigues, and this is underlined when the narrator runs into the sea with his wife, leaving the sand to lie unnoticed on the beach. The tiny pieces of people’s lives, whether lived or whether constructed as “stories” are as numerous, and as insignificant as the grains of sand on the beach. The message in the images seems to be saying that it does not matter which moral choice the narrator made then, or makes now. The sun and the waves are there, and the two characters have ended up together, and so they must just leap into the water and take it from there. Deep thinking about past mistakes or other potential “stories” that they could have lived is just a waste of time. Rohmer succeeds, therefore, in taking some quite ambitious and highly intellectual themes, and presenting them with the narrative voice of a novel, the drama of the theatre, and something else which is the genius of the twentieth century moving image of cinema. He manages to merge elements of all three into a unified whole which sets new standards for directors coming after him. Rohmer speaks of “three levels of discourse: indirect, direct, and hyperdirect.” (The Taste for Beauty, p. 84). “The theater’s text is richer, because during a presentation, it alone provides information.” (Rohmer, The Taste for Beauty, p. 84) He argues that film can function, and indeed must function, with less dense speech because the world of the film is already present in the mise en scène, the images, the sounds, etc. Some of the aspects of a novel can be retained in a film, for example a narrative voice which can be overlaid on the visual image and the action of the film, as Rohmer does in the four latter Moral tales. This narrator affects the atmosphere and milieu, situating the action within a context and adding a gloss to the bare meaning of dialogue and action. This is not sustainable on stage, but it works very well in novels, and in films. The dialogue in Rohmer’s films is admired for its authenticity, and this is due to his skill in identifying what is necessary for the cinematic purpose, and allowing only this to be filmed. So, for example, he preferred amateur actors, in the main, who still retained the rhythms of ordinary speech, untouched by any actorly pretensions, and he studied real dialogues using tape recorders, analysing every linguistic utterance to understand its structure, function and connotations. Crisp explains, in connection with Le Genou de Claire, the filming technique which Rohmer used in order to achieve maximum realism in dialogue: “For the most part, then, elaborate rehearsal of the predetermined dialogue was the rule, with 15 or 20 dry runs being the norm. “ (Crisp, 1988, p. 61) This technique contrasts with more invasive cutting and pasting, and merging of several “takes” and it preserves the natural flow and timing of the actors’ speech. The result is a certain ordinary or everyday mood, making the viewer focus on what is said, rather than how it is being projected in the film. When a film director creates a linked series of films, he automatically creates a context for the second and subsequent films which grows stronger and stronger until it reaches the last film in the set. This is very much the case with L’Amour l’Après-midi which reprises many of the moral dilemmas of the earlier films, as it lays out options for Frederick. When we listen to his speech, we hear an echo of previous tempted protagonists, and expect him to go through a similar journey of decision-making, until he finally makes his choice of Chloe or Hélène. It is also the case in My Night at Maud’s , the text of which opens with the interesting narrative comment: “In this story I’m not going to tell everything. Besides, there isn’t any story, really: just a series of very ordinary events of chance happenings and coincidences of the kind we have all experienced at one time or another in out lives.” (Rohmer, Six Moral Tales III p. 1) This is a tongue in cheek definition of any narrative endeavour, and it is followed by a big hint as to the transformation which the “non-story” undergoes when it is turned into film by Rohmer: “The deeper meanings of these events will be whatever I choose to endow them with.” (Rohmer, Six Moral Tales, p. 1). The viewer knows that this is only the voice of one character, and immediately sets about looking for a) the deeper meanings that the narrator has announced will be forthcoming, and b) the even deeper ones that the audience has come to expect from the interaction of this rather self satisfied narrator with other characters in the film. A third challenge for the viewer is to sort out which of the various views on offer can be trusted, and which are perhaps illustrative of wild goose chases or fanciful aspirations. The “truth” of the film lies in its juxtaposition of different perceptions and its invitation to take your pick. So it is that the narrator’s dialogue with the viewer, and the characters’ dialogues with each other all become part of the bigger, all consuming dialogue which is that of the film director with posterity. It is all done with a self-consciousness that shows an awareness of the experimental nature of the undertaking, and a hope that its value will become evident over time, even if at first viewing a certain amount of ambiguity and uncertainty may be apparent. This is the significant and original contribution of Rohmer to the history of cinema: the development of techniques and approaches that allow ordinary voices and everyday events and situations to carry extraordinary amounts of deeper philosophical meaning. He draws out subtle meanings from the slightest, least dramatic events, and for those who are willing to make a certain amount of effort to “get inside the heads” of his characters, there is a rich interplay of ideas, images and events which display the big moral issues in mid twentieth century human relationships. References Crisp, Colin G. Eric Rohmer: Realist and Moralist. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1988. Monaco, James. The New Wave. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Rohmer, Eric. La Boulangère de Monceau (The Girl at the Monceau Bakery) (1963). Short Film. Rohmer, Eric. La Carriere de Suzanne (Suzannes Career). (1962). Short Film. Rohmer, Eric. La Collectioneuse (The Collector). (1967). Film. Rohmer, Eric. Ma Nuit Chez Maud. ( My Night at Mauds). (1968) Film. Rohmer, Eric. Le Genou de Claire (Claires Knee). (1970) Film. Rohmer, Eric. L’Amour L’Après-midi (Chloe in the Afternoon). (1971) Film. Rohmer, Eric. “Letter to A Critic” La Nouvelle Revue francaise 219 (March 1971). Rohmer, Eric. Six Moral Tales. Translated by Sabine d’Estree. Viking Press: 1980. Rohmer, Eric. The Taste for Beauty, translated by Carol Volk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Read More