Long Pauses

Tag: Director: Rohmer

  • Faith and Film

    After reading about it for the past few months, I found a copy of The Hidden God: Film and Faith on the new releases shelf of the university library during my lunch break today. Given the sensational coverage of film and faith in recent weeks, this collection of short essays is a breath of fresh air. The list of contributors is as interesting as the films they discuss. A random sampling:

    • James Quandt on Au Hasard Balthazar and The Devil Probably
    • Stuart Klawans on Andrei Rublev
    • Terence Davies on The Robe and Demetrius and the Gladiators
    • Philip Lopate on The Green Ray
    • Stan Brakhage on Artificial Intelligence: A.I.

    In total, there are fifty essays, each accompanied by beautiful black and white stills. The Museum of Modern Art did a fine job with this one. And MoMA’s film festival must have been pretty damn amazing, too.

    Only two minor disappointments: first, although it gets a brief mention in Nathaniel Dorsky’s “Devotional Cinema,” I wish Dreyer’s Ordet had been treated with an essay of its own. And second, David Sterrit and Mikita Brottman, who contributed a piece on L’Humanite, didn’t cite my Dumont essay. Not that they had any reason to. I’d just like to see my name in such a cool book.

  • Claire’s Knee (1970)

    Claire’s Knee (1970)

    Last night I watched Claire’s Knee (1970), the fifth entry in Eric Rohmer’s series of “Six Moral Tales.” This one is built around Jerome, an unusually self-absorbed rake (even by Rohmer’s standards) who spends the weeks leading up to his marriage on holiday at Lake Annecy. While there he meets an old acquaintance, Aurora, an Italian writer in search of inspiration. Their reunion, as is often the case in Rohmer’s films, leads to long talks about love and life, some genuinely interesting, others much less so. Jerome tells Aurora that he has finally agreed to marry because, after six years with his fiancee, he is surprised to discover that he still finds her interesting. It’s difficult to imagine Jerome finding anyone interesting, though. At the end of the film, for instance, he is shocked to learn that Aurora is engaged. “You never asked,” she tells him.

    Much of Claire’s Knee concerns Jerome’s flirtations with Laura and Claire, the two young daughters of his landlady. In typical Rohmer fashion, their courtship rituals are mostly verbal. His protagonists are keenly interested in love and in ideas of love. At times, I find these discussions endlessly fascinating — the late night talk between Jean-Louis and Maud being the best example — but after seeing more than ten of Rohmer’s films, the novelty of his style has begun to wear on me. I’m fascinated by the pacing of his films and by his need to show those parts of life that are so seldom put on film (the boring parts, some would say), but their lasting affect has been lessened by repetition. For more info about Rohmer, check out my friend Gary’s site.

  • My Night at Maud’s (1969)

    My Night at Maud’s (1969)

    Dir. by Eric Rohmer

    Images: Complete lack of shot/reverse-shot. Instead, much of the dialogue is framed in static medium shots, some lasting more than a minute. Speaker doesn’t address camera directly, but the effect is the same, involving the viewer as an active participant. “Our” voice is heard from off screen.

    • • •

    Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a young engineer, spies his ideal woman at Sunday Mass. Francoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) is young, attractive, blonde, and, most importantly, a practicing Catholic. Before they have even met, Jean-Louis determines that Francoise will be his wife. His pursuit is interrupted, though, when he happens upon Vidal (Antoine Vitez), a childhood friend who he has not seen in 14 years. The two spend an evening discussing religion and philosophy, then agree to meet again the following day at the home of Maud (Francoise Fabian), a beautiful divorcee who Vidal has been seeing. When the three meet, their conversation again turns to philosophy and religion, particularly the consequences of Pascal’s wager.

    My admittedly superficial understanding of Pascal’s wager: Given even overwhelming odds against the existence of God (say, 100 to 1), we must bet on that one chance. For if God does not exist, and we lose the bet, then our loss is inconsequential. But if God does exist, then our lives gain meaning and our reward is eternal.

    The three main characters are an interesting study in contrast. Vidal sees the wager as a logical tool for explaining everything, from religion to politics. For Jean-Louis, Pascal is too strict, a logician who has sacrificed sensual pleasure (“Pascal never said, ‘This is good,’” Jean-Louis tells his companions). His stance on Pascal is one of the many contradictions in Jean-Louis’ ideas, as he himself adheres strictly to (or at least claims to) the mores of Catholicism. Maud is a sensual being and an atheist, who tires of Jean-Louis’ pretenses and deftly dissects them. When left alone with Maud, Jean-Louis is forced to test his principles, to overcome his temptation in order to remain faithful to Francoise, a woman he has not yet met.

    I have seen several of Rohmer’s films over the last few months, and they never fail to elicit from me the same response. Thirty minutes into them, I’m typically annoyed, either by the characters or by Rohmer’s style. His film worlds are populated by self-absorbed “navel-gazers” (a common criticism) and his use of voice over narration often seems redundant. But, without exception, I have eventually fallen into Rohmer’s rhythms and become fascinated by those same characters. Most impressive is his ability to build a logical dramatic tension into his finales. The end of My Night at Maud’s — a coda that takes place years later, in which we learn that Jean-Louis and Francoise are married and that she may have had an affair with Maud’s husband —felt more forced than most, but the result is the same: despite the film’s slow pacing (or, more likely, because of it) I became anxious for the film’s conclusion, unaware of which way the story would turn until it did.