NWR: RIP ric Rohmer

M

MLipton

Mark Lipton
ric Rohmer dead at 89
An acquired taste for many, to be sure, but Eric Rohmer might have been the cinematic Thierry Puzelat, going his own way and making unique and often moving films. He has a certain personal significance as well, as "Claire's Knee" is one of the very few films my mother ever walked out on* and remained a family joke for years. He will be missed.

Mark Lipton

* She also has no patience for Wagner's operas, so take from that what one will.
 
I am a big fan of his movies and very sorry to hear this. As I have said again and again and will say again and again when the circumstances permit, Conte d'Automne is the best movie in which winemaking plays a signficant role ever made.
 
Oh, hell.

Everyone, watch everything, from the gloriously self-conscious "Boulangre de Monceau" (with hot young Barbet Schroeder, n.b.) to the gloriously austere "Ma nuit chez Maud" to the gloriously frivolous "Le beau mariage" and "Les nuits de la pleine lune." Everything.
 
His age was always a source of bedevilment to biographers. But over a long career, he set his cameras to focus on the inarticulate and fumbling desires that fill the space between people. And he caught more than just pictures in the frame.

A compatriot and inspiration to both Truffaut and Godard. Rohmer was also the dean of Hitchcock studies.

It is said that he delayed the shooting of My Night At Maude's for almost a year, "because it is a winter film."

Would that he could have been given another season.
 
originally posted by MLipton:
NWR: RIP ric Rohmerric Rohmer dead at 89
An acquired taste for many, to be sure, but Eric Rohmer might have been the cinematic Thierry Puzelat, going his own way and making unique and often moving films. He has a certain personal significance as well, as "Claire's Knee" is one of the very few films my mother ever walked out on* and remained a family joke for years. He will be missed.

Mark Lipton

* She also has no patience for Wagner's operas, so take from that what one will.
Click to expand...

Rohmer's movies are a lot shorter than Wagner's operas.

I saw "Chloe In The Afternoon" when I was an impressionable 23-year-old, and to this day the 23-year-old that still lives in me (despite my best efforts to evict him) wants Frdric's magic device that brings him beautiful women.
 
originally posted by Levi Dalton:
It is said that he delayed the shooting of My Night At Maude's for almost a year, "because it is a winter film."
Click to expand...

More purist than that he wanted to film the Messe de Minuit on Christmas Eve in the cathedral in Clermont Ferrand. Since he didn't like the first takes, he waited a year for the actual midnight mass to film again.

Funny about Rohmer; perhaps my favorite filmmaker, but I have known at least one person who could not stand the style, nor the awkwardly purposeful amateurishness of the actors.

He is brilliant (he was a literature professor before a filmmaker). The only film of his I didn't like was the bizarre late one set in the French Revolution, with fake backdrops, I forget the name. The Duchess and something?

I think we should do a hit parade of everyone's favorite Rohmer film.

Better than those year-end 2009 lists, and far more telling!

I'll start:

(No, I'll wait to see if anyone takes the bait. C'mon, disorderlies, take the bait!)
 
My favorite? Jeez, I don't know. I've always loved the Rayon Vert (I recently read the Jules Verne novel because of it: don't!). Then there's his spy movie as only he could do it, Triple Agent. And I love Conte d'Automne for the wine talk (should the female winemaker introduce herself as a vigneronne or a viticulteuse?). And of course, boring to say so, but I love both Claire's Knee and Chloe in the Afternoon. I haven't seen all his movies, but I think I'll just go with everyone I've ever seen.
 
My least favorite was Perceval le Gallois. I don't think I lasted more than an hour. But I was impressed that I lasted as long as I did.
 
He certainly put the Francais into Le Cinema Francais. His death reminds me of the "Breathless" exchange between Jean Seberg and Jean-Pierre Melville:

She: What is your greatest ambition?

He: To become immortal and then to die.
 
Last night saw Emmanuel Mouret's Un baiser, s'il vous plat (Shall We Kiss?), available from Netflix. Carries on the Rohmer tradition well.
 
Great stuff. Consolation for seeing this thread come back up, having forgotten that Rohmer had passed, and feeling the grief all over again.

Fabrice Luchini is so great.
 
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