Eric Rohmer: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)

Conversations With Filmmakers Series

by Éric Rohmer

The 1969 film "Ma Nuit chez Maud" catapulted its shy academic film director Eric Rohmer (1920-2010) into the limelight, selling over a million tickets in France and earning a nomination for an Academy Award. "Ma Nuit chez Maud" remains his most famous film, the highlight of an impressive range of films examining the sexual, romantic, and artistic mores of contemporary France, the temptations of desire, the small joys of everyday life, and sometimes, the vicissitudes of history and politics. Yet Rohmer was already forty years old when Maud was released and had already had a career as the editor of "Cahiers du Cin ma," a position he lost in a political takeover in 1963. The interviews in this book offer a range of insights into the theoretical, critical, and practical circumstances of Rohmer's remarkably coherent body of films, but also allow Rohmer to act as his own critic, providing us with an array of readings concerning his interest in setting, season, color, and narrative.
Alongside the application of a theoretical rigor to his own films, Rohmer's interviews also discuss directors as varied as Godard, Carn, Renoir, and Hitchcock, and the relations of film to painting, architecture, and music. This book reproduces little-known interviews, such as a debate Rohmer undertakes with Women and Film concerning feminism, alongside detailed discussions from "Cahiers" and "Positif," many produced in English here for the first time.

Genres: Film

Paperback Bunko

First published December 13, 2012

About the author

Éric Rohmer (born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer) was a French film director and screenwriter. He is regarded as a key figure in the post-war New Wave cinema and is a former editor of influential French film journal Cahiers du cinéma. He was also the brother of philosopher and pedagogist René Schérer.

Scherer fashioned his pseudonym from the names of two famous artists: actor and director Erich von Stroheim and writer Sax Rohmer, author of the Fu Manchu series.

Rohmer was the last of the French New Wave directors to become established. He worked as the editor of the Cahiers du cinéma periodical from 1957 to 1963, while most of his Cahiers colleagues, among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, were making their names in international cinema.

Reviews

[Jenina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had too much fun reading about Rohmer’s afternoon routine, color palette decision-making, and outright distaste for Francis Bacon’s art.

To reduce Eric Rohmer’s films into screencaps of pretty French landscapes and people does great injustice to how witty, funny, and profound they actually are.

"Quel esprit ne bat la campagne?
Qui ne fait château en Espagne?"
("Who doesn't daydream?
Who doesn't build castles in Spain")
Proverb for ‘Le Beau Mariage’

[Dany · Rating 5 out of 5]

What interests me is to show young people as they really are just now, but also as they might be if they were fifty years old or a hundred years old, and the events of the film could have taken place in Ancient Greece, for things haven’t changed all that much. For me what is interesting in mankind is what is permanent and eternal and doesn’t change, rather than what changes, and that’s what I m inter- ested in showing.


The only music in my films is the music of people’s voices.


Modern literature and cinema are very often critical and derisive and make fun of the people presented. I find in that direction there is little to say. It’s a small subject. For me, what makes the human being different from an animal is that he imposes obligations upon himself. Man is looking for a certain rule of life. “And who can go with humor to heroism,” says the dandy in La Collectionneuse. My char- acters refuse heroism. They want to live in the everyday life and heroism is not part of everyday life. I think it’s an interesting problem because it concerns everybody—how to live each day according to certain ideas. What is tragic in modern life is when the idea of life is lost.

The public is free to be critical of my characters, but I am not. On the contrary, I am an admirer. I show only things I like. What I like about the temptresses is not an abstract idea of their prettiness, but because they have a variety, a richness of life. What I like about them—as in all of life—is the fact they are unique. And the cinema, of all the arts, is the best to show the unique aspect of a human being.

“Rohmer avoids easy beauty but, at the same time, he wants every shot to be beautiful,” says Almendros.


In the relation between literary and filmic narratives, in the way my actors learned to speak, in the play between the stylized and the real, I hope I may have enriched cinema a little...


The subject matter didn’t require a lot of money, but there is also a statement that a film without a large budget is possible. That’s impor- tant given the situation of the industry at this time. It is good to know how to make films with little money. You know that there’s no neces- sary relationship between the amount of money spent on a film and its quality. You can spend a lot of money on films that look poor and vice versa. Waste must be avoided.


I don’t believe in “direct writing” in cinema. There are not so many examples of that, and in general the films that have been made like that are not among the most successful. There is no such thing as what Alexandre Astruc has called the “camera-pen,” that is, anyone who makes a film the way he writes a book. The work in films is always a job of staging, and staging begins by an adaptation of a work which exists by itself in a literary way. There is no film which can- not exist literarily in one way or another. And the criterion which would state, “This film would be worth nothing literarily; it exists only by the film” is a criterion which is only rarely valid. When all is said and done, I don’t see any film for which it would be valid. Even things which are very cinematographic, which renew cinematographic language, Citizen Kane, for example, or Stromboli...


I’m very lucky because my films’ budgets are almost balanced by international pre-sales. As a consequence, it’s not that important how well they do at the French box office. Everything is determined by marketing: but what you gain in ticket sales, you lose in costs. We give too much importance to figures. For me, A Good Marriage was a great success, as it sold ninety-five thousand tickets, but for Godard or Demy that could be a catastrophe. It’s meaningless.


I think in general one can distinguish two types of filmmaker: painters and architects. There are those for whom space exists before you film, and those who invent a space during filming, and who conceive a space that no longer has any- thing to do with the real space. For the former, the architects, the cinema’s aim is to make a pre-existing space live before our eyes, a space in which the distances and relations between objects resemble those of the real world. This is the space that belongs to Fritz Lang, to Renoir, and to Rossellini. I certainly belong to that group.

What pleases me in the cinema is contact with reality.

The spirit can be moved anywhere. There are no unfilmable places, even the ugliest, most disagreeable places can be filmed. There is no architecture that isn’t interesting somehow, even if it’s unpleasant at first sight.

If I show places, it’s from the outside, from the point-of-view of someone who isn’t fully integrated. I’m not a painter of habits, of either Paris or the countryside.

I’ve forbidden myself all criticism. I show things. I give things their chance, if I can say that. I have no a priori opinion on places. They take a test, like people: are they photogenic?

I force myself to describe the feelings of a person at a given moment in time, and to find the most appropriate place to express them. For all that, I don’t include any social criticism or pamphleteering.


But at the same time, I’m eager to show transcendence in a round- about way, like a game. That’s how I use the theme of the stars, without believing in it, but without being a sceptic either, by which I mean being interested in people who believe in this area. I like people who have faith, even if I don’t believe in the thing they have faith in.

My films are made using meteorology. If I didn’t check the weather forecast everyday, I couldn’t make my films because they are filmed according to what the weather’s doing. My films are slaves to the weather. To the extent that I don’t cheat and that I’m inspired by the weather, I have to be a weath- erman. It’s the cosmos as a perfect work of art and as a natural marvel which attracts me. These are the miracles of nature.

The idea for The Green Ray came from there. I was struck by how natural people were in TV interviews. On TV, when people are in a natural situation, they’re perfect.

I am closer to Reinette than to Mirabelle, who expresses a kind of popular common sense. I am closer to Reinette in her paradoxes and her naivete. My naivete is less assured and more provocative. But I am closer to her, even to her ridiculous side. Even Dostoievsky is close to The Idiot in his stupidity. I like ridiculous characters who make us laugh. All my characters have this ridiculous aspect. I want them to be like that, and they all contain a kind of truth.


First of all, I chose a philosophy that in- spires me. For example, Freud doesn’t inspire me, and he doesn’t inspire Jeanne either because she doesn’t explain psychoanalysis to her pupils. It’s ontology which interests me, which corresponds with my tastes. I’ve written very little theory, when I was a cinema critic I didn’t make refer- ences to Kant or any other philosopher, well, hardly, but it underlay everything. What André Bazin called my theory of cinema is underpinned by what we could call TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM.

Another reason—I’m going back to an earlier point now—that I don’t like going too fast at the start, it’s that I like a lot of things to be learnt through hearing conversations, not to be delivered too quickly. I prefer not to take advantage of cinema’s ability to go anywhere, but to restrict myself to a certain time and place, even if it means lots of things that are necessary to understand the story are evoked in speech. For example, I could have put in scenes with Jeanne’s boyfriend, or others in her philosophy class, but I cut them out. When I write a story it is often through elimination, and the result of these eliminations is that the dialogue gets richer.


If I make films, it’s to ask a question rather than give a response.

...But the number of themes an auteur has is very limited. He is a prisoner of the structures into which he has voluntarily shut himself and outside of which he can’t create anything. I find myself in such a world—which began with the Moral Tales, perhaps even The Sign of Leo. Not only do I not have reason to leave, but I don’t want to and I must not. I try to find new combinations in my “personal computer” and I don’t think I’ve exhausted them yet.

Opposition is almost a mechanical method of inspiration for me. Inspiration can only come if you prepare for it and you seek it out. At the same time, inspiration is also a gift from heaven, or a gift of the Muses if you like. In this sense, you don’t look for inspiration, you find it.


I never do complicated things, but everything I do is done well.

I’d like that what is felt in my films is written, and that what seems written is improvised, that’s always what I’m looking for.

This has led me to pay particular attention to my characters. One of my characters will never say something that is manifestly wrong. They all have a truth, and conflicts arise from several possible truths that may emerge from the same event. I think the right way to view my films, if there has to be one, is to be persuaded in turn by each of my characters, to believe each one, and finally to understand that there is a mystery which holds together several explanations, several stories that are all equally credible. Let’s say that I, as the author, while writing, am persuaded in turn by each of my characters.

On the other hand, I’ve noticed that a lot of directors have a tendency to want to stylize the acting, to push the actor towards playing. What interests me are the actors’ spontaneous gestures, although it doesn’t stop my cinema having a certain style. Furthermore, I would point out to you that in most of the films made by my New Wave contemporaries, we find this way of acting, in opposition to the very theatrical style we find at the moment. I don’t think that my actors act very differently from those in a film by Godard or Rivette, for example, although our filmic worlds have very little in common.

It’s not the content that matters here, it’s the way of saying it, the gestures if you like. Whether someone is talking about politics, philosophy, or love, the first thing I look for is authentic gestures. I don’t like actors using deliberate gestures, that simplify expressions in contrast to life’s richness, on the other hand I study unconscious, natural gestures very carefully, such as scratching your back while talking about philosophy, or crossing or uncrossing your legs, or any other example.

Bresson tried to fight this gestural language through a hierarchy and the non-gesture; I try to fight against it through the overuse of gesture, the disturbing or unconscious gestures that arise spontaneously.

If an actor becomes aware of their gestures, we have to abandon everything. I prefer it when an actor is so taken with their text that they have spontaneous gestures. Physically they are very interesting gestures, as well. When I’m choosing actors, I talk with them and see how they move their hands. And that’s why I prefer filming in a 1/33 ratio, the format of my last film, with a 16mm camera with an almost square frame, because that allows me to show off an actor’s gestures more effectively.

That’s one of the virtues of amateurism. It’s almost as if each of my spectators could make their own film themselves. It’s my way of inviting them into my world: 16mm image, few characters, no camera movements, almost like a “family film,” like a home movie nearly. Why not?

It’s the virtues of economy and invention that I like above all. It’s the same thing for camera move- ment, where my practice matches a certain philosophy of the cinema. This philosophy comes from Cocteau: “To film a galloping horse using a tracking shot is to film a still horse.” I like the camera to be impassive, just as I like the narrator to be absent, and I only use panoramic movements to increase space, which is another way of staying objective.

In my films, I’ve always remained behind the fiction, I don’t take sides, or choose one character over another. In my interviews, I’m sometimes more explicit. I remember that in Cahiers, in 1969, I gave a profession of faith in the ontology of the image, even if it wasn’t really known at the time. For me, an artist should be preoc- cupied with questions concerning the environment, the beauty of the world, in the countryside as well as in the town, rather than following one particular political line.

I think that an artist is especially attached to these questions of nature and architecture, and perhaps that’s his way of being a citizen.

Yes, in the sense that cinema records, in the words of Bazin, “the beauty of the real.” But I would go further: my love of cinema itself springs from my love of nature. And that’s what always lead me towards a Bazinian concept of cinema: the mechanical recording of things is cinema’s strength, it’s a machine before it’s art, whereas painting’s strength, primarily art because it is forced to transpose, to describe, to use metaphors, to represent a landscape rather than record it, is a strength of the imagination which bothers me more. I prefer to look at a landscape than see it represented via a painting. It’s nature which led me to loving cinema, and that’s why I prefer cinema to all the other arts, because, unless you’re making “cinematic postcards,” it doesn’t have a predatory relationship to landscape.

I’ve always kept faith in the future and trust in the past together. In a certain way, I am very conservative, but the more conservative I am, the more I’m waiting for the future.


You could say I’m faithful to Bazin’s teachings, even if he was too hidebound regarding depth of field and the sequence shot. And I do think that resorting to a highly visible artifice gives me truth.

The past is the tense of the novel; the present is the tense of cinema.


Here is a general problem: what should we give preference to? The actor or the setting?

For me, film has a realist basis. You mustn’t be able to sense the artifice, colors mustn’t appear too harmonious and decorative, as they can at the theatre. On the contrary, there should be some dissonance, colors that don’t go with others, especially when you are filming on the street. So you have to be quite modest: sometimes, ideas have come to me from painters.


Q: So why start with a 1.33 format?
ER: Because, quite simply, with 1.33 I have more space. People talk about the big screen, when they should talk about the narrow screen! In order to have a wide screen as the image appears on a camera, you have to cut off the top and the bottom of the frame. Now, I need those parts of the screen: I’ve always wanted to show what’s above people’s heads, and I also like to show hands. I don’t like telling actors to raise their hands, because it’s completely unnatural. I like to show the table. . . . There are so many things I like showing, and I can’t because of the current format!


I’m a filmmaker, not a historian: I wanted to allow myself to interpret history in my way, without advisors. So that’s how I work, apart from for details: when I write adaptations, it’s between me and that author, Chrétien de Troyes and me, Kleist and me, d’Urfé and me. I don’t want anyone else, even if others might reproach me.

You’ll say that that’s magical and I say yes, the magic of cinema! If you want to dominate everything, it doesn’t work. You have to allow some chance in, and some subjects allow that and organize themselves. I’m more and more convinced by this the more films I make.

I can’t present the truth of an era. All I can do, the same as any film- maker or fiction writer, is to show how an era represented itself (I prefer this approach, personally), or show how we represent it to ourselves, through interpretation, extrapolation, and embroidery. I’ve never tried to modernize history.


The public often tell me that I make films that resemble each other and they are right, but it is normal because I am a complete auteur, that is someone who creates the film, looks at the subject, and at the same time I am also the man who creates the image.


It might be pedantic, but I don’t think one can love art today without being an historian, without judging it in comparison to works from the past or the future.

If one is not able to paint figuratively, like they taught in the old Schools of Fine Art, I don’t think one can undertake abstraction. In abstraction, there is always a memory of the figurative. If not it’s pure decoration. If a painting has no contact with reality, it no longer exists. And that’s what’s happened: painting has disappeared, whether it’s on walls or an easel; now, we have installations, which don’t just have a relationship to reality, but that are themselves a reality.

[Freyja · Rating 3 out of 5]

"If I make films, it’s to ask a question rather than give a response. I think most viewers will experience the film as I do. Those who aren’t like me, I’m not saying they won’t like it, but they’ll like it in a different way."

Sebelum baca ini, saya nggak tau kalau ternyata The Green Ray itu scriptnya improvised (no wonder people like it so much even tho it's not my favorite from Rohmer). Dari interview-interview yang terkumpul dan diterjemahkan di sini, jadi bisa paham sedikit tentang proses kreatif Rohmer, apa aja sumber inspirasi dia, apa yang dia suka dan nggak suka. Saya sendiri suka banget detail kecil yang diperhatikan Rohmer pada setiap naskah filmnya, yang katanya punya 'warna' masing-masing dan dia selalu make sure naskahnya disampul sesuai warna-warna itu. Juga gimana di sepanjang karirnya Rohmer lebih suka bekerja dalam tim kecil yang bisa dia bawa keliling Paris daripada di dalam studio dengan kru berjumlah besar. Itu juga jadi salah satu alasan kenapa dia menikmati bikin film di Prancis, tentang Prancis dan orang-orangnya, ketika ditanya apa dia nggak tertarik bikin film di Amerika misalnya. "I want to show the reality of life in France, I don’t want to deal with a way of life I don’t understand," katanya, "I think that there’s still a lot to deal with in France." Sebagian orang bisa berpendapat kalau film Rohmer itu tumbuh dari ide yang mirip, saling mencerminkan satu sama lain, sampai kadang terkesan repetitif, dan Rohmer nggak menyangkal gagasan itu—dia justru bilang itu semua normal, karena dia seorang auteur yang nggak cuma membuat film dari subjek yang dia pikirkan, tapi juga menciptakan sebuah potret yang utuh.

(and yes, we need to talk more about narrow screen!)

[Omar Muñoz Cremers]

Pour les vrais amoureux du cinéma. Een uitputtende interviewbundel met Rohmer. Goede introductie, alle films met informatie erbij en dan gewoon interviews uit alle periodes. Rohmer scheen verlegen te zijn maar praat met veel plezier over van alles behalve zijn persoonlijke leven ("Het is beter dat mensen me niet herkennen dan kan ik gewoon in de tram observeren.") Aardige man met veel goede ideeën, literaire bagage maar ook weer niet pretentieus. Er valt voor de Rohmeriaan veel te leren over zijn films, hoeveel ruimte hij zijn acteurs geeft (bijvoorbeeld voor het gebruik van eigen gebaren en vocabulaire) en vooral zijn haast punkachtige manier van filmen vanaf de jaren '80. Le Rayon vert maar ook, 4 Aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle maar ook L'Arbre, Le Maire et la médiathèque worden met een minimale crew van drie opgenomen.

[JJ Cardillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is fantastic. An amazing look at a thoughtful, and creative master of filmmaking. Although Rohmer himself is compelling, what struck me even more so were the respective interviewers. The type of questions and wide variety of subject matter gives Rohmer places to go in thought. Despite having made so many films, by reading these interviews it feels as though he only scratched the surface of what he might have wished to explore.

Although I loved reading this, I found that my interest in it waned in the back third. Probably as a result of not being familiar with/as interested by the later work Rohmer put to screen.

I cannot recommend this book enough. I took it from a library and that was great… but I need to purchase my own copy. Really, really great read!

[Ian Roseen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cements Rohmer’s place as one of my all-time favorite directors and my favorite French director, period. I’m dying for more of his films beyond the Moral Tales to be made available on DVD or Blu-Ray in the U.S. If anyone knows where… hit me up.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A feast of ideas with my all-time favorite film director. I think you have to be a serious Eric Rohmer devotee to appreciate this collection, but if you are it's essential.

[Scott Glassman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A true artist in every sense of the word. For how “simple” the structure of his work is, it was invaluable to learn about how nuanced the details are.

He lives on forever, one of the GOATS!