Eric Rohmer: C/D

Anyone seen the new one that's going to be at the NYFF? Being called his last in the fest blurb.

Shit I hadn't heard this. I guess at age 87 it might be time to let go.

That's too bad, but I guess he's up there age-wise. It's a ridiculous proposition, but when people ask me who my favorite director is, it's always a toss-up between Rohmer and Bunuel. There's something appealing to me about his ethical depth and quiet, personal storytelling style. Also, I love his total lack of flash when compared to his contemporaries.

Oh, I haven't seen the Chris Rock remake of Chloe in the Afternoon. I'm afraid to mostly because no crazy electronic score means no Chloe in the Afternoon.

Hah yeah - that title sequence of 'Chloe'...

Thanks for the great movies !

http://www.liberation.fr/culture/0101613208-eric-rohmer-est-mort

I think I very well may watch one of his movies for the first time in his honor tonight.

it's sad when anybody dies.

^^^ statler and waldorf over here

Never thought "if only real people spoke more like people in movies" more than when I watched one of his films.

Actually, I made the mistake of thinking real French people DID talk like that, and bought a very expensive plane ticket to find out they talked more like the worst moments of Diva.

lol

tonight at bar trivia we will all speak like Tale of Winter characters

Although even the street people in France used fancy words like "désolée" instead of "sorry."

we all know that nrq can't relate Rohmer to "his culture"

(The guest on The Muppet Show this week is Steve Martin)

aw, RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NeRXbf7sEg

I really do intend to watch one of his movies, if not tonight, then sometime in my life. Gotta start sometime, right?

I remember Tarantino saying in the mid 90s he wanted to do a pseudo-Rohmer film, let's hope to God that never happens

which rohmer does the august ilx film dude recommend for young impressionable nouvelle vague come-lately here?

Yeah, he should leave that stuff for Rick Linklater, Motbius.

I'm not putting you down for that, Eric.

Les nuits de la pleine lune
Was just checking on Fabrice Luchini to see if anybody was left standing from that one.

My favorites:

My Night at Maud's
Chloe in the Afternoon
Pauline at the Beach
Summer
A Winter's Tale
An Autumn's Tale
The Lady and the Duke

we all know that nrq can't relate Rohmer to "his culture"

― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 11, 2010 5:55 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

no, i can, northern european bourgeoisie is close enough. 'ma nuit chez maud' is the one to go for imo.

I'm afraid if anybody gives any suggestions to the impressionable Louis, it will be like when the Federation starship left the Roaring Chicago book on the planet with Vic Tayback.

Yeah, he should leave that stuff for Rick Linklater

grrrrrr! yes, his best films are like the Before movies if they had a non-punchable man in them.

Lots of insufferable characters in Rohmer films.

yes, but no slick grungemeisters.

"What I say, I do not say with words. I do not say it with images, either, with all due respect to partisans of pure cinema, who would speak with images as a deaf-mute does with his hands. After all, I do not say, I show. I show people who move and speak. That is all I know how to do, but that is my true subject. The rest, I agree, is literature."

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2010/01/eric-rohmer-19202010.html

Lots of insufferable characters in Rohmer films.

― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 11, 2010 1:27 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes, but no slick grungemeisters.

― Rage, Resentment, Spleen (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 11, 2010 1:29 PM (11 minutes ago) BookmarkpAlso, they don't always go unpunished.

Don't know if I told you this before but before the first Before was made, there was some talk in Austin that the lead was going to be David Thewlis.

Not to play into the hands of the history mayne, but thinking about it, his kind of clean "non-cinematic" visual style reminds me of that of his, um, co-religionist Luis Buñuel.

Lots of insufferable characters in Rohmer films.

I meant to say: But they're mostly girls, just like IRL

[/Homer Simpson]

which rohmer does the august ilx film dude recommend for young impressionable nouvelle vague come-lately here?

rayon vert (green ray) (summer)

or my night at maud's

(ma nuit chez maud)

Pauline at the Beach
A Tale of Springtime
An Autumn Tale

Claire's Knee's the only canonical one I find overrated; prefer Chloe in the Afternoon

Have a soft spot for Chloe in the Afternoon because we saw that in intro French. Love that part about how he has a different book to read on the bus or on the train or on the park bench or whatever the breakdown was.

btw I would remind you that Chris Rock has already done a Rohmer remake.

from Nestor Almendros' OOP memoir, on working with E.R.:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/the-perfect-moment-20100112

Argh, I got rid of that book during a move.

I had a friend who is a DP who complained about the information provided therein, but now I see from those excerpts that maybe it was more about a cinematographer talking about the great directors with whom he worked rather than giving away trade secrets.

My little tribute to him.

Well done.

Astrea and Celadon is fun proto-Shakespeare, tho the luscious Andy Gillet looks a bit too much like Ashton Kutcher when in drag. It could've been called Astrea's Breast. Great last scene.

http://www.observer.com/files/full/sarrisROMANCE-OF-ASTREA-CEL.jpg

^^^ That movie was so erotic, and tonally weird, too, what with it being a contemporary movie based on a fourteenth century text of a story set in the fourth century (or something along those lines).

Rohmer was so old so I think he had a good run and don't feel sad or anything, but I watched, like, eight or nine or ten of his movies in 2009, and read two of his stories. He was a real clever ironist, and I liked how his formalism would always lay bare his plotting and the philosophical ideas he folded in without making it all seem easy or empty. Although Pauline Kael disagreed; she thought he made well-crafted fluff, I think.

which stories did you read? I bough the Moral Tales book but quickly realized I'd rather just watch the films.

Yes on the tonal weirdness of Astrea & Celadon - I put it down to the utter strangeness of doing a dead Renaissance genre (one that is to me both fascinating & basically unreadable) completely straight (I mean there are plenty of ironies there, but he's not mocking the conventions of the genre afaict). It's a lovely back and forth reflection - a neglected ancestor of the novel coming to life in the hands of a director who's novel-y in his film-making.

And yes on the erotic aspect. I have not been so engaged by a breast in a film for a long time.