Series of Eric Rohmer’s Films

張貼日期：May 24, 2015 1:12:43 PM

Pamela Shen

Eric Rohmer is my favorite French film director. As a critical figure of The French New Wave, he not only sets high aesthetic demand of his films like his contemporaries, but also creates his own way of telling stories and accomplishes his individual success. Rohmer’s work can be roughly divided into three Series—Six Moral Tales, Comedies & Proverbs, and Tales of the Four Seasons.

Rohmer borrowed a camera and made his first 16mm short film in 1950 and started his film career. He was not famous until a series of films that he titled Six Moral Tales came out. Six Moral Tales contain six different stories all concerning about moral. However, the moral that Rohmer defined is different from the social norm then; it tends to be a kind of individuals’ self-image. For example, The Collector, which is in the Six Moral Tales, tells the story in the viewpoint of a man. He wants to date a girl while he cannot do that for he’s engaged. Somehow after that, he starts to consider the girl to be extremely complicated and cunning.

However, the truth is the girl doesn't pay any attention to him at all, and all the details that make the man judge the girl come from his fancy. The man considers himself to be moral, and as a result, he can only blame the girl and think she is a flirt in order to relief himself. Six Moral Tales narrate about this kind of self-deception, and I think the topic is extremely interesting because this situation is very common in our lives even though not many people notice it.

The second series films of Rohmer are called Comedies & Proverbs, which include The Aviator's Wife, The Marquise of O, Pauline at the Beach, The Green Ray and so on. It was the period during which Rohmer started to win different kinds of awards; however, I don't like the films of this series that much. The series contain eight comedies and each of them corresponds with a proverb. Some of the proverbs were invented by Rohmer himself and they make the films lively and humorous. For example, the proverb of Full Moon in Paris,which was invented by Rohmer himself, is ‘the one who has two houses loses his mind,’ and it doesn't seem like a proverb at all. The Green Ray is my favorite one in this series. It talks about a sad girl who cannot get along well with almost everything. However, Rohmer gives that kind of girl a way to live their own lives through the film. The proverb of this film is a couplet from a Rimbaud poem, which is ‘Let the time come, when hearts are enamored.’

Tales of the Four Seasons are my favorite series of Rohmer’s. The series contain four stories for the four seasons. They are A Spring Tale, A Summer Tale, An Autumn Tale as well as A Winter Tale. These stories are concerned about the choices and fate; the characters are willful and stubborn while the stories are peaceful and romantic. As the works of later period of Rohmer, these films are more mature and tend to be melancholy. In A Tale of Winter, the main character is a girl who falls in love with a man who she meets on the beach but loses the contact way of him. She’s pregnant after that, and she meets other men who love her and want to take care of her and her child. But she still wants to find the man. Many years later, she meets the man unexpectedly. However, Rohmer doesn't give an answer as to whether it is a happy ending for the girl because she doesn't know the man quite well.

These series reveal Rohmer’s glamour, humor, and view of life. I like his films because the stories in his films are concerned about the real life. They may have less catchy packaging than Hollywood movies but deserve our attention. Rohmer doesn’t like to judge or define the characters in his films, and as a result, the films don't have many moral teachings. However,the greatness of life and affection is kept back in his films.