My Night at Maud's (1969)

Honestly I don’t know about Eric Rohmer that much, but I know he is one of greatest filmmaker. He had been a movie critic for years and he established “Gazette du Cinema” with Jacques Rivtte and Jean-Luc Godard in 1950. And he became an editor of “Cahiers du cinema” till 1963. His plentiful knowledge and viewing of cinema made him step on filmmaking. 

They say Erick Rohmer was one of leaders of “French New Wave” with Andre Bazin, Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy. According to Wiki, THe New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague) is like below. 

"New Wave" is an example of European art cinema. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm. Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the New Wave way of filmmaking presented a documentary type style. The films exhibited direct sounds on film stock that required less light. Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination o1f objective realism, subjective realism, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions that arise in a film are not answered in the end.

Once I got shock when I watched “Breathless” by Jean-Luc Godard. This movie’s lots of jump cuts made me uncomfortable, due to I couldn’t concentrate the story. In contrary Eric Rohmer’s “Summer tale” was attracting me, and make me want to know about him. 

Summer tale was my first movie of Eric Rohmer. It is a story about a young man between two women in Summer vacation. Finding a love is the man’s goal I think. Anyway I liked this movie. It’s not dramatic, but flat. However I liked its conciseness. Lots of dialogues leaded the story arc. It’s not a movie with visual effect or variety camera movement. It’s about story of a young man, itself. 

I read several articles of Eric Rohmer. He makes several series like “Six contes moraux”, “Comedies et Proverbs”, and “ Contes des quatre saisons”. From his series I come to understand he was of New Wave directors. 

Now I am gonna breakdown of the movie “My Night at Maud’s”. This movie was nominated for Oscar 1971. 

In cathedral A father preaches our sin, and confession of it. Our hero Jean-Louis gives his looking the woman he fall in love. Camera angle takes a medium close up of her side, then camera fans three people who pray step by step (It would be view of Jean-Louis). Different kind of people come to Cathedral, and pray of one’s sin. I have a question of it. So they really repent of their sin, and don’t do bad thing or just want to be comfortable from doing pray?  

A scene in the restaurant where Jean-Louis and his friend Vidal talk about Pascal. Now I come to get Jean-Louis’s philosophy. He shows his anger of pascal when He has dinner at Maud’s house. When they start talking about love based on a mathematical hypothesis, I start thinking Eric Rohmer throw his question to us, and it isn’t easy to answer. It is thing we may solve at end of life. Those actors convey the director’s message through their dialogue than performance. What is the definition MORAL? 

Eric Rohmer tests Jean-Louis’s moral. He has to stay with Maud who is under a blanket with naked. “If I were Jean-Louis?” I come to have a hypothesis like Jean-Louis. 

Meanwhile Jean-Louis comes to have time with Francoise, his “love”, he start to break his self-control. He start reveal his desire.  

They have mass together, and Father’s preach would give us the answer. Both of them are interested in each other, and they reveal their affair they had have. Jean-Louis’s philosophy of life seems to change following a feeling of love. 

Last scene in a beach Eric Rohmer put an wit on Jean-Louis’s voice over. I totally sympathize this situation. This movie draw my sympathy and I definitely like Erich Rohmer. 

There are lots of filmmaker with variety style; story-teller, visual-teller, etc. I personally prefer strong story line than visual amusement. Few characters and few location. Most of time characters sit and just talk each other. How simple it is? However it gave me clear intention of the director. Simplicity of editing, location and characters made me focus the story/dialogue itself. The subject matter is normal issue, not fictional issue. 

on my short knowledge I can’t find technique specific of this movie including editing(Simplicity might be subject to editing, too). 

I have learned that film era from countries or ideology or trend. So far I can’t be convinced about it. It would be come from a historian’s convenience. When directors start preproduction they won’t decide what style it would at first than others. I believe the style is from the script and description of director. 

Why I talk about it is I don’t like to classify directors in specific category. 

Many people say Eric Rohmer’s movie is on The New Wave. But I believe He did write scripts and directed by his feeling just itself. When I watched his two movie “Summer tale” and “A Night at Maud’s”. I noticed his style vaguely; simplicity and a subject matter from a normal life. If he were young director in 2012, will his movie is classified  to the New Wave? Is there any mistake of classification a director and a film? Then people will learn and remember about him/she/it different from truth. 

This movie is Eric Rohmer’s movie it is, and audience feel it by oneself. If one feel romance from this movie, it will be romance movie to oneself. There isn’t  absolute answer like the argument about Pascal, Religion and love in this movie. 

This movie handed me several issue I need to think about. I like it, it’s the movie what I really want to make: Give a message to the audience, Make the audience remind of love, family, humanity.