A Talking For Lie And Love
罗默电影：谎言与情爱的记录
张 典
ZHANG Dian
他并不想判断。那只是关于谎言与情爱的记录；是男人与女人的对话……是与不是、生存与死亡并不重要。逝者如斯夫……你偶尔会记起曾经来过。
1.
当看到埃里克·罗默 (Eric Rohmer, 1920－) 的电影《贵妇与公爵》L'anglaise et le duc (2001) 时[*]，我开始认真思考他在电影中一直在寻找的美的精神是什么。刚开始看罗默的电影，没有产生持久的耐心，感觉他的电影就是在叙述夏日午后阳光下产生的情感故事，有长长的对话，懒洋洋的。在这样在感觉中，我陆续看了《我的女友的男友》 L'ami de mon amie (1987)，《夏天》Conte d'été (1996)，《午后之爱》L'amour l'après-midi (1972),《克莱尔之膝》Le Genou de Claire (1970)，《威尔士人Perceval》Perceval le Gallois (1976)，这几部电影给我的感觉当时很不清晰，罗默到底想表达什么情感？这样很长时间，看过罗默的电影，印象并不鲜明，但感到他一直在追寻一种永恒的东西，当近期看完《贵妇与公爵》时，我开始清晰感受到罗默的追寻是什么。
2.
《贵妇与公爵》以法国大革命为背景，记录了苏格兰贵妇格蕾丝·艾略特 (Grace Elliott) [*]与奥尔良公爵 (Duc d'Orléans。路易十六Louis XVI 的堂兄，Louis Philippe的父亲) [*] 的情感故事。罗默眼中的法国大革命的一个特点是人群在骚乱，社会在涌动，气氛令人惊栗。两位感情非常深的人在风雨飘摇的时代中在坚持自身的理想。艾略特对路易十六和皇后玛丽·安托瓦内特 (Marie Antoinette) 有深厚情感，看起来她是坚定的忠于皇帝的女贵族，坚决反对雅各宾党人的激进主义。奥尔良公爵是改良派，认为法国大革命有合理的一面，因为他看见周围这些皇族太昏庸了，所以法国要改良，但他也反对激进革命，可是最后还是被雅各宾党人送上断头台。
艾略特是坚定的保皇派，在当时的背景下她因此而随时有生命危险。但她并不在意，从士兵的搜查中救助一位陌生的贵族，这位贵族刚好又是公爵非常反感的一位人物。出于艾略特的请求，公爵还是给这位请求庇护者弄到了逃亡通行证。罗默在这里想表现的是超越政治的人性之爱，要突出艾略特的人性，法国大革命在这里只是考验人性的极端试验场。后来，艾略特请求公爵在议会判决路易十六死刑的投票中投反对票或至少弃权，公爵口头答应，但最终他却投了赞成票，在赞成与反对票相等的情况下，公爵的一票将路易十六送上了断头台。这使艾略特悲愤失望，要斩断对公爵的情感。公爵的改良态度也是激进党派不能忍受的，最后公爵深陷囹圄，而艾略特也因保皇态度也深陷囹圄，在这些遭遇磨难中，他们的情感反而越来越单纯深挚，双方都超越了他们的政治立场，而逐渐进入到一种永恒情感的体验之中。
3.
《贵妇与公爵》不是一部政治电影，罗默将对美的精神追求放在首位。按康德 (Immanuel Kant, 1724－1804)的说法，美是道德的象征，美学精神后面总象征着一定的道德[*]。罗默想表达的是美超越道德与政治。罗默给我的感觉是他对法国中世纪、古典主义、巴洛克和洛克克时期的艺术有最深厚的情感，这段时期刚好在法国大革命之前。从法国大革命时期开始，艺术风格是浪漫主义代替了古典主义、巴洛克艺术，其中代表性的事件是让-雅克·卢梭 (Jean–Jacques Rousseau, 1712－1778) [*]反对让-菲力普·拉摩 (Jean-Philippe Rameau, 1683－1764)。[*]拉摩在巴洛克和声理论方面的贡献卓著，拉摩在对位法方面的贡献也十分大，建立了“拉摩法则”。 拉摩的音乐的结构是很复杂的，它契合法国巴洛克时期的情感的形式需求。而卢梭希望开创法国的资产阶级精神，一反法国巴洛克时期贵族等级特权，反对贵族的僵化陈腐，提倡自由、平等和博爱的新精神，卢梭的《社会契约论》可以说是法国大革命的圣经[*]。罗默的审美感偏向了拉摩的一边，这中间就存在这样的问题，罗默毕竟是在法国新浪潮的时代氛围中重新思考变化与永恒的一种关系，但可以看到，法国大革命作为一个伟大时代的具体政治事件已经不是罗默关注的重点了。法国大革命是作为法国浪漫主义美学的象征出现的，罗默反对浪漫主义的情感的骚动，而偏向了宁静与稳定的贵族情感。这中间《贵妇与公爵》到底是怎样体现的？在我看来，电影背景画面的风格与尼古拉·普桑 (Nicolas Poussin, 1594-1665) 的绘画深为想像。[*]普桑有时被称为法国古典主义绘画的奠基人。普桑的绘画是法国巴洛克画风与古典主义精神相结合的产物，他的画结构严谨，富有田园诗般的宁静气氛，可以认为是意大利文艺复兴威尼斯画派的法国化的产物。普桑的画充溢深沉的宗教情感，新柏拉图主义的阳光照射在宁静的原野之上，神性之光，虚幻的理性，普桑的画同时也体现出他的同时代人勒内·笛卡尔 (René Descartes, 1596－1650) 的纯粹几何的精神[*]，实际上表现的是法国人理性精神中的数学般的精确、细腻和敏感。《贵妇与公爵》中的田园景色就令我感受到普桑绘画的田园景色，二者有同样的气氛，相似的情感表达。
这使我又回想起罗默的另一部电影《威尔士人Perceval》，电影改编自12世纪的文学作品《特荷耶斯城的基督徒》（Chrétien de Troyes），Perceval与寡妇母亲生活在一起，梦想成为骑士，故事表达的主题是中世纪的骑士寻找圣杯的故事。罗默这部电影给人的感受首先来自电影的音乐，音乐是意大利文艺复兴时期音乐的风格。意大利文艺复兴音乐具有田园牧歌般的宁静，午后阳光般的慵懒、梦幻，这都是罗默非常喜爱的风格，他在电影音乐中又加上一些孤独与虚无。我感到《贵妇与公爵》是《威尔士人Perceval》思考的一个延续。两部电影给人的审美感受是相通的，两部电影的基本情节都是以戏剧的形式展现的，实际是放大了的舞台电影。罗默的戏剧的借鉴更多来自于巴洛克－古典的结构对称，一切在严谨的理性中表现情感。
4.
罗默身处新浪潮的时代中[*]，而过去的审美精神却成了他的追寻目标。罗默的电影有很强的虚无感，这也构成他作品的主要力量。《我的女友的男友》，《午后之爱》，《克莱尔之膝》，《夏天》，这几部看过的感情故事，全都显现出如阿尔贝·加缪 (Albert Camus, 1913－1960) 的一点局外人的感觉[*]。情感在电影中是以一种抵抗虚无的基调展开的，这样来看，罗默实际上是非常现代性的。他在努力克服虚无感对他的持久侵蚀，他没有表现出加缪小说中的荒诞以及完全的自我外在化，而是以一种看似严肃而又易变的方式在表现情感的矛盾与不确定性，但不是游戏人间的态度，实际上表现的是一种人生的虚无感。主人公在虚无中试图走出虚无。罗默在虚无中追寻审美精神，审美的精神令罗默抵抗虚无，在变化中罗默在寻找永恒的美，永恒不变的人类爱的情感。
5.
罗默寻找什么样的永恒性？现代性的一个大的特点，正如尼采 (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844－1900) 在19世纪末对欧洲的预言：那客人中最可怕的客人来临了，虚无主义已经站在门口，未来两个世纪我们会处于虚无主义的症候之中[*]。罗默的电影可以说是他对尼采所预言的一种回应，罗默回到法国的中世纪，重新思考中世纪的人与现代人面临同样的问题，人的精神性的追寻，那么罗默就成了在虚无中的怀疑，在怀疑中达到宁静，重复了古希腊的庇容 (Pyrrhon of Elis, 公元前360－公元前270) 学派的一个轮回问题[*]，在怀疑中反思人类根本的局限性，在这样的体验中，达到了与命运的和解。罗默的电影给我的感觉就是他的电影的审美力度在逐渐增强，审美就是一种对命运的体悟的加深，罗默的电影的风格愈来愈鲜明，越来越有活力，越来越稳定。罗默找到了古典理性对现代虚无感的克服，是从普桑那里获得了灵感吗？一个永恒的田园，一种永恒的宁静，文艺复兴式的田园牧歌的音乐回荡在罗默的田园上。这就是罗默的追求。
埃里克·罗默
Eric Rohmer，1920—
原名让-玛丽·莫里斯·谢勒Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, 1920年生于法国南部的南锡。1950年开始拍摄短片，1959年开始拍摄第一部长片《狮子的征象》，讲述一位美国小提琴手在巴黎成为流浪汉的故事。罗默从1962年起计划拍摄许多电影，最有名的为三个系列的电影：第一系列是《六个道德故事》(1962－1972)，第二个系列是《喜剧与箴言》（1981－1987），第三组是《四季的故事》（1989－1998）。罗默的电影追求田园牧歌式的宁静美，在法国新浪潮电影中独树一帜，罗默有深厚的绘画与文学修养，在电影中很好地表现出来。
罗默代表作品:
《阿斯特丽与塞拉东》Les amours d'Astrée et de Celadon 2007
《贵妇与公爵》L'anglaise et le duc 2001
《秋天》Conte d'automne 1998
《夏天》Conte d'été 1996-1998
《巴黎的约会》Les rendez-vous de Paris 1995
《冬天》Conte d'hiver 1991
《春天》Conte de printemps 1989
《我的女友的男友》L'ami de mon amie 1987
《绿斑》La rayon vert 1985
《圆月之夜》Les nuits de la pleine lune 1984
《海滩上的褒琳娜》Pauline à la Plage 1982
《美满婚姻》Le Beau Mmariage 1981
《飞行员的妻子》La femme de l'aviateur 1980
《威尔士人柏禾瑟瓦勒》Perceval le gallois 1978
《侯爵夫人》Die marquise von O (La marquise d'O) 1975
《午后之爱》L'amour l'après-midi 1972
《克莱尔之膝》Le Genou de Claire 1970
《在慕德家的一夜》Ma nuit chez Maud 1969
《收集男人的女人》La collectionneuse 1967
《苏珊的历程》La carrière de Suzanne 1963
《面包店女孩》 La boulangère de Monceau 1962
《狮子的征象》Le signe du lion 1959
□ 張 典，现居南京。 ZHANG Dian, the co-editor of National History, is living in Nanjing now. Email: ZhangDian2008@gmail.com
□ Received 20071008. Text online 20071012 .
注釋 References & Notes
[*] coming soon
RRR
Random Related Readings
suggested by National History
國家歷史建議的隨機閱讀文獻
[1] Eric Rohmer的话，中文翻译：濮林。
选自Aurélien Ferenzi与Eric Rohmer于2001就《贵妇与公爵》访谈录。
Aurélien Ferenzi, Interview with Eric Rohmer, Senses of Cinema, Iss. 16, Sept.-Oct. 2001. | Link to the Iss.16 |。Reviews on L'Anglaise et le Duc.
是的，而且我必须找到一种刻画古巴黎的办法。……
电影背景画面是由Jean-Baptiste Marot绘制的。我和他一道设计这些背景以契合那个时代的风格……
Eric Rohmer
“
[French]
Aurélien Ferenzi : La représentation de la ville était le moteur du film.
Eric Rohmer : Oui, et il fallait que je trouve un moyen pour montrer Paris.
…
Ce sont des tableaux peints par Jean-Baptiste Marot. Il les a conçus, en collaboration avec moi, selon les exigences de l'esthétique du temps et de la mise en scène cinématographique. Il y a eu un travail préalable fait par le documentaliste, Hervé Grandsart. Nous sommes partis non seulement des tableaux et de gravures, mais de plans de l'époque.
[English]
Aurélien Ferenzi : The portrayal of Paris was the driving force behind the film .
Eric Rohmer : Yes, and I had to find a way of depicting historical Paris.
…
They were painted by Jean-Baptiste Marot. We designed them together in the appropriate period style and according to the requirements of the mise en scène. Hervé Grandsart did the preliminary documentary research. We worked from pictures and engravings, but also from street maps of the period.”
Aurélien Ferenzi与Eric Rohmer于2001就《贵妇与公爵》访谈录----选译
翻译：濮林
I had to find a way of depicting historical Paris.
我必须找到一种刻画古巴黎的办法。……
I had shot two period films before: The Marquise of O (1975) in real locations and Perceval le Gallois (1978) entirely in the studio. I knew that neither of these methods would give an authentic portrayal of Paris. So I had the idea of inserting real-life characters into scenic backgrounds that I would have specially painted, based on the layout of the city at that time.
我曾经拍过两部历史片。其中《侯爵夫人》 (La marquise d'O, 1975) 实景拍摄，而《威尔士人Perceval》(Perceval le Gallois, 1978) 则完全在摄影棚里完成。我清楚这两种方式都无法真实地再现古都风貌。所以我有了这个主意，就是把实际表演（画面）嵌入我们依据当时巴黎城市格局而绘制的图景中。……
They were painted by Jean-Baptiste Marot. We designed them together in the appropriate period style and according to the requirements of the mise en scène….To me, this work was not just a matter of being meticulous it was about striving for an authenticity that underpins the whole film. At heart, I wasn't especially intent on making a film about the Revolution. I don't much like being pegged as an 18th century buff! Even though I've sometimes been compared to Marivaux, it isn't my favourite century.
背景画面是由Jean-Baptiste Marot绘制的。我和他一道设计这些背景以契合那个时代的风格并视剧情、场景需要。……对我来说，这样做不仅只是出于（对历史题材的）慎重，我以此而努力谋求一种支撑全片的真实感。说句心里话，我对拍摄大革命背景的影片并无特别兴趣。我十分不愿（我的作品）被烙上一张十八世纪泛黄的封面！尽管有时我被人拿来与Marivaux作比较，但十八世纪不是我很喜欢的。
I didn't make this film for any political reasons. I don't use it to defend any party, royalist or anti-royalist. On the other hand, I would like to help cultivate a taste for history in audiences, both old and young…. In fact, my scrupulousness is the reason why I have only made three period films. I pay close attention to the language of a period and it's very difficult to write dialogue in the words of a different era. It keeps the characters from expressing themselves. If I used my own style to write a story in the past, it would be a pastiche. It wouldn't be any good. Here, Grace Elliott's story gave me a very sound basis, right down to the dialogue.
拍摄这部影片并非出于政治原因。我并不是用它来为任何党派辩护，保皇党也好反保皇党也好。或许，我愿意以此而有助于观众领略一种对待历史的趣味，不管他们是老人还是年轻人。……事实上也正是出于慎重迄今为止我只制作了三部历史片。我非常主意特定时期的语言特征，而如果用另一时期的语言来写对白是非常困难的。这将使得角色塑造文不对题*。如果我用自己的（语言）风格来写一个历史故事，那将是一件“复制古董”而乏善可呈。对此，恰好在对白上，格蕾丝·艾略特的经历给了我非常可靠的信心。
[法文全文] 文献·Reference: par Aurélien Ferenzi: Entretien Avec Eric Rohmer.
Aurélien Ferenzi, Interview with Eric Rohmer, Senses of Cinema, Iss. 16, Sept.-Oct. 2001. | Link to the Iss.16 | Version in French: Reviews on L'Anglaise et le Duc | © Aurélien Ferenzi, 2001
______________________________
Senses of Cinema
The archive of Senses of Cinema
Aurélien Ferenzi, Interview with Eric Rohmer, Senses of Cinema, Iss. 16, Sept.-Oct. 2001. | Link to the Iss.16 | Reviews on L'Anglaise et le Duc.
Entretien Avec Eric Rohmer
par Aurélien Ferenzi
Aurélien Ferenzi : Comment est né le projet de L'Anglaise et le Duc ?
Eric Rohmer : Il y a une dizaine d'années, alors que j'étais en vacances, j'ai découvert dans une revue d'Histoire un résumé des mémoires de Grace Elliott, une Anglaise qui a été la maîtresse du Duc d'Orléans, le frère de Louis XVI, et qui a raconté sa vie sous la Révolution. L'auteur disait qu'on pouvait encore voir son hôtel particulier, à tel numéro de la rue de Miromesnil. Je m'intéresse beaucoup aux lieux : le fait que cet hôtel existe encore, qu'on puisse le localiser, m'a particulièrement frappé. Et cela m'a donné l'idée d'un film : un film qui se déroulerait dans ces lieux-là, qui se nourrirait de la relation entre ce point précis de Paris, cet appartement paisible, où, d'une certaine façon, elle se dissimulait, et le reste de la ville en pleine tourmente révolutionnaire. Le plus curieux, c'est que j'ai appris ensuite que l'article de la revue d'Histoire était erroné : le bâtiment de la rue de Miromesnil était postérieur à la Révolution, Grace Elliott n'avait pas pu y habiter ! Pourtant, sans cette erreur, je ne suis pas sûr que cet article aurait provoqué en moi un tel déclic.
AF : La représentation de la ville était le moteur du film.
ER : Oui, et il fallait que je trouve un moyen pour montrer Paris. Quand je vois un film historique, je suis souvent frustré : pour figurer Paris, on part filmer Le Mans ou Uzès, des villes qui ont gardé de vieux quartiers historiques. Moi, je vois bien qu'il ne s'agit pas de Paris, qui possède une architecture très spécifique. Je ne voulais pas de ça, et je ne voulais pas me contenter de filmer deux ou trois porches anciens, ceux qu'on voit toujours dans les films d'époque. Je souhaitais montrer une grande ville, de grands espaces, comme la Place Louis XV, l'actuelle Place de la Concorde, qui est un lieu essentiel de la Révolution, ou encore les quartiers que Grace Elliott cite dans son récit : le Boulevard Saint-Martin, la rue Saint-Honoré où elle passe quand on la conduit au Comité de Surveillance, etc. Quand elle raconte qu'elle a marché jusqu'à Meudon en passant par les Invalides, il a bien fallu qu'elle traverse la Seine quelque part !
AF : Quelle solution avez-vous imaginé ?
ER : J'ai déjà réalisé deux films historiques : La Marquise d'O, en décors naturels ; et Perceval le Gallois, entièrement en studio. Aucune de ces deux méthodes n'était possible pour montrer un Paris authentique. Alors, j'ai pensé à incruster les personnages sur des peintures faites sous ma direction, et fidèles à la topographie de l'époque. L'incrustation, c'est un procédé vieux comme le cinéma : Méliès a sans doute été l'un des premiers à l'utiliser. Mais il y a dix ans, quand j'ai commencé à penser à ce projet, la technique numérique n'était pas aussi développée : si l'on utilisait l'incrustation en analogique, on perdait en qualité d'image à chaque " couche " que l'on ajoutait. Le kinéscopage - c'est-à-dire le transfert de la vidéo à la copie 35 mm - n'était pas non plus très satisfaisant. Ces méthodes sont aujourd'hui au point.
AF : Comment avez-vous fait fabriquer ces " fonds " ?
ER : Ce sont des tableaux peints par Jean-Baptiste Marot. Il les a conçus, en collaboration avec moi, selon les exigences de l'esthétique du temps et de la mise en scène cinématographique. Il y a eu un travail préalable fait par le documentaliste, Hervé Grandsart. Nous sommes partis non seulement des tableaux et de gravures, mais de plans de l'époque. Quand aux intérieurs, ils ne sont pas " naturels ", mais construits tous dans un studio annexe par le décorateur Antoine Fontaine et le constructeur Jérôme Pouvaret. Pour moi ce travail n'est pas de la méticulosité, c'est une quête d'authenticité qui est à la base même du film. Car au fond, je n'avais pas une envie particulière de faire un film sur la Révolution, et je n'aime pas beaucoup qu'on me dise abonné au XVIIIe siècle ! Même s'il est arrivé que l'on me compare à Marivaux, ce n'est pas mon siècle préféré.
AF : Est-ce que l'on peut comparer cette démarche à celle choisie pour Perceval. : s'appuyer sur les représentations de l'époque pour montrer l'époque ?
ER : Oui, la réalité photographique m'importe peu. Ici, je montre la Révolution comme la voyaient ceux qui l'ont vécue. Et je cherche à rendre les personnages plus proches de la réalité picturale. Le film commence par des tableaux, et j'aimerais qu'un spectateur non averti s'imagine qu'il s'agit de documents d'époque, et soit surpris de voir ces tableaux s'animer.
AF : Et l'on pense aussi à votre travail pour la télévision scolaire.
ER : Je n'ai pas fait ce film pour des raisons politiques, je n'y défends aucun parti, ni royaliste, ni anti-royaliste. En revanche, j'aimerais contribuer à entretenir chez le public, jeune ou vieux, le goût de l'Histoire. J'ai entendu dire que c'est en France que l'on trouve le plus grand nombre de revues d'Histoire - à la différence des pays anglo-saxons, plus férus de romans historiques. Il y a chez nous un grand intérêt potentiel pour l'Histoire, mais les films historiques se sont souvent montrés un peu désinvoltes à l'égard de la vérité historique. C'est d'ailleurs parce que je suis très scrupuleux que je n'en ai tourné que trois : je suis très attentif à la langue d'une époque, et c'est très difficile d'écrire des dialogues dans la langue d'un autre temps, ça ne permet pas à une personnalité de s'exprimer. Si j'utilise mon propre style pour écrire une histoire dans le passé, ce sera du pastiche, et ce ne sera pas bon. Ici, le récit de Grace Elliott était une base très complète, jusque dans ses dialogues.
AF : Avez-vous revus certains films historiques, avant de commencer L'Anglaise et le Duc ?
ER : J'en ai regardé trois. Les Deux Orphelines, de Griffith, qui se passe sous la Révolution, Napoléon, d'Abel Gance, et La Marseillaise, de Renoir. Trois films admirables pour des raisons différentes. Longtemps, par exemple, on a loué Renoir de ne s'être pas soucié de la langue du XVIIIe et d'avoir fait parler les gens comme ils parlaient dans les années 30. C'est faux, ou alors il faut croire que la langue de 1930 est plus proche de celle du XVIIIe que de la nôtre ! Griffith m'a ouvert une autre voie : je me posais la question de savoir comment je filmerais les extérieurs, c'est-à-dire les incrustations sur les toiles peintes : est-ce qu'il y aurait des plans-séquences ou des contrechamps qui rendraient l'installation du procédé encore plus complexe ? En revoyant Les Deux Orphelines, je me suis dit que sa force, le plus souvent, c'est que le plan est absolument fixe. J'ai donc fait des plans fixes, et des plans plus rapprochés, réalisés avec une seconde caméra.
AF : Vous avez toujours été sûr que le procédé des incrustations marcherait comme vous le souhaitiez ?
ER : On a fait des essais. Il fallait savoir comment les personnages pouvaient " rentrer " dans le décor. On a fait un essai avec des figurants passant sous un porche, et ça marchait. Ensuite, il a fallu un peu d'adaptation, notamment quand la profondeur du décor était supérieure à celle du studio : la perspective de la Rue Saint-Honoré, par exemple, devait atteindre deux cents mètres, alors que le plateau n'avait que quarante mètres de profondeur. On a dû tourner cette séquence en plusieurs fois, avec des plans de coupe. Bien sûr, il s'agit d'une contrainte : généralement, je me détermine sur le décor, et là j'ai été obligé de concevoir le plan de façon très précise. Mais l'intérêt, c'est qu'il y a plus de vérité que si j'avais fait du montage, que si j'avais pris des petits bouts de maison, des toits avec des angles bizarres pour éviter les antennes de télévision. Cela ne m'aurait pas intéressé : j'aime montrer le décor tel qu'il est. Souvent, sur un plateau, j'entends cette phrase : " on va tricher ". Et bien, je n'aime pas tricher : j'aime prendre la réalité telle qu'elle est, même si, ici, c'est moi qui la produisais par le tableau. La vérité vient du tableau et pas du montage. Je suis fidèle, si vous voulez, à l'enseignement de Bazin, même s'il a été trop systématique, sur la profondeur de champ et le plan-séquence. Et je pense que le recours à un artifice extrêmement visible me donne de la vérité.
AF : Pour revenir au récit proprement dit, qu'est-ce qui vous a séduit dans les mémoires de Grace Elliott ?
ER : Mon documentaliste m'a procuré une version complète du texte, qui avait été plusieurs fois édité en France. Grace Elliott est née en 1760, elle est morte en 1823, et son journal commence au 14 juillet 1789 pour se clore un peu avant sa libération, qui surviendra après thermidor. Au-delà de son intérêt historique qui me paraît indubitable - même s'il y a des erreurs mineures de dates, beaucoup de choses ont l'accent de la vérité -, il y a dans ce texte quelque chose de frappant, comme s'il était déjà scénarisé, avec des scènes, des séquences, et même des dialogues. Il a un ton très différent des autres journaux que j'ai pu lire : généralement, les auteurs de mémoires parlent surtout d'eux-mêmes, de leurs peurs ou de leurs espoirs. Grace Elliott, elle, se met en scène, tout en restant discrète, un peu en retrait. On la voit agir, se déplacer, mais les autres personnages vivent aussi de façon très puissante, en particulier le duc d'Orléans, sur lequel on n'a pas tant de témoignages.
AF : C'est sa fidélité à ses engagements qui vous touchait ?
ER : Non, plutôt son flegme britannique : une certaine modestie, une réserve, une façon pas du tout présomptueuse de parler d'elle-même. Et surtout une manière de percevoir les événements qui fait d'elle une héroïne de romans.
AF : C'est peut-être aussi comment l'Histoire vient bouleverser les destins individuels. Rarement personnages historiques nous ont paru aussi proches, et aussi émouvants.
ER : Je ne peux parler que de mes intentions, pas du résultat. Mais les détails de la vie privée donnés par le texte - et que j'ai gardés dans le film - produisent un effet de réel. Je pense, par exemple, à cet instant où Orléans regarde sa montre : on est dans le moment, dans le présent, et c'est pour cela que c'est cinématographique. Le passé, c'est le temps du roman, le présent, celui du cinéma.
AF : L'éclairage que ces personnages donnaient aux événements de la Révolution vous intéressait aussi.
ER : Ce qui m'intéresse, c'est qu'ils ne soient pas fanatiques. Même si elle défend le roi, Grace n'est pas dans le camp des ultras, elle n'a pas voulu quitter la France, elle est amie avec des Républicains, comme Orléans ou Biron. Il est d'ailleurs probable qu'elle ait été moins royaliste qu'elle ne le dit : elle a rédigé son livre en Angleterre, dans un milieu hostile à la Révolution. Quant à Orléans, on l'a souvent dépeint comme un personnage tout noir, mais il y a un mystère, une ambiguïté, une dualité en lui qui m'intéressent. Il était rancunier et n'aimait pas Louis XVI, mais il était aussi sincèrement attiré par les idées nouvelles. J'ai rajouté des éléments pris dans ses lettres, et dans des témoignages de son fils, Louis-Philippe.
AF : Le spectateur peut être enclin, avec Grace, à condamner le régicide.
ER : Je crois qu'à l'époque, tout le monde voulait la mort du roi, par peur de paraître réactionnaire, parce que c'était la " tendance ", un peu comme tout le monde se dit écologiste aujourd'hui. Je n'ai pas voulu faire mon film contre cette histoire que m'apportait Grace Elliott, mais avec elle. Si l'on veut juger en termes historiques, ce n'est pas mon film qu'il faut prendre comme objet, mais les mémoires que j'ai utilisés.
AF : Comment avez-vous choisi les comédiens ?
ER : Comme toujours, par intuition. Je ne convoque qu'une seule personne, elle lit le texte et c'est bon ! J'ai eu du mal à trouver l'Anglaise. Une directrice de casting anglaise, connue de Margaret Menegoz m'a envoyé des photos de comédiennes et des bandes audio les accompagnant : le seul enregistrement qui me plaisait, c'était celui d'une actrice qui me disait connaître le texte de Grace et avoir envie de l'interpréter. La voix m'a plu avant la photo, et quand je l'ai rencontrée, la comédienne m'a encore plus séduit que sa photo ! Quant à Jean-Claude Dreyfus, je ne pensais pas a priori à lui, mais je cherchais une forte personnalité. Il me fallait quelqu'un de grand, de fort, même s'il ne ressemble pas scrupuleusement au duc d'Orléans. Je suis très content de la distribution. Ma direction d'acteurs, comme toujours, s'est limitée à des indications techniques : le sentiment, c'est l'affaire des comédiens. Moi, je me contentais de leur dire de bien articuler, pour qu'on les comprenne. Ils ne m'ont pas déçu.
AF : Pensez-vous que ce film va surprendre les habitués des Comédies et proverbes ou des Contes des quatre saisons.
ER : Non, et d'ailleurs, à chaque fois que j'ai fait des films un peu différents, historiques ou politiques, comme L'Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque, le public a suivi. Je ne voudrais pas être confiné dans les sujets trop psychologiques, les comédies amoureuses, même si j'y suis le plus personnel. Je voudrais pouvoir en sortir de temps en temps.
See also
Rohmer Talk compiled by Bill Mousoulis.
Interview with Mary Stephen by Bill Mousoulis.
Magical Realism in Conte d'automne (Autumn Tale, 1998) by Fiona A. Villella.
Some Kind of Liar: A Summer's Tale by Adrian Martin. Issue 5, April 2000 - Senses of Cinema
Eric Rohmer Filmographie
1959 LE SIGNE DU LION
" Six contes moraux "
1962 LA BOULANGERE DE MONCEAU
1963 LA CARRIERE DE SUZANNE
1967 LA COLLECTIONNEUSE
1969 MA NUIT CHEZ MAUD
1970 LE GENOU DE CLAIRE
1972 L'AMOUR L'APRES-MIDI
1975 DIE MARQUISE VON O (La marquise d'O)
1978 PERCEVAL LE GALLOIS
" Comédies et Proverbes "
1980 LA FEMME DE L'AVIATEUR
1981 LE BEAU MARIAGE
1982 PAULINE A LA PLAGE
1984 NUITS DE LA PLEINE LUNE
1985 LE RAYON VERT
1987 L'AMI DE MON AMIE
1986 QUATRE AVENTURES DE REINETTE ET MIRABELLE
" Contes des quatre saisons "
1989 CONTE DE PRINTEMPS
1991 CONTE D'HIVER
1996 CONTE D'ETE
1998 CONTE D'AUTOMNE 1992 L'ARBRE, LE MAIRE ET LA MEDIATHEQUE
1995 LES RENDEZ-VOUS DE PARIS
2001 L'ANGLAISE ET LE DUC
[英文全文] 文献·Reference: by Aurélien Ferenzi: Interview with Eric Rohmer.
Aurélien Ferenzi, Interview with Eric Rohmer, Senses of Cinema, Iss. 16, Sept.-Oct. 2001. | Link to the Iss.16 | Version in French: Reviews on L'Anglaise et le Duc | © Aurélien Ferenzi, 2001
Senses of Cinema
The archive of Senses of Cinema
Aurélien Ferenzi, Interview with Eric Rohmer, Senses of Cinema, Iss. 16, Sept.-Oct. 2001. | Link to the Iss.16 | Reviews on L'Anglaise et le Duc.
Entretien Avec Eric Rohmer
par Aurélien Ferenzi
Aurélien Ferenzi: Interview with Eric Rohmer
Rohmer here discusses his latest film, a period drama shot on digital video-The Lady and the Duke
Aurélien Ferenzi : How did the idea of The Lady and the Duke come to you?
Eric Rohmer : While on holiday about ten years ago, I came across a digest of the memoirs of Grace Elliott in a history magazine. This English lady had been the mistress of the Duke of Orleans, King Louis XVI's cousin, and had written an account of her life during the French Revolution. The article mentioned that her town house was still standing at such-and-such a number on Rue Miromesnil. I have always been interested in places and was particularly struck by the idea that this house could still be seen at a certain address. That gave me the idea of making a film that would be set in that particular spot in Paris and would play on the relationship between the peaceful apartment, which served Grace as a kind of hideout, and the rest of the city in the throes of revolutionary turmoil. Strangely enough, I found out later that the article in the history magazine was wrong: the house on Rue Miromesnil had been built after the Revolution, so Grace Elliott couldn't have lived there! But without that mistake, I'm not sure the article would have sparked off the idea in me.
AF : The portrayal of Paris was the driving force behind the film .
ER : Yes, and I had to find a way of depicting historical Paris. I'm often frustrated when I watch period pieces set in Paris. People always tend to go off and film in Le Mans, Uzès or other towns with well-preserved historic neighbourhoods. I can always tell it's not Paris, which has its own specific architecture. I didn't want that, nor did I want to make do with filming the same handful of old carriage doorways that always feature in period films. I wanted to show a big city with big open spaces like Place Louis XIV (now Place de la Concorde), which was a focal point of the Revolution, and the parts of town that Grace Elliott mentions in her memoir: Boulevard Saint-Martin, Rue Saint-Honoré, down which she is taken on her way to the Surveillance Committee, and so on. When she says she walked all the way to Meudon via the Invalides, she had to cross the Seine somewhere!
AF : So what was the solution you came up with?
ER : I had shot two period films before: The Marquise of O (1975) in real locations and Perceval le Gallois (1978) entirely in the studio. I knew that neither of these methods would give an authentic portrayal of Paris. So I had the idea of inserting real-life characters into scenic backgrounds that I would have specially painted, based on the layout of the city at that time. Inserting characters into sets is one of the oldest tricks in the filmmaker's book. Méliès was probably the first to do it. But ten years ago, when I first started thinking about the project, digital technology was still in its infancy. If the characters and scenery had been composited on film, each new layer would have incurred a loss of picture quality. Kinescoping, i.e. transferring from video to 35mm film, wasn't very satisfactory either in those days. Now both of these techniques have been perfected.
AF : How did you have the scenic backgrounds made?
ER : They were painted by Jean-Baptiste Marot. We designed them together in the appropriate period style and according to the requirements of the mise en scène. Hervé Grandsart did the preliminary documentary research. We worked from pictures and engravings, but also from street maps of the period. The interiors are not real locations. They were all built in an adjoining studio by the set designer, Antoine Fontaine, and the rigger, Jérôme Pouvaret. To me, this work was not just a matter of being meticulous it was about striving for an authenticity that underpins the whole film. At heart, I wasn't especially intent on making a film about the Revolution. I don't much like being pegged as an 18th century buff! Even though I've sometimes been compared to Marivaux, it isn't my favourite century.
AF : Was your approach comparable to the way you made Perceval: using pictures from the period to depict the period itself?
ER : Yes. I don't much care for photographic reality. In this film, I depict the Revolution as people would have seen it at the time. And I try to make the characters more like the reality you find in paintings. The opening scenes of the film are pictures, and I'd be pleased if the uninformed spectator thought they were period paintings and was surprised when they suddenly come to life.
AF : One is also reminded of your work in educational television.
ER : I didn't make this film for any political reasons. I don't use it to defend any party, royalist or anti-royalist. On the other hand, I would like to help cultivate a taste for history in audiences, both old and young. I have heard it said that France is the country that publishes the largest number of history magazines, whereas the English-speaking world has more taste for historical novels. There is a huge potential interest in history in France, but period films have often been rather lax about historical exactitude. In fact, my scrupulousness is the reason why I have only made three period films. I pay close attention to the language of a period and it's very difficult to write dialogue in the words of a different era. It keeps the characters from expressing themselves. If I used my own style to write a story in the past, it would be a pastiche. It wouldn't be any good. Here, Grace Elliott's story gave me a very sound basis, right down to the dialogue.
AF : Did you watch other historical films again before starting on The Lady and the Duke?
ER : I watched three period pictures: D.W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm (1921) (which is set during the French Revolution), Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927) and Jean Renoir's La Marseillaise (1937). All three films are admirable for different reasons. For example, for a long time Renoir was praised for making his characters speak as they did in the 1930s and not bothering about 18th-century speech. That's a myth, unless we believe that the language of the 1930s was closer to the 18th century than our own! Griffith made me realize something else: I was wondering how to film the exteriors, i.e. how to insert the characters into the scenery. Would I film sequence shots or reverse angle shots, which would make the process even more complicated to set up? Seeing Orphans of the Storm again, I realized that most of the time, its strength is that each shot is static. So I took static shots, and closer shots with a second camera.
AF : Were you always sure that the characters could be keyed in as you wanted?
ER : We ran tests. We had to know how the characters would fit into the scenery, so we filmed a test with extras going through a doorway and it worked. We sometimes had to adapt a little, especially when the set was deeper than the length of the studio. For instance, the view down Rue Saint-Honoré had to be 200 metres long, while the sound stage was only 40 metres wide. We had to shoot that sequence in several parts with cutaway shots in between. It was a constraint, of course. I normally decide how to shoot each scene as I come to it, whereas here I had to design the shots very precisely beforehand. But the advantage is that the result is truer than if I had edited it all together from little bits of houses and roofs framed from odd angles to cut out the TV aerials. That wouldn't have interested me. I like to show the scenery as it is. On the set, I often hear people say "We'll cheat it." I don't like cheating. I like to take reality the way it is, even if it's a reality I created through painting, like here. Truth comes from the painting, not the editing. 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.
AF : To return to the story itself, what appealed to you in Grace Elliott's memoirs?
ER : My researcher found me a complete copy of the text, which had been published several times in France. Grace Elliott was born in 1760 and died in 1823. Her journal begins on 14th July 1789 and ends just before she was let out of prison, after the fall of Robespierre. Over and above its undeniable historical interest (it contains a few minor errors in dates, but most of it has the ring of truth), there is something striking about it, as though it had already been written as a script, with scenes, sequences and even dialogue. It has a very different tone from the other journals I have read. Memoir-writers mostly tend to write about themselves, their fears and hopes, but Grace Elliott includes herself in the picture, though always maintaining a certain detachment and distance. We see her acting and moving around, but the other characters also live in a very powerful way, especially the Duke of Orleans, of whom we have very few first-hand reports.
AF : Was it her loyalty to her commitments that touched you?
ER : No, it was more her British stiff upper lip: a certain modesty and self-control, a completely unaffected way of talking about herself and, above all, a way of looking at events that makes her the heroine of a novel. Perhaps this is how it happens when History overturns the lives of individuals. Few other historical characters have ever seemed so close to us, and so moving. I can only talk about my intentions, not about the result, but the details of her private life that appear in the book, which I kept in the film, create an effect of reality. For example, I'm thinking about the moment when Orleans looks at his watch. We're in the present, in the moment. That's what makes it filmic. The past is the tense of the novel; the present is the tense of cinema.
AF : You were also interested in the light the characters shed on the events of the Revolution.
ER : What interests me is their lack of fanaticism. Grace stands up for the King but she is not an extremist. She doesn't want to leave France. She has Republican friends such as Orleans and Biron. She is probably actually less of a royalist than she says, given that she wrote her book in anti-Revolutionary England. As for Orleans, he is often shown in a totally negative light, but there is a mystery, an ambiguity, a duality about him that interests me. He was vindictive and he didn't like Louis XVI, but he was also sincerely attracted to new ideas. I have added some details drawn from his own correspondence and the testimony of his son, Louis-Philippe.
AF : The audience might be inclined to condemn the killing of the King, as Grace does.
ER : I think that at the time, everyone wanted the King dead for fear of appearing reactionary. It was the trend then, rather as it is the trend nowadays to claim to be an environmentalist. I wanted to make my film with Grace Elliott's story, not against it. If anyone wants to pass judgment on historical grounds, they should judge the book on which the film was based, not the film itself.
AF : How did you choose the actors?
ER : By intuition, as always. I audition one person, he or she reads the lines, and that's it! I had difficulty casting the Englishwoman. A casting director known to Margaret Menegoz sent me photos of actresses and an audio tape of their voices. The only tape I liked was of an actress who said she knew Grace Elliott's book and wanted to play her. Her voice appealed to me before her photo did, and when I met her, I found the actress even more attractive than her picture! As for Jean-Claude Dreyfus, I didn't think of him at first, but I was looking for a strong personality. I needed somebody big and stout, even if he didn't physically resemble the Duke of Orleans all that closely. I am very pleased with the cast. My directing of actors, as usual, went no further than giving them technical instructions. Feelings are the actor's business. All I did was tell them to enunciate clearly so that they would be understood. They didn't let me down.
AF : Do you think the film will surprise audiences used to your Comedies and Proverbs and Tales of Four Seasons?
ER : No, and besides, whenever I have made slightly different films, be they historical or political, like The Tree, the Mayor and the Media Centre (1992), the audience has followed. I wouldn't want to limit myself to overly psychological topics or romantic comedies, even if that's where I feel most personally involved. I like to get out from time to time.
© Aurélien Ferenzi, 2001
[3] Jean Baptiste MAROT :《贵妇与公爵 L'ANGLAISE ET LE DUC ER.F2001》背景绘画的创作介绍。J. B. Marot绘制了电影《L'ANGLAISE ET LE DUC 》全部背景画面。
Tableaux For The Cinema
Jean Baptiste MAROT
Email: marot@worldonline.fr
on the paintings of L'Anglaise et le Duc. (An Eric Rohmer's Film 2001)
In 1998, Eric Rohmer asked me to make 36 paintings of Paris that would depict historical views of the city during the French revolution. These paintings had to be made as genuine paintings of the time in which actors would move around and play.
To fulfil this specific order, I made up a 36 sketches story-board working on the best pictorial points of view for the urban spaces needed by the show. Among these 36 sketches, 3 views were inspired by XIXth century paintings : Le Pont au Change and Le Pont Saint Michel by Corot and a view of Saint Roch church exhibited at Musée Carnavalet.
All the other sketches were made in observing the existing sites and with the help of ancient maps, engravings, documents...
A set of remarkable photographs of Paris taken by Marville just before the important demolition ordered by Haussmann during the XIXth century contributed to rediscover architectures that do no longer exist.
I had to reconstitute lost sites and to draw them from unknown standpoints like le Palais des Tuileries or le Château de Meudon, using topographic plans to reveal the slopes and levels of the former landscape which has been nowadays drowned by a dense urbanisation.
In the same time, we constructed the paintings in 3D images, putting all the sites and buildings on plans in order to fit the perspective of the paintings with the shot pictures, the painter's point of view becoming the camera's focus, its length, its direction.
I had to know very precisely the width of the streets, porches, the height of the steps... so that the actors would not pass trough the walls or walk one foot over the ground !
All data were programmed for the shooting in a laser pinpointing the accurate places and ways of the actors in a green painted studio.
In being faithful to antique painting (Vedute were very fashionable at the time), I had to adapt the oil-painting technique of ancient chiaroscuro in order to avoid any damage due to the different pictures productions (photography, digitalisation, film...).
What I have been mostly interested in this long term work has been to make visual the gap between the image of the painting (memory of the subjective feelings of a place) and the reality itself.
Being able, Place de la Concorde for instance, to embrace at a glance all the little lodges of the moats (today steles of inner-cities), the statue of Louis XV, the horses of Marly, materialising an idealistic view, where nothing could be hidden by nothing, that would be impossible to get with a naked eye.
I also enjoyed to pivot slightly la Porte Saint-Denis and to flatten, distort and move the surrounding elements according to the best perspective for the painting.
These techniques (painting and perspective) I required for this work are the ones I generally use in the practice of my art, conceiving tableaux, lamps or piece of furniture as objects halfway between images and things. I call my special marotte * "Tableaux pour la maison". □
[4] 自由制片人和专栏作家Bill Mousoulis就《贵妇与公爵》所进行的调查.
Rohmer Talk compiled by Bill Mousoulis, Senses of Cinema.
© Bill Mousoulis & Senses of Cinema, 2000.
About Bill Mousoulis from www.InnerSence.com.au
Email: Bill@InnerSense.com.au
Bill Mousoulis is an independent filmmaker based in Melbourne. Since 1982, he has made over 80 films including six features. His half-hour Between Us won a major prize at the St Kilda Film Festival. His features My Blessings, Desire and Lovesick have screened at various film festivals. He was also the founder of the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group in the mid 1980s, and the founding editor of the journal Senses of Cinema. | Notes Source.
Rohmer Talk
compiled by Bill MousoulisA few weeks ago, a call was put out inviting people to contribute a paragraph on the films of Eric Rohmer, using a particular word as the basis. The following words were suggested:
philosophy / morality / irony / silence / light / transformation / everyday / matrix / love
Or they could choose their own word.
These are the results:
from Geoff Andrew: philosophy
Along with Abbas Kiarostami, the eternally youthful and eternally imaginative Eric Rohmer is, in this writer's opinion, the greatest living film-maker in the world today. And his greatest film, among many great films, is perhaps Ma Nuit Chez Maud, in that it is the clearest and most successful example of his almost unique ability to transform philosophy - the subtle processes of intellectual thought and theory - into the stuff of drama. Here, as he explores, with his customarily light sense of irony, the relevance or otherwise of Pascal's wager to the morality of modern life - and in particular to that of modern love - he manages to merge the metaphysical with the physical, so that an inherently materialistic medium is endowed with a capacity to deal in abstractions. Oh, and the film is sexy and funny, too... The work of a master.
Geoff Andrew is Senior Film Editor, Time Out magazine, and London Programmer, National Film Theatre, London.
Rohmer spends a lot of time creating an everyday rhythm to his movies. In Aviator's Wife, a bus picks up the protagonist, then spends a protracted time starting and stopping, letting people on and off. In Winter's Tale, the film is interspersed with objective shots of a car driving through the countryside. In most movies, this would be a prelude to a vivid, flaming, fatal accident involving a large truck. In a Rohmer film, it is a sympathetic character on his way to an unexpected reunion. In Rohmer's films, you do not see guns, fights or drugs. Is this an unrealistically academic view of the world? Possibly, but I don't see these things in my own everyday life. I'm thrilled that there is one director who has the courage to show life the way it is lived. The bus pulls out with a whining of the motor, stops at a stoplight with the screech of air brakes, and then something wonderful may happen.
Terry Ballard is the Automation Librarian at Quinnipiac College in Hamden Connecticut, and Library Systems columnist for Information Today. He is the author of the web site: Eric Rohmer, A highly unofficial web page. | Link |.
from Rose Capp: desire
On desire in Claire's Knee - In Claire's Knee (1970), Rohmer's cast of young and 'youngish' characters circle each other listlessly, desire igniting, spluttering and disappearing like so many deliberately lit spot fires-Jerome and Aurora, Jerome and Laura, Laura and Vincent, Claire and Gilles, Jerome and Claire. Always 'in character' as the self-appointed roué, Jerome's encounters with women are strangely enervated events. Attracted in turn to the youthful pulchritude of Laura and Claire, he describes his obsession for the latter as 'pure desire in a void', but it is a contrived passion that could be more aptly characterised as devoid of pure desire. Rather, it is in the minutiae of other characters' lives-the brief encounters, awkward pauses, small gestures, trivial details-that Rohmer invests his film with the real depth charge of erotic desire. Of all Rohmer's films, I love this mid-career work most and for many reasons... for its lolly pink intertitles and Lolitaesque intrigues, for the repressed exuberance of the youthful Laura, for Rohmer's sly, wry expose of Jerome as Hollow Man, for the endless stream of home-made lemonade that flows from Aurora's house, for the intense evocation of languid summers long gone, for the studied ennui of the writer Aurora, for Jerome's daggy red speedboat (an improbable vehicle of seduction), for young French masculinity in the shape of the truculent Gilles, and ultimately of course, for Claire's bony, brown, thoroughly inspirational knee.
Rose Capp is a Lecturer in Cinema Studies and freelance writer on film, currently completing a Ph.D in the Dept. of Visual Culture at Monash University.
from Rolando Caputo: morality
Morality in the Shape of a Girl's Knee - Le Genou de Claire (Claire's Knee, 1970) contains one of the most striking compositions in Rohmer's work. Claire, a girl of sixteen, is perched half way up a ladder under the branches of a cherry tree with one leg erect supporting her weight. Her other leg, with its foot positioned one rung above, juts out at an angle to her body. As if looking at a pyramid askew, the bend in her knee forms the apex of an almost perfect triangle with foot and upper thigh respectively intersecting with the strait line of her other leg and torso. Jerome, a middle aged man soon to be married, stands below her. The finger of his out-stretched arm almost touches the toe of her shoe in a causal but pointed gesture, while his gaze is transfixed by her knee which is positioned slightly above him and as if suspended in space (her upper body is out of frame). One senses in this composition the residue of a pictorial reference: Balthus' 1940 canvas Le cerisier (The Cherry Picker). Rohmer does not in any way 'faithfully' reproduce Balthus' canvas, rather, what he recognises and makes use of is its understated sensuality. What is absent from Balthus' cherry picking girl is that exquisite gaze-attracting angle formed by Claire's knee. Yet, even a cursory glance at any of Balthus' other major works of an erotic persuasion - Thérèse Dreaming (1938), Nu au chat (1949), Les Beaux jours (1945-46) - confirms the posture of the knee as all important to the distinctiveness of his figurative style. It is not by accident that Jerome's gaze falls on Claire's knee and makes of it the desired object; for as Pascal Bonitzer noted, the knee is the mid point between the feet (locus of fetishism) and the girl's sex (like a good bourgeois he can't be caught peeking up her dress). Rather, his gaze falls on a 'neutral' zone which avoids 'tainting' his gaze with vulgarity or committing him to a confirmed passion. The majority of the films which make up the Moral Tales series are about men 'avoiding' the sex act and the stratagems they adopt to side-step temptation. If there is a morality to Rohmer's cinema it is in the very act of where one chooses to direct one's gaze and the consequences of that act.
Rolando Caputo is a Lecturer in Cinema Studies at La Trobe University, and a freelance writer on film.
from Adrian Danks: lightness
"Lettuce is more like a friend" - In Rohmer's Le Rayon Vert there appears a discussion of lightness (of air, of vegetables, of being) that seems to me the very essence of the director's work. This sequence, within which the above dialogue also appears, revolves around a faltering, at times ludicrous, and plainly silly discussion of the ethics of vegetarianism. I have chosen this sequence as emblematic of Rohmer's cinema for a number of reasons. First, I am also a vegetarian and the often silly set of excuses and arguments proffered by the film's central protagonist to explain her life-decision remind me of many of my own justifications for this choice. Second, this sequence has a strange and indescribable reality or naturalism, a quality that I think is the most remarkable aspect of Rohmer's films (as I'm really not sure where it resides). His films seem to be generated from such flimsy premises, often seem to revolve around such annoying protagonists, seem to be fired by such superficially banal dialogue (and feature some of the most embarrassing party/dance sequences in the history of cinema) and yet they regularly manage to seem more 'real' or naturalistic than the work of just about any other filmmaker. This is also despite the fact that his films often seem so contrived, so dated, so conservative, and deal with characters and situations about which the director should hold very little insight. Third, and most significantly, Rohmer's films revel in an extraordinary airiness, almost a weightlessness, in which things, events and characters appear, on the surface, to lack substance. The greatest achievement of Rohmer's films is to make art look and feel so artless, and for realism to seem like simplicity itself (in fact not like realism at all). On watching this scene I lose the sense of observing actors performing lines, of a camera shifting perspective (which it does), of a script written around the theme of its central character's tiresome undecidability. Rather, this scene appears to be unfolding in front of me and the faltering expressions of the characters emerge as newly formed insights into human behaviour and the cinema itself.
Adrian Danks is President of the Melbourne CinÈmathËque and lectures in cinema and cultural studies at RMIT University, Department of Communication Studies.
from Darron Davies: dignity
Lack of judgement
Furtive glances
The first cry of a bird after dawn
Doubts
Fears
Garden conversations
Not fitting in
Wanting depth
Wanting relationship
Subtle exchanges
The sun's green ray
A knee
And all along a thanks
In a world pretending toughness and certainty
Someone has sent a truly fresh breeze
Darron Davies works in education and lives in Ballarat in western Victoria, Australia. He sees films occasionally, finds music equally as enriching and has dabbled in filmmaking, film criticism and acting.
from Philippa Hawker: distance
A formal approach. A gravity. A sense of distance in the frame -- there is always a space around the characters, a determination to establish the dimensions and detail of the places where they live and work and pass the time. A corresponding lack of faith in the overbearing, deceptive intimacy of the close-up. An interest in the distances that people travel, both in the quotidian sense -- the regular walk down the street, the train journey to work -- and in the way that many Rohmerian characters are examined during a period of dislocation, on holiday, in a new city, trying to live in two places at once. The distance between what characters say and what they do -- a constant awareness of the dynamics of deception and self-deception. The director's own distance from his subjects -- a dispassionate, curious, observant gaze, not a judgmental one. The distance between those who respond to Rohmer, and those who do not. I have a friend who can't stand him: "Those abject women," she says. "So pathetic." Among anti-Rohmerians, Le Rayon Vert is a particular object of hatred -- prickly, particular Delphine and her obsession with the unbearable lightness of vegetables. But I enjoy the experience of being presented with these characters I am not constrained to like or expected to abhor, people I am not invited to identify with or admire, or, conversely, to feel contempt for. I enjoy the idea of going the distance with Rohmer, as it were, of witnessing this long project of contemplation.
Philippa Hawker is a film reviewer for The Age in Melbourne.
from Tina Kaufman: light
Eric Rohmer is the filmmaker whose work, more than probably any other, has marked out much of my cinemagoing. I think I saw My Night At Maud's and Claire's Knee in England, but after I returned to Australia in 1972, it seemed like every year or so another Rohmer would turn up at the Sydney Film Festival. And I've loved them all, for their charm, their wit, their very talkativeness, their lightness - especially in those years when festivals seemed dominated by big, heavy, overwhelming films, and the latest Rohmer was a delicious counterbalance. But if I have to select, my favourite Rohmer moment is probably on the cliffs at twilight at the end of Le Rayon Vert (The Green Ray, aka Summer, 1986) waiting with Marie Rivière, who started out as one of cinema's most irritating lead characters but who has grown perversely appealing; you hope that for her this fanciful tale of a magic green light that appears on the horizon as the sun sets (apparently the basis of a novel by Jules Verne that I've not been able to track down) will actually come true. It's a surprisingly magic moment, ephemeral and very moving.
Tina Kaufman was editor of Filmnews for 17 years and now works as a freelance writer on film. She is also a member of Watch on Censorship.
from Bill Mousoulis: silence
From about Full Moon in Paris on, silence plays a major role in Rohmer's work. There are the "functional" silences, as characters, alone, go to work, play, holiday (the ending of Full Moon, the beginnings of the Spring and Summer Contes); there are the symbolic silences, such as the stillness of the "blue hour" in Reinette and Mirabelle or the golden luminance of the "green ray" in Le rayon vert (a ray whose key is that nothing is spoken yet everything is understood); and there is the silence that is always there in the films, existing as the layer beneath all the talk (and that silence sounds loudly, for Rohmer eschews the use of music). And so whilst we can obviously view Rohmer as a comic of manners from the 18th or 17th centuries, or a moralist or romantic from even earlier times (let's not, after all, forget Perceval and Marquise d'O in his oeuvre), he must now stand as one of the 20th century's greatest realists. His realism doesn't speak its name, but its results are there: we see the everyday, we see ordinary people, and ordinary locations, and they are rendered more delicately, exquisitely and, yes, profoundly, than in the films of practically any other director.
Bill Mousoulis is an independent filmmaker and the co-editor of Senses of Cinema.
from Tom Ryan: restlessness
From the beginning, with a masterful simplicity, Rohmer's films have been ruled by an air of restlessness. Whether their faces are fresh with the glow of youth or lined with the strains of older vintages, his characters are forever on the move, constantly at odds with the serenity of their surroundings, their comings and goings far more revealing of their dissatisfactions than anything they can find to say about themselves or about life in general. When Isabelle (Marie Rivière) goes to visit her wine-maker friend Magali (Béatrice Romand) soon after Conte D'Automne begins, it's not by chance that the women's ennui is suggested by their constant movement around the vineyards rather than through their conversation about grapes, wild snapdragons, snakes and scorpions and the importance of wine being allowed to age gracefully. Nor is it by chance that, wandering away, Isabelle catches her blouse on a thorn.
Tom Ryan is a freelance writer and a film critic for The Sunday Age in Melbourne.
from Brad Stevens: contradictions
Eric Rohmer's cinema is full of contradictions: a mise en scène as rigorously controlled as Bresson's rubbing shoulders with a growing fondness for improvisation; an emotionally mature vision increasingly focused on young protagonists; and a disdain for commercialism which leads to financial success. In England, where masterpieces by Rivette and Chabrol unreel in empty cinemas, no Godard has played theatrically since 1987, and not a single Garrel has ever been distributed, Rohmer enjoys a guaranteed following. It has long been my contention that we cinephiles are nothing more than the wandering ghosts of those mythical 'regular filmgoers' associated with the '30s, '40s and '50s: the pleasures we take from new works by, say, Abbas Kiarostami, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abel Ferrara and Theodoros Angelopoulos - pleasures that involve both recognizing authorial continuity and being surprised by artistic innovation - are surely identical to those felt by the large audiences who watched Rio Bravo, Letter From an Unknown Woman, Notorious, Bonjour Tristesse and Bhowani Junction during their original releases. By contrast, and without wishing to sound reactionary, today's so-called 'popular' audience is an entirely different creature: Speed and Independence Day speak for special interest groups (those representing corporate America) in a way that would have previously been unimaginable, and we must look towards Iran and China to see a genuinely popular modern cinema. Here lies the importance of Rohmer, a good student who learned what classical Hollywood had to teach: not devices to produce emotional responses (cf. Spielberg), but object lessons demonstrating how one can speak relevantly about contemporary society.
Brad Stevens is a UK-based writer on film who writes a regular column on variant versions of films for The Dark Side and has recently completed a book, Abel Ferrara: The Moral Vision, which is soon to be published in the UK by FAB Press.
from Fiona A. Villella: desire
Desire ignited, by the perfect shape and form a girl's knee. The desire to be desired and loved, frustrated and thwarted. Desire controlled - stopped, re-directed, manufactured and cultivated. Characters talk about it, acknowledge it, play and experiment with it, define themselves according to it; it flows through and beyond them; it causes and triggers a state of restlessness and curiosity. In the Morality Tales, desire is experienced in spaces and in ways at odds with socially prescribed conventions. In the Season Tales, desire is responsible for multiple relationships and insecurities and final choices. At the root of the fleeting moment, the flash, of a character's playful smile, sad face slightly titled, sheer wonder at the green ray of a sunset, body and gaze turned from others in a state of distraction, is the working of desire, a force so singularly simple and original yet so complex and ceaseless.
Fiona A. Villella is co-editor of Senses of Cinema and a Melbourne-based writer on film.
from Jake Wilson: matrix
The directors who began together as the French New Wave were very different from each other, but one thing they had in common was the desire to show life in the process of turning itself into a movie, something physical and immediate controlled by something abstract and invisible, as though narrative were a grid clamped down on the world. Sometimes this leads to stories laid out like chess games or scavenger hunts, with characters racing from one Paris street to another; but in Rohmer's films, life becomes fiction so gradually you hardly notice till afterwards. One example out of many: Gaspard (Melvil Poupaud) in the wordless first section of A Summer's Tale, getting off the boat and walking across to the flat where he's staying, past the sunny beach crowded with people on holiday - a world wide open with possibilities, where anything could happen. For a long time, what does happen seems almost aimless: scenic walks, music, casual flirtations. And then, suddenly, Gaspard finds he's locked himself down and there are no possibilities left. He's made commitments to three different girls, and he has to pick one or opt out of the movie. We don't know exactly how it came about, and neither does he. But looking back over the whole narrative, we can see that nothing in it has really been casual or random; somehow, even the most fleeting, ungraspable things of the world - the way a girl smiles, the weather - have been precisely shaped and arranged so that Rohmer can tell this exact tale.
Jake Wilson is a Melbourne writer, cinema student and filmmaker.
本文引用格式 • Citation
ZHANG Dian
張典。羅默電影：謊言與情愛的記錄。國家歷史，1 (1)，nh20071008a1 (2008)。| CrossRef
Dian ZHANG. Eric Rohmer's Film: A Talking For Lie And Love. National History, 1 (1), nh20071008a1 (2008). | CrossRef
□ doi: 10.3128/nh20071008a1 | CrossRef
□ Advanced ScideaNews: National History: Dian ZHANG, A Talking For Lie And Love. □ There is no judgement in the Eric Rohmer's film. It's just a talking for lie and love, and a talking between men and women… Maybe the dilemma of "to be or not to be" is not important at all. The story keeps moving, and you will remember that it's just a period of our life. □ 張 典《羅默電影：謊言與情愛的記錄》：他並不想判斷。那只是關於謊言與情愛的記錄；是男人與女人的對話……是與不是、生存與死亡並不重要。逝者如斯夫……你偶爾會記起曾經來過。
(Abs. by L. Pu)
□ FullTXT Link:
http://www.ScideaNews.com/content/full/nh20071008a1
□ National History: ISSN: 1995-0632. EISSN: 1995-0977.