RIP Eric Rohmer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8452993.stm

Not exactly cut down in his youth, but this is very sad regardless.

RIP!

the only one of his films i've gotten around to seeing is The Lady and the Duke, but it instantly became one of my favorite movies ever. no idea how it stacks up against the rest of his work, but basically it is a masterpiece to me.

Very sad news. RIP.

RIP

A satisfying aesthetic life.

my favorite nouvelle vaguer.

I have his last film sitting at home waiting for me to be done with "end-of" bullshit.

http://www.lamap.fr/bdd_image/626_1551_rayonvert.jpg

Definitely not my fave but a cavernous loss. I shall take a swim in the luxurious Conte d'automne tonight in his honor.

My favorite of his recent films.

one of the best,most modest directors in french cinema

Claire's Knee is one of my favourite films.
RIP.

Sucks. Just saw My Night at Maud's, it was beautiful. Will have to see more.

obv aside from the early classics I recommend Summer aka Le Rayon Vert, per the pic

I thought that was what it was but I couldn't see Le Rayon.

Has Fabrice Luchini said anything yet?

i think claire's knee is the only movie of his i've seen! must correct, obv. RIP.

Sad news! I've enjoyed all of his films that I've seen, and maybe now I'll watch a few more.

It's weird thinking now of how quietly, immensely influential he's been.

my favorite nouvelle vaguer

What makes him so?

RIP.
Had been thinking about Early Modern romances a few months ago & watched Astrea & Celadon - kind of amazing film, shouldn't be a pleasure really but I found it so.

Noodle Vague to thread.

the contradiction between his geniusly quiet,almost unseen directing style and his talky,thought-analyzing characters is a big part of his special charm.

hmmmm... no Maoism? not a fave of the structuralist crowd?
xxxp

awww fuck. he's probably slowly become my favorite director. I watched 2 nights ago the only film of his I hadn't seen yet, Le Beau Marriage. Turns out there won't ever be any other. RIP

what are the positive attributes that make you such a big fan? xp

Yeah, the question was asked seriously, because I'm curious. Try to not kill my curiosity.

my favorite nouvelle vaguer

What makes him so?

― queen frostine (Eric H.), 18:06 יום שני 11 ינואר 2010 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

along with Godard,Truffaut,Chabrol and Rivette he wrote for Cahiers du cinéma and was influenced by the same genres and ideas (auteurs for example)

Love love love his movies.

i guess he was closest in style to Truffaut, though more minimalist

xxp
hmmm, his films always touched on pretty thought-provoking issues, while always remaining breezy and never forcing its point. I also grew to appreciate what a friend of mine once pointed out to be his leitmotiv: making the viewer realize at the end of his films that most of the action had happened off camera.

ok (sorry, i should be working), he makes his much maligned "talkiness" work better than anyone similarly verbal. He also deals with romantic love w/out making it seem like "magic."

and more like a series of silly accidents.

Thanks. Rohmer is one of my genuine blind spots right now, so I was hoping to delve into his work without the burden of comparing him unfavorably against Marker, Varda, Godard, et al.

I mean, ppl who complain he's boring haven't seen much Rivette.

"his films always touched on pretty thought-provoking issues, while always remaining breezy and never forcing its point"

otm, though the subtext and "message" of his films is always within the conservative attitude, as oppose to people like Godard, or Rivette.

lol my best friend and i are saving 'celine and julie go boating' for a special occasion...we started watching it once at 1 in the morning while already tired and despite it being *brilliant* we just had to stop halfway thru

Thanks. Rohmer is one of my genuine blind spots right now, so I was hoping to delve into his work without the burden of comparing him unfavorably against Marker, Varda, Godard, et al.

― queen frostine (Eric H.), Monday, January 11, 2010 6:19 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

he's nothing like any of these dudes. closer to his bud chabrol (thematically) and rivette (stylistically: guy had gift for the semi-ineffable thing they called mise-en-scene).

I'm trying to write a quick obit myself, so I'm still sorting out my feelings for him. One of the few filmmmakers whose name evokes a sensibility. He's been around so long that he's taken for granted, but I suspect that in death critics will examine his work in toto and come to adore him.

pretty different stuff from Godard and the others
For a cahiers du cinema alumni, Rohmer always seemed a bit defiant towards the whole mystique of Cinema as Art. I remember him saying that he thought his films should be seen on TV rather than cinema. Maybe that's also why I always thought of his films as overheard conversations, rather than works of art (and I mean that in a good way)

xxpost Two more blind spots.

There's also a sense in which Rohmer, for all the light-as-a-moth social critiques in his films, created a world steeped in nostalgia for the characters he loved in fiction and French painting.

It's weird thinking now of how quietly, immensely influential he's been.

― Hell is other people. In an ILE film forum. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 11, 2010 6:06 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

yep, all the v in vogue boambach laura linney shit owes a lot to him. his work has much less of a visible imprint of when & where it was made than his peers, stands up really well.

NYT obit by Kehr:

In opposition both to the intensely personal, confessional tone of much of the work of Truffaut and the politically provocative films of Godard, Mr. Rohmer remained true to a restrained, rationalist aesthetic, close to the principles of the 18th-century thinkers whose words he frequently cited in his movies. And yet Mr. Rohmer’s work was warmed by an undercurrent of romanticism and erotic yearning, made perhaps all the more affecting for never quite breaking through the surface of his elegant, orderly films.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/movies/12rohmer.html

RIP

rohmer has an amusing cameo as a balzac scholar in the full version of rivette's out one (i don't think he's in the four hour 'spectre', iirc):

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/out1rohmer.jpg

I guess maybe now we'll finally find out something about his personal life.

Watch those Oscar bastards put him in the obit montage after nominating him ONCE (best screenplay for Maud's).

At least he won't have an IV tube in him like Satyajit Ray.

Although the truth be told, I liked it when Satyajit Ray got his lifetime award, hospital bed and all.

I'll bet there are some people who confuse Ma nuit chez Maude with My Dinner With Andre.

for the french speakers out there - this is pretty much a a statement of intent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAtSnGKwnN0

Watch those Oscar bastards put him in the obit montage after nominating him ONCE (best screenplay for Maud's).

The film got two noms. Best Foreign Film in '69 (lost to Z), which I guess doesn't count (if it won, would he have gotten the statuette?), and then the screenplay one the next year. For what it's worth, they used a clip from Claire's Knee for Brialy when he died.

Anyway RIP good sir. The pursuit sequence in The Aviator's Wife is one of my favorite extended movie moments ever.

Hudson collects links:

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1390

BTW, Amazon has got the Criterion box for 33% off.

For a cahiers du cinema alumni, Rohmer always seemed a bit defiant towards the whole mystique of Cinema as Art. I remember him saying that he thought his films should be seen on TV rather than cinema. Maybe that's also why I always thought of his films as overheard conversations, rather than works of art (and I mean that in a good way)

― spiny doughboy (baaderonixx), Monday, January 11, 2010 6:24 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

that's interesting. he was probably the most ott cinema-as-art guy of all of them in the 1950s, though. eventually they (rivette and some other dudes) had to oust him from the editorial chair in 1963, in a way because of it.

Here's an aricle in French with some comments from Fabrice Luchini and others: http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/actualites/culture/20100112.OBS3336/hommage_unanime_a_eric_rohmer.html.

article

Fabrice Luchini, acteur, à quant à lui déclaré : "Je lui dois absolument tout. Si j'ai même une situation pas trop mauvaise, c'est uniquement grâce à lui"

Obvious, but nice nevertheless.

i don't like gilbert adair, but this obit gets the measure of rohmer better than n e 1 else i've read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jan/12/eric-rohmer-gilbert-adair

again, for the french speakers out there, Libération had a great special edition on Rohmer yesterday (it's probably online)

There was, however, always ­something faintly ­disturbing about such brilliantly airy confections as The Aviator's Wife, Full Moon in P or An Autumn Tale – or, more precisely, about the nature of their reputation both in and outside France, a reputation founded above all on their perceived ­intelligence. Just listen to the chorus of satisfied customers: "Such a ­civilised ­director" and "Such ­intelligent ­characters" and "What a pleasure to hear such good talk in the cinema!"

Now I yield to no one in my ­admiration for Rohmer. Yet his ­characters are among the most ­foolish and ineffectual milquetoasts ever to have graced a cinema screen; 90% of their celebrated talk is ­unadulterated ­twaddle. This is ­absolutely not a flaw: it is, rather, a ­species of trompe l'oeil (or trompe l'oreille).

truly OTM

rip