Éric Rohmer: Interviews Edited by Fiona Handyside (review)

Arguably the leading French proponent of the ‘talking picture’, Éric Rohmer (1920–2010) was among those directors who most frequently rewarded journalists and critics with formal interviews — invariably with the proviso that all personal questions be left aside, to the sole end of illuminating the filmmaker’s craft. This well-conceived collection spanning some four decades fills a significant gap in English-language documentation of Rohmer’s storied career. Despite his staunch pro-Americanism at the head of Cahiers du cinéma from 1957 to 1963, Rohmer claimed to have ‘no knowledge of English at all’ (p. 49): whence Fiona Handyside’s turn to French sources, translated here for the first time for ten of eighteen selections. Striking in these periodic snapshots is the interviewee’s thematic range and rather stubborn constancy. Rohmer proves equally comfortable, and variously opinionated, discussing the drawbacks of neon versus incandescent lighting; the photogenic potential of the new urbanism or of riverbanks; the circular nature of art’s progress through history; or the relation of aspect ratio to the expressive qualities of human gesture (1.33:1 is always best). Discontented by the professionalization of the French cinema industry after 1980 and seduced by emergent televisual practices, the self-described auteur emphasizes with increasing vigour the virtues of economy (reduced crews, limited takes) as a condition for artistic freedom. Although his tone is not overtly self-congratulatory, Rohmer cultivates the image of an outsider vindicated in his wish to attract a small but committed public of literate viewers by performing variations on a theme. If several interviews turn on individual releases (Conte de printemps, L’Anglaise et le duc), Handyside rightly favours those in which a broad exchange of ideas ensues. Historically symptomatic are a wonderfully dogged attempt by Beverly Walker, writing for Women in Film in 1973, to make Rohmer side ethically with the ‘temptresses’ of the Contes moraux (Maud, Chloé), and the non-committal discussion of ‘politics’ in L’Arbre, le maire et la médiathèque twenty years later. A good balance obtains between literary and creative concerns — for example, the status of screenplays and the exigencies of adapting such neglected classics as Perceval and Les Amours d’Astrée et de Céladon — and the nuts and bolts of cinematography, lovingly detailed in Priska Morrissey’s long interview of 2004. The one surprise is the minor billing given to Cahiers du cinéma, from which Handyside culls but one of the nearly twenty interviews Rohmer granted that journal, and the corresponding overemphasis on the later years (three interviews co-conducted by Noël Herpe in 2004, 2007, and 2010 are featured). Handyside includes exhaustive credits for each film, down to the names of the carpenters, hair stylists, and car hire firms; trimming the twenty-two pages of filmography might have enabled one or two additions, perhaps from the 1960s, absent here. Fronted by a fleet thematic introduction, this judicious overview in its depiction of a creative modus operandi as punctilious as it is unique will prove essential for Rohmer enthusiasts and for students of French film after the New Wave.