Eric Rohmer: Interviews

Interview with Eric Rohmer

140 Interview with Eric Rohmer Aurélien Ferenzi / 2001 From Senses of Cinema, no. 16 (September–October 2001). Copyright 2001 by Senses of Cinema, Inc. and the contributors. Reproduced by permission. AF: How did the idea of The Lady and the Duke come to you? ER: 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, Uzes, or other towns with well-preserved historic neighborhoods. 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 aurélien ferenzi / 2001 141 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. Melies 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 scene. 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, Jérome 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 eighteenthcentury buff! Even though I’ve sometimes been compared to Marivaux, it isn’t my favorite century. AF: Was your approach comparable to the way you made Perceval...