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Eric Rohmer: A Biography
The director of twenty-five films, including My Night at Maud's (1969), which was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, and the editor in chief of Cahiers du cinema from 1957 to 1963, Eric Rohmer set the terms by which people watched, made, and thought about cinema for decades. Such brilliance does not develop in a vacuum, and Rohmer cultivated a fascinating network of friends, colleagues, and industry contacts that kept his outlook sharp and propelled his work forward. Despite his privacy, he cared deeply about politics, religion, culture, and fostering a public appreciation of the medium he loved.
This exhaustive biography uses personal archives and interviews to enrich our knowledge of Rohmer's public achievements and lesser known interests and relations. The filmmaker kept in close communication with his contemporaries and competitors: François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette. He held a paradoxical fascination with royalist politics, the fate of the environment, Catholicism, classical music, and the French nightclub scene, and his films were regularly featured at New York and Los Angeles film festivals. Despite an austere approach to life, Rohmer had a voracious appetite for art, culture, and intellectual debate captured vividly in this definitive volume.
This exhaustive biography uses personal archives and interviews to enrich our knowledge of Rohmer's public achievements and lesser known interests and relations. The filmmaker kept in close communication with his contemporaries and competitors: François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette. He held a paradoxical fascination with royalist politics, the fate of the environment, Catholicism, classical music, and the French nightclub scene, and his films were regularly featured at New York and Los Angeles film festivals. Despite an austere approach to life, Rohmer had a voracious appetite for art, culture, and intellectual debate captured vividly in this definitive volume.
608 pages, Paperback
First published January 3, 2014
27 people are currently reading
335 people want to read
About the author
Antoine de Baecque
132 books14 followersAntoine de Baecque est un historien, critique de cinéma et de théâtre, et éditeur français.
Ancien élève de l'École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud (lettres), Antoine de Baecque est spécialiste en histoire culturelle du XVIIIe siècle. Agrégé d'histoire en 19861, il soutient une thèse de doctorat en histoire sous la direction de Michel Vovelle à l'université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Carrière universitaire - Après avoir enseigné en tant que maître de conférences à l'université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, puis avoir été enseignant permanent à l'université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense au sein des Études cinématographiques du département Arts du spectacle, il est, en 2018, enseignant à l'École normale supérieure.
Carrière de journaliste - À l'École normale, il fonde la revue Avancées cinématographiques. Il publie à l'âge de 22 ans son premier article dans les Cahiers du cinéma lors de la mort de François Truffaut. Il écrit ensuite de nombreux articles et ouvrages sur le cinéma français, en particulier sur Truffaut, Godard et sur l'histoire des Cahiers du cinéma, dont il a été le rédacteur en chef de 1996 à 1998. Il est, de 2001 à 2006, rédacteur en chef des pages culture du journal Libération. À partir de 2007, il collabore au journal en ligne Rue891. À partir de 2015, il écrit dans la revue en ligne Délibéré, où il publie « Degré zéro »5, une chronique consacrée à la marche et à l'exploration de la ville (Paris puis New York).
Ancien élève de l'École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud (lettres), Antoine de Baecque est spécialiste en histoire culturelle du XVIIIe siècle. Agrégé d'histoire en 19861, il soutient une thèse de doctorat en histoire sous la direction de Michel Vovelle à l'université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Carrière universitaire - Après avoir enseigné en tant que maître de conférences à l'université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, puis avoir été enseignant permanent à l'université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense au sein des Études cinématographiques du département Arts du spectacle, il est, en 2018, enseignant à l'École normale supérieure.
Carrière de journaliste - À l'École normale, il fonde la revue Avancées cinématographiques. Il publie à l'âge de 22 ans son premier article dans les Cahiers du cinéma lors de la mort de François Truffaut. Il écrit ensuite de nombreux articles et ouvrages sur le cinéma français, en particulier sur Truffaut, Godard et sur l'histoire des Cahiers du cinéma, dont il a été le rédacteur en chef de 1996 à 1998. Il est, de 2001 à 2006, rédacteur en chef des pages culture du journal Libération. À partir de 2007, il collabore au journal en ligne Rue891. À partir de 2015, il écrit dans la revue en ligne Délibéré, où il publie « Degré zéro »5, une chronique consacrée à la marche et à l'exploration de la ville (Paris puis New York).
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
November 10, 2020
Like diving for pearls in the Sargasso Sea, at every turn your ankles snagged by coils of dank oily weed, this vast blathering tiresome but essential biography might choke even dedicated fans to death from lack of oxygen before they get to the last page.
Ugh.
These two authors are in permanent abstruse waffle mode and the two translators viciously thought they would pass the authors’ orotund vapourising into English with zero attempt to make it more readable. They are bad people and I hope they catch frequent colds this year.
EXAMPLES
Beyond the invocation of a god, or of absent gods, there is the contemplation of things as they are. Rohmer makes this contemplation the foundation of modern cinema. P177
To be sure, we could discuss the gap between the logos and the libido, as it is manifested more obviously than ever in Frederic.
We can recall that between the end of one filming and the writing of a new project, Rohmer accorded himself a long period of reverie (preferably associated with walking or with desultory conversation) that allowed him to gradually clarify the ideas he had in mind. P 441
[My my, you don’t say so, what a novel way to work.]
What is cinema, if not the hope of re-creating the link to the mother?
P457
In his “costume dramas” Rohmer offers a historical portrait of a way of seeing. He situates the spectator at the heart of the story by assuming the systems of representation chosen and meticulously reconstructed. P476
BEING BORING ERIC
Okay, they have a tough job to do, because Eric Rohmer’s actual life was really boring.
Regulated as it was by this logic of habit, Eric Rohmer’s life has almost no interest for the biographer! Without scandal or uncomfortable secrets, it was simple, tranquil, reassuring and no doubt dull; but certainly happy p127
So, he was married at the age of 37 and that was that. Before the age of 37 he was a nerdy film critic, part time teacher and failed author.
So this huge book is a careerography. The biographical stuff takes up about 20 pages.
Eric was the patron saint of late career starters. He thought he wanted to be a novelist and published one novel – it sank like a stone. He got to direct his first feature in 1959, that also sank like a stone. He got fired as editor of his film magazine because they thought he was an old fart.
Finally, at the age of 47, he made a second film La Collectionneuse and that was a hit. After that he didn’t stop. His last film was made when he was 87.
STUBBORNLY COMMONPLACE
That’s a felicitous phrase from the book which sums up all of ER’s films to the point where they have been famously described as “like watching paint dry”. Middle-class French people (mostly those magnificent girls, see below) gab endlessly about themselves and their unsatisfactory but not actually especially distressing relationships in various stages of self-delusion and in beautifully photographed French locations until there’s a little tiny plot twist in the last 20 minutes and all is resolved. (He also skewers male self-delusion brilliantly.)
These movies are gentle wry comedies full of social awkwardness and tepid affections; so soft that if anyone does have an argument, which is rare, your local librarian wouldn’t even notice it, wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.
People who can’t see the magic say that these films are extraordinarily narrow, that you never see a black person or an old person or a working class person in any of the 23 features. Well, that’s pretty much true. I don’t care. There are plenty of other good movies.
TYPICAL QUOTE FROM AN ERIC ROHMER FILM
“I think a lot about my thought.”
THESE MAGNIFICENT GIRLS
“To someone who asked him : ‘But how do you manage to have tea every day with these magnificent girls?’ he replied ‘My secret is absolute chastity.”
To the point where in the brief nude scene in A Winter’s Tale he couldn’t bear to watch, he ducked out the back until it was done.
Rohmer movies are all about the girls, which some might more accurately describe as women. There are one or two in every one of the 23 feature films, the films are all about them.
etc etc
UNIQUE WORKING METHODS
He used to meet people and think this guy or that woman would be exactly right for a part he had in mind. It didn’t matter if they were actors or not, if they had ever had the least idea of being in a movie. When he liked them enough he would have endless conversations with them and tape the conversations. Then he would put their own words and their own anecdotes into the script; so they were playing an amalgamation of Rohmer’s fictitious character and themselves. After he got famous, young actress wannabes would write to him all the time, and some of them did end up playing the lead in a movie he built entirely around them.
Also, all his movies were very low budget and he never bothered to advertise them. He would just ring up various cinemas in Paris and say would you like to show my new movie? Then the word would get out that there was a new Rohmer movie and other cinemas would phone him up. Even his failures never lost any money. (OK, one did.) He never expected any of his movies to be popular, and when some of them were he was most surprised.
By doing movies in this odd way he avoided 99.9% of the heartaches and hassles usually associated with making good movies. But the actors and crew were often pretty fed up to find they had to pay for their own meals when they were filming.
ELUSIVE BUTTERFLY
None of his films will knock you out of your seat. Take another French director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet – he has a unique eye-goggling style and he’s made at least three ten-out-of-ten masterpieces. But Eric Rohmer’s films are true, they’re as aggravating, insufferable and amusing and endearing as people are; it’s inextricable.
Five stars for this book as a celebration of a great artist
Two stars as a pretty ghastly reading experience
I guess averages out to three.
Rounded up to four, because I couldn't bear to give 3 stars to a book I'd been waiting so long for.
Ugh.
These two authors are in permanent abstruse waffle mode and the two translators viciously thought they would pass the authors’ orotund vapourising into English with zero attempt to make it more readable. They are bad people and I hope they catch frequent colds this year.
EXAMPLES
Beyond the invocation of a god, or of absent gods, there is the contemplation of things as they are. Rohmer makes this contemplation the foundation of modern cinema. P177
To be sure, we could discuss the gap between the logos and the libido, as it is manifested more obviously than ever in Frederic.
We can recall that between the end of one filming and the writing of a new project, Rohmer accorded himself a long period of reverie (preferably associated with walking or with desultory conversation) that allowed him to gradually clarify the ideas he had in mind. P 441
[My my, you don’t say so, what a novel way to work.]
What is cinema, if not the hope of re-creating the link to the mother?
P457
In his “costume dramas” Rohmer offers a historical portrait of a way of seeing. He situates the spectator at the heart of the story by assuming the systems of representation chosen and meticulously reconstructed. P476
BEING BORING ERIC
Okay, they have a tough job to do, because Eric Rohmer’s actual life was really boring.
Regulated as it was by this logic of habit, Eric Rohmer’s life has almost no interest for the biographer! Without scandal or uncomfortable secrets, it was simple, tranquil, reassuring and no doubt dull; but certainly happy p127
So, he was married at the age of 37 and that was that. Before the age of 37 he was a nerdy film critic, part time teacher and failed author.
So this huge book is a careerography. The biographical stuff takes up about 20 pages.
Eric was the patron saint of late career starters. He thought he wanted to be a novelist and published one novel – it sank like a stone. He got to direct his first feature in 1959, that also sank like a stone. He got fired as editor of his film magazine because they thought he was an old fart.
Finally, at the age of 47, he made a second film La Collectionneuse and that was a hit. After that he didn’t stop. His last film was made when he was 87.
STUBBORNLY COMMONPLACE
That’s a felicitous phrase from the book which sums up all of ER’s films to the point where they have been famously described as “like watching paint dry”. Middle-class French people (mostly those magnificent girls, see below) gab endlessly about themselves and their unsatisfactory but not actually especially distressing relationships in various stages of self-delusion and in beautifully photographed French locations until there’s a little tiny plot twist in the last 20 minutes and all is resolved. (He also skewers male self-delusion brilliantly.)
These movies are gentle wry comedies full of social awkwardness and tepid affections; so soft that if anyone does have an argument, which is rare, your local librarian wouldn’t even notice it, wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow.
People who can’t see the magic say that these films are extraordinarily narrow, that you never see a black person or an old person or a working class person in any of the 23 features. Well, that’s pretty much true. I don’t care. There are plenty of other good movies.
TYPICAL QUOTE FROM AN ERIC ROHMER FILM
“I think a lot about my thought.”
THESE MAGNIFICENT GIRLS
“To someone who asked him : ‘But how do you manage to have tea every day with these magnificent girls?’ he replied ‘My secret is absolute chastity.”
To the point where in the brief nude scene in A Winter’s Tale he couldn’t bear to watch, he ducked out the back until it was done.
Rohmer movies are all about the girls, which some might more accurately describe as women. There are one or two in every one of the 23 feature films, the films are all about them.
etc etc
UNIQUE WORKING METHODS
He used to meet people and think this guy or that woman would be exactly right for a part he had in mind. It didn’t matter if they were actors or not, if they had ever had the least idea of being in a movie. When he liked them enough he would have endless conversations with them and tape the conversations. Then he would put their own words and their own anecdotes into the script; so they were playing an amalgamation of Rohmer’s fictitious character and themselves. After he got famous, young actress wannabes would write to him all the time, and some of them did end up playing the lead in a movie he built entirely around them.
Also, all his movies were very low budget and he never bothered to advertise them. He would just ring up various cinemas in Paris and say would you like to show my new movie? Then the word would get out that there was a new Rohmer movie and other cinemas would phone him up. Even his failures never lost any money. (OK, one did.) He never expected any of his movies to be popular, and when some of them were he was most surprised.
By doing movies in this odd way he avoided 99.9% of the heartaches and hassles usually associated with making good movies. But the actors and crew were often pretty fed up to find they had to pay for their own meals when they were filming.
ELUSIVE BUTTERFLY
None of his films will knock you out of your seat. Take another French director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet – he has a unique eye-goggling style and he’s made at least three ten-out-of-ten masterpieces. But Eric Rohmer’s films are true, they’re as aggravating, insufferable and amusing and endearing as people are; it’s inextricable.
Five stars for this book as a celebration of a great artist
Two stars as a pretty ghastly reading experience
I guess averages out to three.
Rounded up to four, because I couldn't bear to give 3 stars to a book I'd been waiting so long for.
October 3, 2021
The very model of a major biography of a filmmaker.
The only real oddity of the book is that the biographers pass over—quite deliberately, and announcing it as such to the reader—ALL of Rohmer’s private life post, say, LA COLLECTIONNEUSE. At one point he is married, seemingly for life…wait, to whom? Who is she? And how did he keep up this ruse where his very square parents thought he was merely a provincial schoolteacher to the very end?
Might Maurice Scherer aka Eric Rohmer not have had some other double lives? Well, we shall never know from these biographers. The most dirt they dig up is that Rohmer was so erotically inflamed by one of his 90s actresses that he ran off to “do solitary calisthenics.” I’ll say. In any case…
The authors tackle every angle on Rohmer, giving particular weight to his career as captain of the ship of Cahiers, with Jacques Rivette as his piratical hijacker. (Did the “violent, radical” Rivette really make Cahiers that different? I shall leave it to you user commenters to decide.) The religious, history-of-philosophy, political, even the post-feminist resonances of Rohmer’s movies all get considerable weight.
For me the most exciting moments in this leviathan work are the exploration of Rohmer’s last three works. Rohmer is rarely considered a paragon of late style, but for my money his last three films, all fairly expensive (for him) period pieces, THE LADY AND THE DUKE, TRIPLE AGENT, and THE ROMANCE OF ASTREE & CELEDON, are probably his strongest. Reading about how Rohmer adapted himself to the new post-JURASSIC PARK age of CGI, to make the first wildly deliriously digital CG arthouse (and period!) epic is thrilling.
The writers hew their focus so tightly to the details of each picture that I think one would have to go back and roll through the Rohmer canon to savor the nuance of each chapter. One felicity of the book: it opened my eyes to bits of Rohmer errata (or maybe they are major works?) that were entirely unknown to me. For instance, Rohmer made educational films in the sixties while his friends were knocking out FAHRENHEIT 451 and WEEKEND. These appear to be fascinatingly in the ballpark of Rossellini’s “educational” great-man-of-history biopics (to me, some of cinema’s absolute treasures). There is also a film—not video, actual film!—version of Rohmer’s wildly controversial and generally despised theatre production of Kleist’s KATHERINE VON HEILBRONN. Okay, kids: who’s gonna be the first one onto the dark interwebs to find KVH and proclaim it the Greatest Lost Film of the Eighties?
The only real oddity of the book is that the biographers pass over—quite deliberately, and announcing it as such to the reader—ALL of Rohmer’s private life post, say, LA COLLECTIONNEUSE. At one point he is married, seemingly for life…wait, to whom? Who is she? And how did he keep up this ruse where his very square parents thought he was merely a provincial schoolteacher to the very end?
Might Maurice Scherer aka Eric Rohmer not have had some other double lives? Well, we shall never know from these biographers. The most dirt they dig up is that Rohmer was so erotically inflamed by one of his 90s actresses that he ran off to “do solitary calisthenics.” I’ll say. In any case…
The authors tackle every angle on Rohmer, giving particular weight to his career as captain of the ship of Cahiers, with Jacques Rivette as his piratical hijacker. (Did the “violent, radical” Rivette really make Cahiers that different? I shall leave it to you user commenters to decide.) The religious, history-of-philosophy, political, even the post-feminist resonances of Rohmer’s movies all get considerable weight.
For me the most exciting moments in this leviathan work are the exploration of Rohmer’s last three works. Rohmer is rarely considered a paragon of late style, but for my money his last three films, all fairly expensive (for him) period pieces, THE LADY AND THE DUKE, TRIPLE AGENT, and THE ROMANCE OF ASTREE & CELEDON, are probably his strongest. Reading about how Rohmer adapted himself to the new post-JURASSIC PARK age of CGI, to make the first wildly deliriously digital CG arthouse (and period!) epic is thrilling.
The writers hew their focus so tightly to the details of each picture that I think one would have to go back and roll through the Rohmer canon to savor the nuance of each chapter. One felicity of the book: it opened my eyes to bits of Rohmer errata (or maybe they are major works?) that were entirely unknown to me. For instance, Rohmer made educational films in the sixties while his friends were knocking out FAHRENHEIT 451 and WEEKEND. These appear to be fascinatingly in the ballpark of Rossellini’s “educational” great-man-of-history biopics (to me, some of cinema’s absolute treasures). There is also a film—not video, actual film!—version of Rohmer’s wildly controversial and generally despised theatre production of Kleist’s KATHERINE VON HEILBRONN. Okay, kids: who’s gonna be the first one onto the dark interwebs to find KVH and proclaim it the Greatest Lost Film of the Eighties?
Read
February 1, 2017The book was inspiring. It provided insight into an alternate style of filmmaking. His style was cerebral/transcendental, although it did include feelings. I was excited to know he had adapted a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, who is a personal favorite. I like Poe for the same reason, he is dealing with ideas, concepts, and transcending the ordinary world.
Eric tried to conceal his involvement with film from his family at first, they thought it was beneath his literary gifts. Eric says he felt making films was pure poetry, the use of metaphors being the most enticing part.
It was encouraging that much of his early work was heavily criticized, but it didn't bother him. He enjoyed that people were thinking and talking about his concepts. He focused on morality plays, trying never to be judgmental. Very simple ideas, like a man being seduced by another woman, but not surrendering to temptation, remaining true.
Eric tried to conceal his involvement with film from his family at first, they thought it was beneath his literary gifts. Eric says he felt making films was pure poetry, the use of metaphors being the most enticing part.
It was encouraging that much of his early work was heavily criticized, but it didn't bother him. He enjoyed that people were thinking and talking about his concepts. He focused on morality plays, trying never to be judgmental. Very simple ideas, like a man being seduced by another woman, but not surrendering to temptation, remaining true.
June 7, 2017
This is as good a biography as you are going to get out of someone as private as Rhomer. Antoine de Baecque, himself editor of Cahiers du Cinema, like Rohmer has a unique perspective on the struggles within the periodical that was the vehicle for the film criticism and then film directing career of Rohmer, the intellectual Dean of New Wave. It was interesting to read about his efforts at painting and his love of Matisse before turning to film. I enjoyed the quotes about making film 'classical'. I would have liked to see some excerpts of some of his more famous pieces in the book, like the one directing Eisenstein as an eye for form and composition. I felt like Baecque could not provide me with a guide to his intellectual/spiritual motivations, he could only point to the similarities between different films and the experiences of Rohmer and his friends. A Night at Maud's (with its Dinner with Andre soliloquy on Blaise Pascal) was a replay of Rohmer's own journey to marriage it seems. Claire's knee, a sanitized study of perversion, was written during his student days. An interesting evolution from ear to knee, like Hitchcock purses. Still, it was interesting to read about Rohmer's politics, conservationism and his love of running. I guess I will have to get some translations of Cahier's for the critical theory and watch Rossellini's Stromboli for the spiritual crisis.
October 4, 2021
If you'd told me it would take me three whole months to get through a biography of one of my favourite filmmakers, a book whose authors had access to the director's extensive archives, I'm not sure I would have given your prediction much credit. Unfortunately I think it's down to the translation, which is full of grammatical errors and sentences that don't quite make sense, which is not a deal-breaker when the authors relate behind the scenes stories from the making of Rohmer's films, but is completely exhausting when dealing with some of Rohmer's more advanced criticism and ideas. I'm glad I read it, and I will dip into during the years to come, but as a tome to consume from first page to last, it's a bit of a bust.
October 15, 2022
I can't tell if my gripes are petty -- that the authors wrote negatively about Boyfriends and Girlfriends, for instance, which was the film that restarted my love affair with Éric Rohmer, the intensity of which I hadn't experienced in about 7 years, and inspired me to make a film of my own and read as much as I could about him and his writings -- or if they are legitimate, as in the confusing way the book is structured, the drier-than-watching-paint-dry writing style, the sometimes confusing translation, and the parts of Rohmer's life that are left unexplored (how his sons and wife felt about his 9 am - 6pm sojourns, for instance, or if it was obvious to them that he was a filmmaker, or what he said to them to justify his particular way of working, or even what he did on the weekends), but I've often been wrong and insensitive to most works I've encountered, and inarticulate of my attacks or defenses of said works, so I hedge my bets and say that, regardless of my complaints, I am grateful to hold a biography of this great, reclusive artist in my hands.
It is a thankless task to write about Rohmer given his privacy and insularity, and given the great misunderstanding about his films -- their precise, impeccably composed, radically classical, suspenseful nature is often mistaken for something devoid of style to those with less discerning eyes -- but the book does a good job of drawing together the strains that influenced his work and main themes, the most touching of which to me is his desire to remain hidden in plain sight, his being and interests woven into the narratives and imagery as discretely as possible, as demonstrated by his hysterically loose working methods, his famous stinginess, his compassion and dedication to listening, and his adherence to traditional forms of art.
As someone who wishes to make films personally and cheaply and selfishly, but without those words coming to mind to potential viewers, this book is a wonderful guide to the filmmaker who achieved a remarkably coherent, expansive body of work, who expressed himself freely though the lives and words of others and who did so with the most inexpensive tools at his disposal. To the filmmaker I've affectionately referred to as "Daddy" for the last 8 months or so, and to the biographers, despite their rigid academic approach, I say, "thank you," and "wish me well," as I embark on my next project.
It is a thankless task to write about Rohmer given his privacy and insularity, and given the great misunderstanding about his films -- their precise, impeccably composed, radically classical, suspenseful nature is often mistaken for something devoid of style to those with less discerning eyes -- but the book does a good job of drawing together the strains that influenced his work and main themes, the most touching of which to me is his desire to remain hidden in plain sight, his being and interests woven into the narratives and imagery as discretely as possible, as demonstrated by his hysterically loose working methods, his famous stinginess, his compassion and dedication to listening, and his adherence to traditional forms of art.
As someone who wishes to make films personally and cheaply and selfishly, but without those words coming to mind to potential viewers, this book is a wonderful guide to the filmmaker who achieved a remarkably coherent, expansive body of work, who expressed himself freely though the lives and words of others and who did so with the most inexpensive tools at his disposal. To the filmmaker I've affectionately referred to as "Daddy" for the last 8 months or so, and to the biographers, despite their rigid academic approach, I say, "thank you," and "wish me well," as I embark on my next project.
January 4, 2021
I have read the original French edition.
September 14, 2024
An extensive account of Éric Rohmer as a teacher, writer, and figure of the French New Wave, one of my all-time favorite directors. I consider him a master of the everyday human condition in cinema.
"Three personalities coexisted in Rohmer: the teacher he had always dreamed of being, the filmmaker curious about everything, and the man without imagination."
I also got an insight into his personal and private life (born Maurice Sherer), and it's wild that he managed two worlds throughout his life. The process of writing and producing a film from that perspective, made it an enriching read.
"Three personalities coexisted in Rohmer: the teacher he had always dreamed of being, the filmmaker curious about everything, and the man without imagination."
I also got an insight into his personal and private life (born Maurice Sherer), and it's wild that he managed two worlds throughout his life. The process of writing and producing a film from that perspective, made it an enriching read.
June 16, 2021
In only the past year and change, Éric Rohmer has become one of my all-time favorite filmmakers. His distinctive style of capturing the effervescence of French plains and plazas, transporting the thrill and threat of everyday sociality into his pithy scripts, teasing out the capricious relationship between one's unfiltered desire and moral imperative... All of which have amounted to a singular voice in cinema (sweeter, and more elegant, than those of his New Wave counterparts, for my money). Undoubtedly classical while compellingly modern in his curiosity and restraint, Rohmer's aesthetic lens for viewing public life has greatly shaped my own.
In its divulging of his many habits and principles that animated everything about his twenty-five feature films, this biography is such a treat. A pleasure from beginning to end.
In its divulging of his many habits and principles that animated everything about his twenty-five feature films, this biography is such a treat. A pleasure from beginning to end.
November 24, 2020
Finally finished this monstrosity. Originally started it like a year and a half ago.
January 20, 2025
Eric Rohmer is my favourite director and an utterly fascinating, unique, and bizarre person, so I was eager to learn more about his soul—who he was as a person and how he thought about things. Rohmer was famously private, but given the biographers’ access to extensive records and archives of Rohmer and the significant length of this biography, I was optimistic that this book would shed light on who he was beyond his work. Unfortunately, it focuses almost exclusively on Rohmer’s films and his career as a film critic. Aside from some basic biographical details on his early life and one chapter on his views on architecture and urban development, it offers very little insight into his personal thoughts and ideas.
Everyone online knows Rohmer avoided modern technologies like telephones and cars, but this book doesn’t provide much more about who he actually was as a person.
Someday, I’ll probably write an essay about Rohmer—what I think the essence of Rohmerism is and why it resonates so deeply with certain people—but that’ll have to wait. For now, I’ll just share what I find most shocking about him: that he was a hardcore conservative Catholic, ascetic, happily married, and never involved in affairs or sexual escapades—despite those being the focal point of nearly all his films. Not that this contrast exists, but that his depictions of these things/this lifestyle is so on point, despite him having no real world experience with any of it!
For those unfamiliar, Rohmer used a pseudonym, avoided public appearances, kept his family life and film life completely separate, and was intensely private.
His films reveal a deep love of beauty, a profound connection to the emotions of lust and yearning, and strong voyeuristic tendencies. I suspect much of his restricted personal life was a way of shielding himself from his own urges and desires, which I assume were extreme—much like how Tolstoy created his own religion to control his savage impulses (though Tolstoy ultimately failed in this endeavour, where as Rohmer seems successful).
Everyone online knows Rohmer avoided modern technologies like telephones and cars, but this book doesn’t provide much more about who he actually was as a person.
Someday, I’ll probably write an essay about Rohmer—what I think the essence of Rohmerism is and why it resonates so deeply with certain people—but that’ll have to wait. For now, I’ll just share what I find most shocking about him: that he was a hardcore conservative Catholic, ascetic, happily married, and never involved in affairs or sexual escapades—despite those being the focal point of nearly all his films. Not that this contrast exists, but that his depictions of these things/this lifestyle is so on point, despite him having no real world experience with any of it!
For those unfamiliar, Rohmer used a pseudonym, avoided public appearances, kept his family life and film life completely separate, and was intensely private.
His films reveal a deep love of beauty, a profound connection to the emotions of lust and yearning, and strong voyeuristic tendencies. I suspect much of his restricted personal life was a way of shielding himself from his own urges and desires, which I assume were extreme—much like how Tolstoy created his own religion to control his savage impulses (though Tolstoy ultimately failed in this endeavour, where as Rohmer seems successful).
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August 31, 2024Supposedly the definitive biography of my favorite director, so why am I disappointed? Rohmer was notoriously secretive about his personal life, he kept a pretty firm work/home divide and his own mother never knew he was a filmmaker. That leaves us with a paucity of detail about the man himself, just snatches of what he can get from his frequent collaborators. The author films in the rest with some, frankly, indulgent analysis. This would be tolerable, but he’s so rigid on his various theses that it tends to burden down the few details we do have.
At its best when detailing the threadbare operation of his sets, his chaste little harem of actresses, and the petty French New Wave drama. My takeaway from this is that the French view films entirely different from Americans, two peoples split by a shared medium.
At its best when detailing the threadbare operation of his sets, his chaste little harem of actresses, and the petty French New Wave drama. My takeaway from this is that the French view films entirely different from Americans, two peoples split by a shared medium.
August 19, 2025
Decent attempt at capturing an artist (on some days my favourite filmmaker) who resisted biography and huge parts of his life remain mysteries even after this 600 page book. Great accounts of the productions of all his films, even if I think the authors fundamentally misread some. Best of all - has inspired me to track down and see all the obscure parts of his filmography, including very compelling arguments for his maligned late historical films.
September 13, 2021
good but not as engaging as the truffaut bio — the latter’s life is the rarity of rarities (the life is as great a work of art as the oeuvre proper), whereas rohmer’s films speak more than the puny man himself can
May 17, 2018
Thorough but not very fun
May 31, 2023
Really great read if you're interested in Rohmer and his films. The translation is mostly good but I did notice semi-frequent typos, but it never kept me from understanding what was being said.
January 7, 2024
There’s a rare amount of detail about Rohmer’s private life in this book — something you never get in journal articles or books which are essentially filmographies.
April 5, 2025
A bit of a theorist’s idea of a biography and very French in its approach to such, but the insights on the films occasionally shine through the otherwise opaque text in a greatly enjoyable fashion.
January 24, 2026
Una biografía muy, muy completa.
June 28, 2021
Not just an analytical text about Rohmer's cinema but a very through look inside life of a filmmaker that his secrecy kept aa lot of his worldview hidden to his audience.
read-in-part
April 14, 2018read 50%
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