In the book that Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol wrote abut Hitchcock in 1957 they said, referring to Hitchcock's form: "Our effort will not have been in vain if we have been able to demonstrate how an entire moral universe has been elaborated on the basis of this form and by its very rigor."
The same thing can be said about Rohmer's films. I remember when I first saw Ma Nuit Chez Maud, in 1969 at the 72nd St. Playhouse, after waiting on line in the rain, and how impressed I was by its austere beauty. A man has decided whom he will marry, though he hasn't met her yet, and spends the night with another woman, mostly talking while they each try to keep the other from seducing them. They argue over everything from Pascal and his wager to who is a Jansenist and who is a Jesuit and what is the relationship between free will and grace. I remember the film as taking place almost entirely at Maud's but when I saw it again on Turner Classic Movies "the night at Maud's" it is only about half of the movie, the rest of it shows the man's courtship of the woman he has loved at first sight.
Rohmer's style of shooting conversation is unusual and effective: he focuses on one of the participants both listening and talking for long periods of time before cutting to the other person. At Maud's this eventually leads to Jean-Louis (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant) getting into bed with Maud (Francoise Fabian), where they quickly embrace and as quickly reject each other. The next day Jean-Louis introduces himself to the woman he is going to marry, a fellow Catholic whom he first saw in church, and says good-bye to Maud, who is leaving town. Jean-Louis meets Maud a final time, five years later, when he is with his wife and child. Rohmer's formal examination of what works between a woman and man and the relationship between friendship and love continues with his subsequent "moral tales."
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