Eric Rohmer (born Maurice Scherer) was a charter member of the Cahiers du Cinéma group, though a decade older than his colleagues, which would make him the granddaddy of the French New Wave. But Rohmer, now 80, forgot to get old. His films only grow more charming and rigorous, elegant and plainspoken. For over four decades Rohmer has worked within the limits and challenges of his chosen style, which is extremely intellectual, almost entirely conversational, wittily visual, seasonal-and thoroughly enjoyable.
In film after film Rohmer explores the moral and emotional isolation of contemporary individuals living on either side of the sexual revolution. His Six Moral Tales, modern as they are, evoke the jeux d'amour found in eighteenth-century French literature. They are delicate excursions into the province of the man who intellectualizes desire until it is safe, objectifies women until they are dangerous. The two later series-Comedies and Proverbs and Tales of the Four Seasons-center more around women, and Rohmer's women are as uncompromising as they seem impetuous, certainly some of the most likeable and admirable women in French cinema.
Through his characters Rohmer explores ideas, and through ideas, character. Pascal's wager-that, since neither belief nor disbelief can be proved on rational grounds, you might as well err on the side of grace-comes up over and over again. As Terrence Rafferty wrote, "Rohmer's aesthetic philosophy is to stake out, and hold, a position from which he can ambush the rare life-altering event, the moment of grace, the miracle.... In Eric Rohmer's movies-and no one else's-the more things stay the same, the more they change."
