Éric Rohmer: A Biography

Antoine de Baecque; Noël Herpe

Published by Columbia University Press 2016

Éric Rohmer

A Biography

Antoine de Baecque and Noël Herpe
Translated by: Steven Rendall and Lisa Neal

https://doi.org/10.7312/de-b17558

Overview
Contents

About this book

Éric Rohmer set the terms by which people watched, made, and thought about cinema for decades. This exhaustive biography uses personal archives and interviews to enrich our knowledge of Rohmer's public achievements and lesser known interests. Despite an austere approach to life, Rohmer had a voracious appetite for art, culture, and intellectual debate captured vividly in this definitive volume.

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 cinéma from 1957 to 1963, Éric 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.

Author / Editor information

Antoine de Baecque is a professor of the history of cinema at the University of Nanterre. He has published biographies of François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard and was editor in chief of Cahiers du cinema.

Noël Herpe is a senior lecturer at the Université de Paris VIII. He has published works on René Clair and Sacha Guitry, as well as a book of interviews with Éric Rohmer about his text Le Celluloïd et le Marbre.

Reviews

No doubt [de Baecque and Herpe's] enthralling biography will remain the ultimate text on the life and legacy of Eric Rohmer, just like Rohmer will live on as one of the ultimate figures of cinema.

A thorough study of a great director. Highly recommended.

The definitive overview of the director's life.

Chris Fujiwara:
A rich and thorough study.

Gerald Peary:
Excellent... definitive.... [A] wonderful book.

Pascal Blum:
An entertaining new biography.

Christopher Schobert:
Comprehensive and definitive.... An utterly enthralling read.

James Campbell:
Deeply researched and thoroughly enjoyable.

Allen Pierleoni:
An intimate, anecdote-filled look at a legend.

Richard Brody:
[A] superb new biography.

Compulsively readable, this volume is a model of scholarship and style that no serious cinephile's library should be without.

Biography of the year for cineasts.

Dan Sullivan:
An essential and ceaselessly enjoyable work of scholarship.... The most valuable gift afforded by this biography is the sheer joy of moving through the exacting, meticulous accounts of each stage of Rohmer's life and career, painstakingly researched and written as if the authors were striving for the same arresting attention to detail, subtlety, humor, and philosophical weight of his films.

One of the most distinguished filmmakers of the French new wave.... [de Baecque and Herpe] pull off the high-wire act of appealing to both film scholars and lay readers with a combination of comprehensive research and engaging storytelling. The book will foster a renewed appreciation of a complex artist and the remarkable body of work he left behind.

Dudley Andrew, Yale University:
Rohmer was sensitive, very well educated, and at home with literature, music, painting and theater; the biography shows a happy life lived in such culture. It shows how this flows easily into his films, how they operate as experiments in feeling and perception. The book makes one hungry to see them all over again.

Derek Schilling, Johns Hopkins University:
Antoine de Baecque and Noël Herpe achieve in this scrupulously researched volume the paradoxical feat of delivering the definitive biography of a pseudonymous subject. Eric Rohmer will interest film historians, theorists of film, enthusiasts of French cinema, and film directors both aspiring and established, for whom Rohmer's low-budget modus operandi remains one of the miracles of modern film production. This, the first biography of Rohmer (né Maurice Schérer), is likely also to be the last.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
The Mysteries of “le grand Momo” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Maurice Schérer’s Youth: 1920–1945 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	5
2 From Schérer to Rohmer: 1945–1957 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	30
3 Under the Sign of Leo: 1959–1962 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
4 Under the Sign of Cahiers: 1957–1963 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
5 The Laboratory Period: 1963–1970 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
6 Four Moral Tales: 1966–1972 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
7 On Germany and the Pleasure of Teaching: 1969–1994 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	258
8 In Pursuit of Perceval: 1978–1979 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	307
9 Six Comedies and Proverbs: 1980–1986 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	321
10 The Rohmer of the Cities and the Rohmer of the Countryside: 1973–1995 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	379
11 In the Rhythm of the Seasons: 1989–1998 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	434
12 Filming History: 1998–2004 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	475
13 A Tale of Winter: 2006–2007 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	518
14 In Pain: 2001–2010 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	540
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	555
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	613

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 608
Illustrations
- Other: 51 b&w illustrations

eBook

Published: June 14, 2016
ISBN: 9780231541572