Walking in the City: Paris in the Films of Eric Rohmer

Abstract

Admirers of Eric Rohmer’s films could hardly fail to notice that alongside the elegant simplicity of his plots and the subtle psychology of his characters there is a passion for exploring different locations and a deep interest in the interactions between places and people. Rohmer has examined the coast and the beach, with La Collectionneuse (1967) set on the Côte d’Azur, Pauline à la plage (1983) in Normandy, Le Rayon vert (1986) in the Basque country, and Conte d’été (1996) in Brittany. Nor are holiday locations the only places Rohmer has explored in detail. His films have explored French provincial towns, such as Clermont-Ferrand in Ma Nuit chez Maud (1969), Le Mans in Le Beau Mariage (1982), and Bourg-St-Andreol in Conte d’automne (1998), and the Parisian suburbs of Marne-la-Vallée in Les Nuits de la pleine lune (1983) or Cergy-Pontoise in L’’Ami de mon amie (1987). Rohmer’s interest in setting, environment, urban planning, and architecture is also demonstrated in the television documentaries Paysages urbains (1963) and Ville nouvelle (1975), a four-part series on Cergy-Pontoise. What is particularly striking about the list enumerated above is its sheer variety: it is as if Rohmer’s films undertake “an almost programmatic documentation of the various regions of France:”¹