The Movie-Like Life of New Wave Cinema Director Eric Rohmer

Born Maurice Schérer, Éric Rohmer was a giant of French cinema and one of the legends of the New Wave. But his real life story is almost more incredible than the plot of a movie. Born in 1920, Schérer as he was then (he later renamed himself after movie director Erich von Stroheim and Fu Manchu writer Sax Rohmer) studied history at university and became a teacher in Clermont-Ferrand. But in the 1940s, he quit and returned to Paris where he worked as a freelance journalist.

He started going to see films at the Cinémathèque Française, and soon got to know France’s up and coming filmmakers. Inspired, Rohmer began to specialise in film journalism and in 1951, started working at the legendary Cahiers du Cinéma, which he went on to edit from 1957 to 1963. But it wasn’t long before he joined the likes of New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut behind the camera.

A very secret career

In 1969, Rohmer – often referred to as the last and the most enduring of the New Wave directors – won international acclaim with the fourth film in his ‘Moral Tales’ series, My Night at Maud’s, which was nominated for the Oscar for best foreign language film. It was just the start of a career spanning four decades, during which he would score awards too numerous to mention, from Hollywood to Cannes to Venice to Berlin.

As well as films, Rohmer turned his hand to writing books, too, penning a novel called Elisabeth in 1946. Then in 1957 he teamed up with Claude Chabrol to write the first book on Alfred Hitchcock, a seminal work in the creation of auteur theory.

Other notable movies include 1983’s Pauline at the Beach, the third in Rohmer’s ‘Comedies and Proverbs’ series, which won the Silver Bear for best director at Berlin, and, of course, the ‘Tales of the Four Seasons’ quartet of filmic masterpieces.

So far so impressive – but what’s so incredible about all that? Rohmer was very keen on privacy, using false names and even donning disguises (he wore a fake moustache to one of his own premières). In fact, he was so private, he never even told his mum what he did for a living. She thought he was just plain old Maurice Schérer, a teacher at a lycée in Paris.

Éric Rohmer 10-second CV

Name: Name: Eric Rohmer (Maurice Schérer)

Born: March 21, 1920, in Tulle (Corrèze)

Died: January 11, 2010 i in Paris at the age of 89

Early career: Rohmer started off like many New Wave directors as a writer at Cahiers du Cinéma before he decided to give directing a go for himself.

I know the name…

Well, his mum didn’t! But yes. With a career lasting 40 years and involving more than a dozen films, Rohmer is one of the mainstays of French cinematic history, and is often considered one of the more accessible of the New Wave directors.

What should I watch first?

Why not have your own Éric Rohmer Film Festival and watch the ‘Tales of the Four Seasons?’ They are all a joy to watch and run in this order: A Tale of Springtime (1990), A Tale of Winter (1992), Α Summer’s Tale (1996) and Autumn Tale (1998).

C’est pas vrai!

There’s an Instagram account dedicated to the outfits worn in Rohmer’s films: rohmerfits.

From France Today Magazine