Éric Rohmer: A Biography I

This book, by Antoine de Baecque and Noël Herpe, is my current reading project. I like most of the Rohmer films that I've seen and wanted to understand him better. What I've found is that all human activities, including the arts, exist in ecosystems. It isn't always easy to recognize this, particularly when you live in a dominant ecosystem whose participants presume that it is the best of its type in the world. When it comes to the arts, Americans tend to think, or are trained to think, that box office sales, value at auction, copies sold, crowd size, number of followers, etc., are indications of success. However, that is just a current sociological phenomenon here and is unlikely to hold up over time. What I find is that various motifs and styles surface and disappear all over the world all of the time, and to understand them properly requires a lot of work. In the arts as in the biological world, the ecosystems are ultimately what determine the success of individuals. Often, when evaluating a work of art, it is best to start with the ecosystem. I think of classical music as an example. First there was Bach in Germany, then a musical cult developed in Vienna and was led successively by Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven. I think that if Vienna hadn't developed as it did as a musical center, you may never have heard of Beethoven. In the case of Éric Rohmer, I find that his particular ecosystem is not entirely familiar to me, as I have not paid much attention to the French New Wave. However, it does appear to be a distinct artistic and cultural movement, and I will attempt to discuss Rohmer in that context.

Éric Rohmer was born Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer in Tulle, in south central France, on March 21, 1920. His grandfather had moved to Tulle from Alsace-Lorraine, where he had worked as a gunsmith, following its annexation by Germany in 1870.  He married a Tulle woman, and they had one son, who was Rohmer's father. His father worked as a notary's clerk, and the family belonged to the middle class and were conservative Catholics. Rohmer had a brother, René, who was two years younger. They were close, and René grew up to be gay. They were both good students and enjoyed the arts. Rohmer had little exposure to film but staged theatrical productions at home while he was growing up. He studied in Paris for entry to the École normale supérieure in Paris and passed the written exam but failed the oral exam in 1939. He tried again in 1940 but failed. At that point he was drafted into the French army for physical work. He was discharged from military duty on January 31, 1941 and wasn't sure what to do next. He eventually decided to move to Paris, where his brother, René, was studying for the École normale supérieure. When the Germans retreated from France in 1944, there were severe reprisals against Nazi collaborators, and this seems to have traumatized Rohmer. Simone de Beauvoir describes this period in The Mandarins. She was twelve years older than Rohmer, but they had similar postwar experiences.

Rohmer never succeeded at gaining entry to the École normale supérieure. Instead, he earned a license-ès-lettres and was only qualified to teach Latin and Greek in a secondary school. René, on the other hand, entered the École normale supérieure at the age of twenty-one, which led to a brilliant career in philosophical research. René entered the same "mandarin" class as Sartre and de Beauvoir, but was not a close friend of them. This all had a psychological effect on Rohmer but didn't damage his relationship with René. However, within the Schérer family, René was considered the brains. In the greater scheme of things, it's probably just as well, because Rohmer's career was more interesting. One of the factors that interfered with his academic success was probably his shyness, because in those days aggressive students like Sartre and de Beauvoir were the model. I'm probably a little prejudiced on this because I've never had any desire to study French philosophy. In any case, René went on to have a successful career, despite once being charged with "inciting minors to debauchery." For that matter, Sartre and de Beauvoir were always a little depraved.

The relevant details in this book are a little slim, but Rohmer did work as a teacher for a few years and had a job near Paris. In the early 1950's, the film craze that led to the French New Wave gained momentum. All of a sudden there were countless film clubs and film journals. Rohmer wrote articles and was exposed to the new directors, such as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol. I'm not sure exactly why Rohmer chose to use a pseudonym, but it may be that he didn't want to upset his mother, who was extremely conservative and had a low opinion of films. The actual films didn't appear until the late 1950's. Most of them were markedly low-budget. Rohmer seems to have been completely inept when attempting to make his first film, and I enjoyed this anecdote from Claude Chabrol:

Intending to make a film of Les Petites Fille modèles, he thought it would be a good idea to seek his actress in the parc Monceau. Imagine the scene: this tall, skinny, dark-haired silhouette wearing a cape, slithering silently down the garden paths with a package of candy in his hand. When he liked a little girl, he beckoned to her, saying: "Come here, little girl, I'm going to tell you a lovely story." After using this ploy for three or four hours, naturally he got himself arrested by the park guard. In his absolute innocence and entirely cinematic passion, he didn't understand why the cops hauled him off to the police station.

Some of the inspiration for the French New Wave came from Alfred Hitchcock. Rohmer enjoyed It Happened One Night, by Frank Capra. There was also an interest in Paris of American authors such as William Faulkner and John Dos Passos. Rohmer enjoyed the works of Balzac.

Rohmer's shyness may have impeded his romantic life. This was resolved as follows:

One Saturday evening in December 1956, at a dance at École des Mines, this very shy man had the nerve to approach a young brunette who was herself very reserved, and whom he had "spotted" (one might think we are already in My Night at Maud's). In doing so, Rohmer, who had never been very bold with girls, suddenly made good on a wager he had made with his friend Jean Parvulesco: "This evening," he had told him, "I will meet my wife." Her first name was Thérèse. She came from a good family in the north, having been born in Cambrai. She had been carefully brought up, was a practicing Catholic, and was twenty-seven years old. They began seeing each other. On July 13, 1957, Maurice Schérer married Thérèse Barbet at the church in Paramé, near Saint-Malo, where the young woman's family owned a vacation home. Rohmer, established in his profession, married, and aged thirty-seven, looked for an apartment for himself and his wife: his bachelor life was definitely over and he left, after fifteen years of Bohemian renting, his furnished room in the little Hôtel de Lutèce on rue Victor-Cousin.