6 Discs
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The multifaceted, deeply personal dramatic universe of Eric Rohmer has had an effect on cinema unlike any other. One of the founding critics of the history-making Cahiers du cinéma, Rohmer began translating his written manifestos to film in the sixties, standing apart from his New Wave contemporaries, like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, with his patented brand of gently existential, hyperarticulate character studies set against vivid seasonal landscapes. This near genre unto itself was established with his audacious and wildly influential series “Six Moral Tales.” A succession of jousts between fragile men and the women who tempt them, the “Six Moral Tales” unleashed onto the film world a new voice, one that was at once sexy, philosophical, modern, daring, nonjudgmental, and liberating.
1963
In the first of Rohmer’s “Moral Tales,” a law student (Barbet Schroeder) with a roving eye and a large appetite stuffs himself full of sugar cookies and pastries daily in order to garner the attentions of the pretty brunette who works in a quaint Paris bakery.
1963
In Rohmer’s second “Moral Tale,” Bertrand bides his time in a casually hostile and envious friendship with college chum Guillaume. But when ladies’ man Guillaume seems to be making a play for the spirited, independent Suzanne, Bertrand watches bitterly with disapproval and jealousy.
1969
In the brilliantly accomplished centerpiece of Rohmer’s “Moral Tales” series, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis, a pious Catholic engineer who unwittingly spends the night at the apartment of the bold, brunette divorcée Maud, where his rigid ethical standards are challenged.
1967
In Rohmer’s first color film, a bombastic, womanizing art dealer and his painter friend go to a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohemian Haydée, accused of being a “collector” of men.
1970
“Why would I tie myself to one woman if I were interested in others?” says Jerôme, even as he plans on marrying a diplomat’s daughter by summer’s end. Before then, Jerôme spends his July at a lakeside boardinghouse nursing crushes on the sixteen-year-old Laura and her blonde stepsister, Claire.
1972
In the luminous final chapter to Rohmer’s “Moral Tales,” the bourgeois business executive Frédéric, though happily married to an adoring wife, cannot banish from his mind the multitude of attractive Parisian women who pass him every day. Then arrives Chloé, an audacious, unencumbered old flame.
SPECIAL DELUXE EDITION SIX-DISC BOX SET
