Take One (Sep-Oct 1972)

Pal Sa we I like it when in my films something happens that | am not forcing ... that happens and I just have to film. ments on this? ROHMER: Your question is the answer because it is very right. | approve several interpretations to my films and | don’t know what | could add to what you have said. | accept all interpretations. Some people feel that the films must be watched very seriously and that one mustn't laugh. Others laugh all the way through them. | am neither for one or the other, but | would maybe favor those who are laughing. | don't like people to be too self-conscious in a movie theatre. But | have a question too. Do my films seem cold or are they over-sentimental? That’s something | do not know. | can’t say whether, in my films, | destroy the emotions or if | make them larger. | must say that | am not the judge of this. Q: Yet while freeing themselves from conventional morality, the characters continue to judge themselves by rather severe moral standards. And it seems to me that in your films you make much harsher moral judgments on the male characters than you do on the female characters. ROHMER: Yes. Because it is always a man who is telling the story and he is trying not to be soft towards himself. Q: But what of the women? The men are always searching for relationships despite their real fear of intimacy. What is the search of the women in your films? ROHMER: In Chloé in the Afternoon there is one who wants to have a child with blue eyes, and the other one has two children with blue eyes — and that’s enough for her maybe. Q: While the men investigate their lives on screen, enabling the audience to understand their motivations and conflicts, the lives of the women are shrouded in mystery. We see them only in relation to the men, and then only through the eyes of the men. In Chloé for example, the wife Héléne comes back from a mysterious errand and we never know what's in her mind or what she was up to. ROHMER: If | do not say certain things it is because | do not want to say them. It is because | do not think it is necesSary to say them. But | don’t want to do a thriller, a mystery movie, a whodunit. My films are not a guess-who. | shoot the films with the point of view of one of the characters. What he knows, we will know. What he doesn’t know, we will never know. The husband, Frédéric, will not know what the wife did in the afternoon because he is not interested in finding out. He does not want to know. You, like Frédéric, may not be interested in the thing. You also have every right to guess. Maybe she was on an errand. Maybe it was something different. As far as I’m concerned, | don’t know. In The Moral Tales | only ask questions; | do not give answers. It is only the drama that is exposed. Q: For an actor to play a part, does he or she have to know what the answer to the question is, and if so, does he or she tell you? ROHMER: That's precisely what | would never have dared to ask the actor. In that last scene in Chloé in the Afternoon when the wife comes in, | have the impression that the two actors did more than just merely play a part. | had a real husband and wife [Bernard and Francoise Vérley] play the parts of the husband and wife, and that’s what they told me. And when-we shot that scene, | was almost embarrassed to sit through it even though | knew they were acting out. It was a scene we did only one take of and it would have been absolutely impossible to have done it over. | like it when in my films something happens that | am not forcing — that happens and | just have to film. My film is nothing of a documentary, nothing of a cinema vérité film. It was written and well prepared. It was acted by actors. But there are certain moments, despite everything, when the actors forget they are actors; and | forget that they are actors too. And that’s what interests me most in the films: to find these moments. But in general, | find them without looking for them. In Chloé in the Afternoon it happened at the very end, and it was only then that | felt that | was happy with my film. Until then | was not very satisfied. Q: When did this moment occur in your other films? ROHMER: In Claire’s Knee it happened differently — maybe not during the film, but before. | met these two actresses who inspired me, and how should | say, the characters they had in real life carried over to the film. Ma Nuit Chez Maude came more like Chloé: during the shooting. There is a close-up of Frangoise Fabian in which she really totally identified with the character. And La Collectionneuse is like Claire’s Knee. There are no actors — it’s almost a documentary movie. Q: You mentioned earlier that the protagonists try not to be soft on themselves. Yet don’t you feel that their constant introspection leads to narcissism? ROHMER: That is correct. All the narrators are narcissistic. It’s difficult not to be narcissistic for someone who is studying himself and watching himself. This is true, but at different levels of narcissism for the different characters. It happens that they are too interested in themselves to be interested in politics: although maybe the two things are not always incompatible. But one has to choose. | felt that politics had no place in my films because it was not the subject. It is not possible to deal with every subject at the same time. Q: But your films are political to the extent that they present a serious evaluation of middle class values. The dinner table conversation in Chloé for example... . ROHMER: No. | wanted to show what we call un francais moyen: the average Frenchman. | didn't want to ridicule anyone. What is said at the dinner table is no sillier than what can be said anywhere. | wanted to show that the main character was thinking about Chloé, and all the frivolous things that can be said bored him. If my film were a criticism of the French bourgeoisie, it would be a very superficial and totally powerless criticism of it. | only wanted to show an ordinary man with nothing derogatory in the term “ordinary.” | think that audiences have too much a tendency presently to see criticism in everything. My films are not satirical films. | do not make fun of my characters. On the contrary, | love my characters, even if they are not heroes. Q: What made you decide to make films? ROHMER: My first experience with the cinema was when | gave a lecture about film. | was at the lycée where | was teaching a literature course, and since there were references made to modern theatre | felt: “Why not also speak about films?” Then one of my pupils said to me, “Since you have so many ideas about cinema, why don’t you make films?” So | told him, “But | don’t have a camera,” and he told me, “Well, | can lend you mine.” So with this camera | made a few films — of very 9