My Night at Maud's

Following the death of Eric Rohmer last week, I was trying to think of how many of his films I'd seen. I'm not quite sure, because his films, especially those of the eighties and nineties, have a certain sameness to them, and the titles are simplistic. I do remember quite clearly seeing Pauline at the Beach, if only because of the spectacular sight of Arielle Dombasle in a bathing suit (I don't remember the plot).

In many of the obituaries the two of his films mentioned most often were My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee, both of which I haven't seen. So Netflix to the rescue, and last night I took in the former.

Released in 1969, and nominated for Oscars as Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay, My Night at Maud's is quite extraordinary. As with most of Rohmer's work, it's very talky--really it's just a series of extended conversations. As part of his series Six Moral Tales, it's a study of how an individual follows a moral code, is tempted to break it, and then rights himself. In this case it's a young man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who, as a Catholic, follows the teaching of his church. Over the course of the film he falls in love in first sight with one woman, is tempted by another, but remembers himself and adjusts accordingly.

Included in the film is a long discussion of Pascal's wager, which simply put is that you have a doubt in the belief in God, the thing to do is go ahead and believe, because the pay-off is better if there is a God. Pascal was a mathematician and philosopher, and the notion that a film could stop dead and allow a close to ten minute discussion on him is kind of exhilarating. What's more amazing is that this film is actually very sexy.

The film opens at mass. Trintignant spies a beautiful young blonde girl (Marie-Christine Barrault). He swears to himself that he will marry her, though he doesn't know her. He even follows her in his car while she rides on a motor scooter. Later he bumps into an old school chum (they discuss the probability of their meeting) who is now a philosophy professor. After the discussion of Pascal and attending midnight mass (it is Christmas Eve), his friend (Antoine Vitez) invites him over to his friend Maud's apartment. Played by Francoise Fabian, Maud is a divorced mother who is powerfully sexy and knows it, and she enjoys flirting with the men. Because it is snowing, she offers Trintignant the option to crash at her place. Vitez, who had slept with Fabian once and hoped to again, leaves in something of a huff. Trintignant is cagey. Maud is not a Catholic, but he is smitten, and when she changes into a short nightshirt and climbs under her fur bedspread he doesn't know what to think. She promises not to touch him and he lies next to her. In the morning she is naked, and they start to make out but he pulls back.

Later in the film Trintignant meets Barrault, and he ends up spending the night at her place (after his car gets stuck in the snow). Their evening together is much more chaste, but still ripples with electricity. Part of her appeal to him is her Catholicism, and when she reveals that she has a married lover it's a blow to him. But he confesses that the night before he met her he spent the evening with Maud, and they promise never to speak of it again.

The acting is excellent, as there are challenges galore. The takes are extremely long, and Rohmer was very specific in his writing, even inserting pauses like Pinter. Yet there never is a moment when you don't feel that you're actually watching real people converse. Another interesting factor is that Rohmer never used a music score--if the sound didn't come from the action of the film, he didn't want it in there. It's a habit I find refreshing, as so often movies are undermined by bombastic scores.