Review: "Six Moral Tales" Has Never Looked Better

To err is human, or so the swaths of philosophers and artists have surmised across the centuries. Eric Rohmer has been heralded by much smarter critics than I for having been a filmmaker that gracefully presented stories that were innately human; every glance, physical gesture and line of dialogue being delivered as if the mind was commanding the body. His "Six Moral Tales" are among his most famous and accomplished works, and they've been neatly upgraded to Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection. It only took a quick look at the old DVD set to see that this new upgraded version is nothing short of a grand achievement in preservation and restoration.

Somehow, each of these tales and their tortured but playful emotions resounds just as strongly as they did upon initial release. Rohmer, a writer before a filmmaker, takes a core idea – a man being forced to choose between women – and delves deep into the human psyche with a deceptively acute eye. Some have pointed out that his shot composition can be relatively simple in terms of setup, but he's filling each and every frame with characters responding to emotional and physical stimuli, even when they're trying to resist any reaction.

While his earlier tales, both "Suzanne's Career" and "The Bakery Girl of Monceau," belong to the French New Wave in terms of aesthetic and following of Andr� Bazin's theories, it's "La Collectionneuse" and "My Night at Maud's" that find the filmmaker laying bare what makes him tick and what he thinks makes these characters do what they do. In addition, he does it all with a camera that's conscious of filmmaking as a spectator's sport. His version of cinematic voyeurism revels in watching people not only make actions but also what's running through their minds when they're making them. Even more, his tales are deeply rooted in irony, as to be truly human is not only inescapable, it's also funny as hell.

Nestor Almendros, friend and cinematographer on many of Rohmer's films, once said, "Some people think Rohmer is in league with the devil." This quote perfectly describes the director. Not that he was actually making a deal with the devil, but that he was so in tune with his material and approach that it seemed almost impossible to define as natural.

That above quote is probably best represented in "Claire's Knee," one of the best of Rohmer's moral tales. In it, Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy), who's a proud womanizer, makes a bet to win the affection of Laura (B�atrice Romand), a much younger woman. Naturally, things don't go exactly as planned, and Jerome increasingly feels goaded into submission by the ingenues he lusts after. Rohmer foists the perversity of Jerome's desires onto the audience, but he doesn't favor his priggish main character's issues over the young women he pursues. While it's certainly a pleasure to see Jerome fail miserably at courting Laura and her half-sister, Claire, it's the relationship between the women that reveals itself to be the film's strongest link. We slowly watch them succumb to desire and love in different ways, but it's their sense of self that develops in the process. That kind of narrative perfection isn't easily achieved, hence Almendros' comment rings so true.

Rohmer was a maverick in a way that separated himself from his peers, like Godard and Chabrol, by focusing in on dialogue as the ethos and even the soul of his work. For a filmmaker who constantly wrestled with the formation and destruction of belief, there's an oneiric feel to his films, as if both reality and what we're thinking can coexist in each and every frame.

Needless to say, the incredible new Criterion Collection Blu-ray set is the best Rohmer's moral tales have looked at home. In particular, it's breathtaking to watch the textures of his shorts shot on 16mm. The film grain swirls, contracts and expands as do the character's mindsets. These unique, indelible and deeply funny films are some of the closest examples we have to signify that cinema as art is truly alive.

Special features include:

� Conversation between director Eric Rohmer and filmmaker Barbet Schroeder from 2006
� Four short films by Rohmer– "Presentation, or Charlotte and Her Steak" (shot in 1951 and completed in 1961); "V�ronique and Her Dunce (1958)"; "Nadja in Paris" (1964); "A Modern Coed" (1966)–and one on which he advised, "The Curve" (1999)
� "On Pascal," a 1965 episode of the educational TV series "En profil dans le texte "directed by Rohmer, on the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, the subject of debate in "My Night at Maud's"
� Archival interviews with Rohmer; actors Jean-Claude Brialy, B�atrice Romand, Laurence de Monaghan, and Jean--Louis Trintignant; film critic Jean Douchet; and producer Pierre Cottrell
� Video afterword from 2006 by filmmaker and writer Neil LaBute
� Trailers
� PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critics Geoff Andrew, Ginette Vincendeau, Phillip Lopate, Kent Jones, Molly Haskell, and Armond White; excerpts from cinematographer Nestor Almendros's 1980 autobiography; and Rohmer's landmark 1948 essay "For a Talking Cinema"; along with an English translation of "Six Moral Tales," the book of stories by Rohmer on which the films are based

"Six Moral Tales"
Blu-ray
$99.95
https://www.criterion.com/boxsets/417-six-moral-tales