My Night at Maud’s (Eric Rohmer, 1969): France

Reviewed by Byron Potau. Viewed on DVD.

Eric Rohmer’s cinematic world is one filled with conversation. The discussion is the thing and it is interesting. However, it is not a cinema that appeals immediately or even to many. Rohmer gained a wider audience and a lifelong following with his art house hit and the third film in his Six Moral Tales series, My Night at Maud’s. The film is full of heady discourse, extended discussion on mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, and moral choices from its characters to be pondered and conversed over later in the company of friends and, perhaps, with a glass of wine.

Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a 34 year old engineer, studying mathematics, specifically Pascal, and is something of a born again Catholic. He spots Francoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) in church and has an immediate attraction to her. She is young, beautiful, blonde, and Catholic. He runs into an old childhood friend, Vidal (Antoine Vitez), now a philosophy professor and Marxist. Vidal invites him over to meet and spend the evening with his divorcee and mildly bohemian friend, Maud (Francoise Fabian). After some philosophical, religious, and amorous discussion, Vidal is dismissed and Jean-Louis convinced to sleep over rather than drive home in the snow. Jean-Louis is faced with the first of his moral decisions when it is clear there is an attraction between he and Maud, but it would only be a casual affair and he already has his eye on Francoise. Would a tryst with Maud conflict with his religious beliefs? This is not the last time he and Maud will cross paths facing him with another moral dilemma.

All three main actors, Trintignant, Barrault, and Fabian are quite good, but the real focus of the film is its thought provoking dialogue. One need not be an expert on Pascal, but some familiarity would not hurt. However, even if one knows nothing of Pascal the fascinating discussion instills the urge to learn more on one’s own.

The film may seem simple, but it has an interesting course of events. Rohmer’s style is talk, talk, and more talk, but it is a fascinating mixture of ideas in religion, morality, and probability and it never gets preachy or feels forced. Rohmer has a good feel for the conversation, a knack for amplifying the situation, and an ability to stimulate more conversation in his viewers. Watch it with someone you can talk to.

DVD Extras: 1974 episode of the French television program, Telecinema, featuring interviews with Jean-Louis Trintignant, film critic Jean Douchet, and Producer Pierre Cottrell; Conversation “On Pascal” directed by Eric Rohmer for the educational series En Profil dans la texte; Original theatrical trailer.