Éric Rohmer

An interview with François Truffaut on the cinema of Jean Vigo.

The documentary delves into Éric Rohmer's distinctive filmmaking process, using film clips, rare interviews, and unreleased test footage.

Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.

When she was working as cutter for films like La Carrière de Suzanne, La Collectionneuse and La Boulangère de Monceau, Jackie Raynal was most fascinated by how Rohmer handled sound. Unusual in times of digital access to every sound bit, the director insisted on using the original sound from exact the same place and time where the scene has been shot. So every bird, every gust of wind and every tree got it’s specific sound.

Éric Rohmer converses with collaborators and admirers.

What was your first desire? What did you long for most? Arielle Dombasle put these questions to a wide circle of famous people.

A conversation between Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder.

In 1995, producer Françoise Etchegaray recorded the production of A Summer's Tale. The footage remained on the shelf for years until director Jean-André Fieschi combined the images with bits of the finished film.

Les Contes Secrets ou les Rohmériens features interviews with 16 actors who have appeared in Rohmer's films, and they talk on camera about his unusual working methods, his personality, and his spare but evocative signature style. Among the thespians who share their memories are Jean-Louis Trinitignant, Marie-Christine Barrault, Zouzou, Jean-Claude Brialy, Béatrice Romand, Françoise Fabian, and Andre Dussolier; the film also includes rare footage of Rohmer himself at work on the set of his 1978 effort Perceval.

No plot available for this movie.