Éric Rohmer: A Biography - Hardcover

Baecque, Antoine De; Herpe, Noël

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231175582 ISBN 13: 9780231175586

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2016

Synopsis

The director of twenty-five films, including My Night at Maud's (1969), which was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, and the editor in chief of Cahiers du cinéma from 1957 to 1963, Éric Rohmer set the terms by which people watched, made, and thought about cinema for decades. Such brilliance does not develop in a vacuum, and Rohmer cultivated a fascinating network of friends, colleagues, and industry contacts that kept his outlook sharp and propelled his work forward. Despite his privacy, he cared deeply about politics, religion, culture, and fostering a public appreciation of the medium he loved.

This exhaustive biography uses personal archives and interviews to enrich our knowledge of Rohmer's public achievements and lesser known interests and relations. The filmmaker kept in close communication with his contemporaries and competitors: François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette. He held a paradoxical fascination with royalist politics, the fate of the environment, Catholicism, classical music, and the French nightclub scene, and his films were regularly featured at New York and Los Angeles film festivals. Despite an austere approach to life, Rohmer had a voracious appetite for art, culture, and intellectual debate captured vividly in this definitive volume.

About this title

About the Author

Antoine de Baecque is professor of the history of cinema at Paris Nanterre University. He has published biographies of François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard and was editor in chief of Cahiers du cinéma.

Noël Herpe is a senior lecturer at the Université de Paris VIII. He has published works on René Clair and Sacha Guitry, as well as a book of interviews with Éric Rohmer about Rohmer’s book, Le Celluloďd et le marbre.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231175582
• ISBN 13: 9780231175586
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 608