Minority View: The Green Ray by Eric Rohmer blog
Eric Rohmer is, apart from Jacques Rivette, the only filmmaker from the French New Wave whose films have remained true to the filmmaker's original vision. Rohmer's films are distinguished by their ‘˜smallness' and their disinclination to depart from the one subject that concerns the filmmaker - the relationship between people, especially between young men and women. Rohmer's films are always ‘˜light' in as much as he does not claim to have great truths to offer either about the world or about the human soul but his efforts are always dazzling and his delineation of social behavior inevitably precise. Over the years, Rohmer's films have become simpler and the behavioral contortions witnessed in his earlier films - My Night with Maud (1969) and Claire's Knee (1970) - are no longer in evidence. Instead of dwelling on sexual politics and self-deception, Rohmer seems to be preoccupied with issues like loneliness, the need to connect and the possibility of love.
The Green Ray (1986) is a film about a girl who works as a secretary and is trying to find a companion to go on a summer vacation with. A day before Delphine (Marie Rivere) is due to go to Greece with a girlfriend, the girlfriend backs out. After declining her sister's invitation to go to Ireland with her (can there be anything more depressing that going with one's family), Delphine accepts a friend's invitation to go to stay with her family at their seaside home. As always, Rohmer uses every opportunity to include improvised conversations - to help us understand her mental state - and the most engrossing of these is one in which Delphine reveals she is a vegetarian, with strong moral views on what she will not eat and why. Gradually, Delphine comes across as a person who is left alone by adults because of being much too sensitive about too many things. Rohmer also uses nature to great effect and particularly moving is her walk through the fields when the wind gets fierce. The howling of the wind becomes an indication of the noise inside Delphine's head. When she watches the trees swaying and breaks down silently at the edge of a field, we understand the state she is in although her behavior with her hosts and the children has been cheerful. When Delphine's friend departs with her boyfriend, she goes along and returns to Paris.
The rest of the film is about Delphine making other efforts at a pleasurable holiday. She harbors a vain hope that she will reestablish ties with her former boyfriend Jean-Pierre but that is clearly unlikely. In her final venture she goes to Biarritz and runs into a Swedish girl out to have fun. After running away from a possible encounter with men (she has run away from them before) she overhears a conversation about an atmospheric phenomenon described by Jules Verne. She has somehow come to believe that the color green is somehow associated with her now and she pays attention to the story. It appears that on rare occasions, when the air is very clear, the last rays of the setting sun turn a beautiful green and it is believed that when people witness this happening their feelings suddenly become clear to them as do those of other people. Needless to add, Delphine finally finds someone at the conclusion of the film and also sees the green ray.
Rohmer is a filmmaker preoccupied with inner states but he differs from a filmmaker like Bergman in as much as he deals with behavior rather than with psychology. Unlike Bergman, he takes the position that cinema being a faithful record of the exterior has no means of penetrating a person's psyche. He therefore relies heavily on our understanding of body language and gesture. We form impressions of people based on their body language - we think we know when they are telling the truth or lying, for instance - and we comprehend Rohmer's films in almost the same way. Rohmer is not a difficult filmmaker intellectually but understanding his films requires some experience with people. This is perhaps why young persons find it difficult to respond to his films, which - because of their inability to read gestures - they find too full of silences and aimless conversation. If they read gestures carefully, they would recognize that even a smile could be momentous to the narrative.
Coming lastly to the central performance in The Green Ray, after his early films in which he used stars, Rohmer switched to little-known actors. He also allows them to improvise in conversations. The result is that there is hardly any indication that the people in the film are acting. It is almost as if we were watching life itself. Moreover, the ‘˜meaning' of each character seems to stretch beyond the film. Sometimes, however, Rohmer is not well-served by his actors. I would say that films like Claire's Knee and A Tale of Springtime (1990) are failures because the characters appear exhaustively delineated by the film and they don't extend beyond it. Marie Riviere in The Green Ray is one of Rohmer's favorite actresses and her performance here is luminous. We know Delphine as we might know a friend and this is something we can't always say about great performances in cinema.
Comments( 8 )
I find it very difficult too see
I find it very difficult too see Delphine's emotional problems as having nothing to do with sex - because men are the chief source of her worries. Delphine, incidentally, is also preoccupied with herself.
Sexual anxiety? I thought Delphine's
Sexual anxiety? I thought Delphine's approach to relationships and anxieties were purely emotional and that is what created problems for her. She seemed to be looking for complete emotional sympathy and trust but failed to find it in anyone because most people are preoccupied about themselves. It is in people's nature to change and hoping for constant emotional sympathising/trust from anyone amounts to self-deception. Delphine realises that and slowly goes into depression- doesn't she?
The sudden optimistic ending clashes with this deeper realisation. But maybe, there was no other way. Nice article, btw.
1. This is not a general remark
1. This is not a general remark applicable to everybody. It is an attempt to see things the way Delphine might see it.
2. Delphine is in a state of sexual anxiety in as much as she needs a man but is frightened of the hurt that men may cause her.
3. Delphine's superstition functions, of course, also as a narrative device but in Rohmer's films there are are always contradictory aspects to a person that have not been resolved, that even resist resolving. This is where Rohmer's kind of film is different from the kind of 'psychological' film that Hollywood offers - or even something that a French director like Claude Sautet might do.
I have three questions. 1. Why do
I have three questions.
1. Why do you say 'can there be anything more depressing than going with one's family'?
2. Why did Delphine run away from socializing with the guy at the bar if she wanted company so desperately?
3. Her superstition about the colour green and the green ray later on, simply appear as a narrative device to resolve her story. It's very difficult to believe that someone like Delphine who thinks so deeply and clearly understands more than her peers, (which becomes a hindrance in her efforts to socialize too), can give herself upto stray cards lying on the road or shop names, (even in despair).
I am provoked by Prottusha to add some
I am provoked by Prottusha to add some more remarks about the complexity of the world and experience imparted by it. If you look at literature (since there was no cinema before 1900) you will find that great works of literature were once produced by people who were very young. Georg Buchner who wrote Woyzeck died in 1837 when only 24. This would have been impossible in the 20th century when great works of literature were produced by much older people. It would seem therefore that with the world becoming more complex, people take much longer to become 'adults' in terms of experience.
Cinema only appears to depart from this because films like Citizen Kane and Battleship Potemkin were produced by men in their twenties. But these films are only great in terms of their formal innovations and are not 'mature' in terms of the human experience they testify to. Both are, essentially, the somewhat shallow works of precocious young people. For the profound/ deep/mature works of cinema in terms of content, one looks to filmmakers who were productive later in life.
1. Being preoccupied with a single
1. Being preoccupied with a single character is not being 'self-indulgent'. If this is self-indulgent so should literature be that preoccupies itself with one person. Literature is full of great instances where the entire focus in one person. 'Self-indulgent' is the author placing himself (or his alter-ego) at the center of the film. By this reckoning, the Tarkovsky of The Sacrifice is 'self-indulgent' while the Tarkovsky of Andrei Rublev is not. Being preoccupied with a single person is a legitimate way of exploring human motivation as long as there is no identification with the protagonist. Rohmer is always coolly distant towards Delphine.
2. I think the young today are worse off as far as experience with people is concerned perhaps because they don't read as much. Literature forces you to reflect about people in ways that cinema does not because cinema (which is only capable of looking at surfaces) does not have access to the inner self. There can be no film equivalent to what Dostoyevsky provides with regard to understanding people. But I think Rohmer would have been difficult to someone 20 years old even in the age when literature was the dominant mode of entertainment rather than film. 'Experience' with people involves observation (noticing the gesture), hypothesis (what s/he could be meaning), testing hypothesis (through a directed response) and then predicting behavior in individual cases several times before one can be confident. Learning to do this takes a long time.
"Rohmer is not a difficult filmmaker
"Rohmer is not a difficult filmmaker intellectually but understanding his films requires some experience with people. This is perhaps why young persons find it difficult to respond to his films, which - because of their inability to read gestures - they find too full of silences and aimless conversation."
While I wholeheartedly agree with the first statement; you seem to be imagining the response that young people might have towards the film. The ability to read gestures depends on one's observation and experience but may not be so directly proportional to age. Since living naturally becomes more complex as time wears on, don't you think it might be possible for young people to be more perceptive than they were two or three decades back?
I don't know why but it seems to me
I don't know why but it seems to me that the technique Rohmer adopts can only be true as long as he is simply observing transactions between people from a distance, (which would include reading body language, gestures etc). But, in order to do this, the filmmaker needs to distribute his attention equally between all characters, like in 'My Night at Maud's' perhaps. I personally felt that this is where Green Ray was left far behind his other films because he seems so involved in Delphine that except in the garden party sequence, there is really no one in the film but her! But maybe, this was needed to evoke her loneliness, the 'noise inside her head' as you say........ but it also makes the 'story' and the minor characters surrounding her seem fake - especially at the optimistic ending which feels forced. It's like she is the only real person that comes through the film with her emotions - and the rest of the story doesn't matter. Isn't that a tad self-indulgent?
Despite my doubts though, I agree that the film is 'great' in a few sequences, especially the ones with Delphine in the field or at the crowded beach.