Film
Seitz, Michael H.
FILM Michael H. Seitz A Hot Summer This has been a pretty good summer for new film releases. No work has more delighted and disarmed me than Eric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach, the third...
...The content of his works is never modish, and though he was co-author of the first seminal book on Hitchcock, Rohmer never seeks to dazzle by cinematic manipulation...
...He is a master, however, at what he does...
...Pauline at the Beach captures the tempo, thoughts, and amatory impulses of the season...
...no other filmmaker so revealingly and subtly represents the enigmatic relationships among human thoughts, choices, and actions...
...Eight years later, a matured and notably more self-possessed "Martin" (Gerard De-pardieu) reappears, and is welcomed back into the village and into the bed of his attractive wife (Nathalie Baye...
...Moreover, severe financing problems have limited Rohmer's output...
...Rohmer's creative range and embrace are limited, and his focus is somewhat narrow...
...Depardieu and Baye give fine performances and the costumes are artful...
...Though this loquaciousness is not likely to appeal to fans of action films, it does generate a dramatic tension of its own: The contradictions between expressed thoughts and actual choices make themselves felt...
...There are few filmmakers, furthermore, whose works provide a greater degree of sheer viewing pleasure...
...Zelig uses real and doctored archival footage and stills of the period, sequences of pseudodocumentary, clips from a fictitious bioflic (Warner Brothers' 1935 film The Changing Man), and imitation home movies...
...The setting for the comedy is a Brittany beach at the end of the summer season, and the group consists of three females and three males of rather ordinary sensibility, ranging in age from fifteen to forty...
...In color inserts, the Zelig phenomenon is discussed by some of today's most eminent cultural critics, including Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow, Bruno Bettleheim, and Irving Howe (who notes that Zelig's craving for assimilation "reflected a great deal of the Jewish experience in America...
...Rohmer's first feature film, Le Signe du Lion (1959), appeared at about the same time as Godard's Breathless and Truffaut's 400 Blows, but it has taken him much longer than most of his New Wave compatriots to establish himself...
...M Zelig Woody Allen, as Leonard Zelig, is pathologically eager "to be like the others...
...Thoughts and actions, it should be added, come to life within a clearly defined setting—a catalyst of sorts...
...As in past Rohmer films, the protagonists rarely stop talking about what is going through their minds...
...Released from San Quentin Prison in 1901 after serving thirty-three years for robbing stagecoaches, the aging Miner was inspired by Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery (1903) to migrate to British Columbia and become Canada's first train robber...
...In Pauline at the Beach, the operative proverb is from Chretien de Troyes: "He who talks too much digs his own grave...
...Heat and Dust The most recent production by the team of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer is based on the latter's novel of East-West encounters in India of the 1920s and then in the 1980s...
...The Grey Fox works a familiar genre in an original way, and Farnsworth, a veteran of more than 300 films as a stuntman, is an engaging presence...
...In some respects a formal tour de force, Zelig is essentially an original social comedy, treated with the wit and sophistication of Allen's best writing for The New Yorker...
...But his work—the "Tales," his two stunning literary adapEric Rohmer's 'Pauline at the Beach': the amatory impulses of summer...
...The action revolves around couplings, attempted couplings, and retreats engendered by misunderstanding...
...So he assumes not only the behavioral characteristics but the physical appearance of those in whose presence he finds himself...
...Martin, a Sixteenth Century peasant, becomes a soldier to escape his responsibilities as a husband and father...
...tations, The Marquise of 0 and Perceval, and the "Comedies"—can now be appreciated as great cinematic achievements...
...The film scrupulously documents the life of this human chameleon in the 1920s and 1930s—his rise to international celebrity status, his tragic fall from favor, and his return to fame...
...The issue is finally resolved before the parliament of Toulouse...
...The film is also visually exciting, making the most of western Canada's expansive and mountainous landscapes...
...No work has more delighted and disarmed me than Eric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach, the third installment in a series that the French filmmaker calls "Comedies and Proverbs...
...They speak almost exclusively of love, but their conception of the emotion differs according to age and situation...
...Rohmer's regular cinematographer, Nestor Al-mentros, relies on the effects of natural summer light, recalling the luminous epiphanies of Claire's Knee and Chloe in the Afternoon...
...Rohmer's series films eschew conventionally structured plots and are realized with seeming artlessness...
...Indeed, throughout his career his style has been marked by classical simplicity...
...But a dispute arises, and some suggest that "Martin" is not the genuine article...
...One critic has characterized the earlier "Six Moral Tales" as "inquiries into the sensibilities and thoughts of a group of people gathered around some modest action...
...An abundance of exotic imagery compensates for the somewhat creaky Victorian narrative found in the 1920s sequences...
...A young English woman (Julie Christie) comes to Satipur in search of the story of her great aunt, a free-spirited romantic who had scandalized British colonial society by running off with a shady Indian...
...The Return of Martin Gere A fascinating dramatic depiction of one of the most perplexing cases in French judicial history...
...Such is the case in the "Comedies," a series that includes The Aviator's Wife and Le Beau Manage...
...And the talk never eclipses the vibrancy of the image, which retains a palpably fresh and seductive quality throughout the film...
...The Grey Fox Latter-day Canadian western, based on the legendary exploits of Bill Miner (Richard Farnsworth...
Vol. 47 • September 1983 • No. 9
