Quotes of the Day

When the French talk about love, it's hard to stop them. And no one should try when the French are speaking in one of the dozens of feature films written and directed by Eric Rohmer. The characters in his films were eloquent, addled, obsessively pursuing a line of romantic rhetoric or analyzing the erotic attraction of a teenager's knee. Applying a wry, professorial tone to the book of love, Rohmer beguiled two generations of art-house denizens. His purchase on their finer fancies began with My Night at Maud's, the 1969 chatfest that swept him into the global spotlight, and ended Jan. 11, with his death in Paris at 89.

Rohmer came to film renown late — he was past 50 by the time My Night at Maud's was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. But he came into film early. Born Jean-Marie Scherer in the province of Lorraine, Rohmer moved to Paris, taught literature, worked as a reporter, wrote a novel. In 1950 he co-founded the Gazette du Cinéma with two other future filmmakers, Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard. Within a few years they — and François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol — were writing for Cahiers du Cinéma, which Rohmer edited from 1956 to 1963. No film magazine was so influential as Cahiers in those years. The young firebrands excoriated the prevailing French cinema and championed Hollywood directors like Howard Hawks, Samuel Fuller, George Cukor and Alfred Hitchcock. (Rohmer and Chabrol co-authored one of the earliest Hitchcock monographs.) Soon, their revolution in criticism spread to the screen. Godard made Breathless, Truffaut The 400 Blows. Their Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) was cresting; its influence would land on many shores.

While his colleagues became directors whose names were dropped at the better cocktail parties in London, New York City and Tokyo, Rohmer trudged along at the magazine and made shorts and feature-length pictures that got little notice. My Night at Maud's changed that. The soufflé-light, dialogue-heavy film — the first to be shown with subtitles in the Cannes festival competition — enchanted audiences with its tale of a man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) committed to one woman (Marie-Christine Barrault) but willing to stay the night with the divorced Maud (Françoise Fabian) just ... talking. After the pyrotechnics of Godard and Truffaut, some wondered if Rohmer had made a film or a radio play. But, as critic Andrew Sarris wisely observed, there's nothing more cinematic than the sight of a man and a woman talking at 3 a.m. in the dark night of the soul. Man and Maud connected with each other, and with the specialized moviegoing world.

More beautiful baubles followed: Claire's Knee and Chloe in the Afternoon in the '70s, Pauline at the Beach and Boyfriends and Girlfriends in the '80s, his Four Seasons quartet — A Tale of Springtime, A Tale of Winter, A Summer Tale, An Autumn Tale — in the '90s and another three features in the 2000s. (He was a late starter who never stopped.) At times Rohmer dipped into the past, for The Marquise of O, Perceval and his final work, Romance of Astree and Celadon, but he's best remembered for his lighter films and their scrupulous devotion to the wiles and smiles of women. He ranked with George Cukor, Ingmar Bergman and Yasujiro Ozu as a director, appreciator and avid anatomizer of the opposite sex. And his actresses were young beguilers who bloomed under his lens.

As light and pleasant as a Rohmer work often was — attractive people falling in love, at least with the idea of love — it was a taste not everyone cared to acquire. Quentin Tarantino, the great enthu-woozy-ast of world cinema, offered this very qualified recommendation of Rohmer's films: "You have to see one of them, and if you kind of like that one, then you should see his other ones. But you need to see one to see if you like it." He makes Rohmer's movies sound less like caviar, more like artichokes. Gene Hackman, in his role as a detective in Arthur Penn's 1975 Night Moves, is even more dismissive. "I saw a Rohmer film once," he says. "It was kind of like watching paint dry."

Actually, it was like watching a master painter apply his brushstrokes to a series of fond character studies. On the palette for Rohmer's prime romantic comedies — he called them "moral tales" — were the cheery pastels of a mythical France where it rarely rains and the sun can make any improvised couple feel warmer. Rohmer was no maker of masterpieces; those require a larger canvas. His films were portraits. They were also essays. Rohmer analyzed what he adored. He could be thought of as a more intellectual John Hughes — not that Rohmer peppered his script with jokes, but both writer-directors often addressed, with a scientist's fascination and a wise uncle's empathy, the fleeting passions of the young.

Creating fables both buoyant and grave, Rohmer had a movie personality hard to describe and harder to forget. Like subtle wines and lingering perfumes, his best films — Maud, Claire, Chloe, the 1994 Rendezvous in Paris — are essences all worth bottling.

• Richard Corliss
• Director Eric Rohmer's career examining the finer points of young love began with 'My Night at Maud's,' the 1969 chatfest that swept him into the global spotlight, and ended Jan. 11, with his death in Paris at 89