The Eric Rohmer Collection (Le Signe du Lion, Le Baoulangere de Monceau, La Carriere de Suzanne) [DVD]

First three films by Eric Rohmer, one of those directors most influental in "The New Wave". Le Signe du lion is at the same time funny, poetic and ironic story of a bohemic musician who hears he has herited a fortune and starts celebrating and lending money. Then he finds out the money has gone to his cousin in Germany. He becomes a drifting hobo in Paris. The irony is that the lower he sinks the happier he becomes.La Boulanger de Monceau and La Carriere de Suzanne are the first two of his Moral Tales. Both have already the same theme as the rest of those tales. To put it shortly: man falls in love with a girl, then loses her, finds a new girl, but finally meets the first girl again and leaves the second. Carriere de Suzanne is a little bit more complicated than the first tale, because there are two men involved and it can be seen as some kind of triangle.

This newly released collection of Eric Rohmer's first full length film, alongside the two shorter films which make up the start of the 'Six Moral Tales' series, is a must-have. All three films sparkle with life, energy and filmmaking skill and imagination, and all three contain plenty of hints of what is to come later in Rohmer's career.My favourite from this selection is probably the shortest of the three films, 'La Boulangere de Monceau (The Girl at the Monceau Bakery)', which presents a typical moral and amorous dilemma which Rohmer revisits many times later in films such as 'A Summer's Tale'. A man in love with more than one woman has to make a choice - but will his eventual love be interested in him? The themes are simple and timeless and in this little gem, about half an hour long, the atmosphere of the streets of Paris in the early 60s is used to great use.If you're a fan of early French New Wave films by Godard, Truffaut and the like, you should give this a go. Anyone who has enjoyed Rohmer's later work ('Tales of the Four Seasons', 'Claire's Knee' etc) will also find a lot to enjoy. The prints of each film are very watchable given their age, and the extras, although not hugely generous, are informative too.

Not a good buy.

To watch this extraordinary genuine Paris atmosphere of the fifties is already a great thing, it made me think in Willi Ronnies or Atget pictures. The stories are like paraboles or little poetic tales with the irony and the wit of Rohmer but differently. You would like more and more...

Rohmer seems to have been a late developer as a filmmaker, these films being his first apart from a 10-minute short included as an extra. He was already 39 when he shot his first feature, Le signe du lion, in 1959, but in many ways it is untypical of his style. It shows an American composer, Pierre Wesselrin, also approaching 40, who thinks he has come into an inheritance, then discovers that he hasn't after all, and slides into destitution during a hot summer in Paris. The first part of the film show him socialising with friends on the back of the good news, and is full of chat that is nevertheless not focused in the way it is in all his later films. As he then wanders the streets alone, the mood shifts and it becomes a picture of solitude, the beauty of Paris by day contrasting with the previous scenes of conviviality, shot by night. The effect is quite surprising, added to by the modern music for solo violin by Louis Saguer, which features prominently. It makes for a superb soundtrack, being a bit like Bartok's solo sonata, and representing the human spirit in the face of adversity - a single thread of great strength that keeps going in spite of everything. It is almost part of a two-panel approach: the aural, set against the visual, which is the stone buildings of Paris, shot in b/w, the bridges, the water ... reflecting on the character from two angles. He is somewhat older than many of Rohmer's figures, and more robust, but it also recalls his later use of the violin in Le rayon vert, and the character's aimless wandering in that film, where vulnerability is more obvious. This early one has a certain detachment, but - also like the later film - a concern with the workings of fate. If it is less satisfying in the end, it is nevertheless one of the greatest documents of Paris in a fiction film, and worth seeing for its unique tone.The other two features are both shorter, but given weight by being the first two of the Six Contes Moraux. Slighter than the more famous ones that followed, they are curiously memorable, no doubt for their truth, although the male perspectives through which they are filtered are less engaging than in many of his later films. La Carriere de Suzanne struck me as the better of the two, getting a lot of detail into its 54 minutes. The two young men are both very good-looking but fall rather short as human beings; however Suzanne herself starts to seem more and more appealing as it goes on, leading me to believe in her innocence in a misdemeanour set up with typical Rohmer subtlety towards the end ... You can only hope these boys will improve with age, but in the end the flaws shown are all those one sees in human nature all the time, not to be blamed on Rohmer, whose art shows them so deftly. Somehow in his later films he often manages to show these things while allowing engaging characters to fill the foreground more. The start of this, for me, is L'Amour, l'apres-midi - the sixth of the Contes Moraux - where the male lead is likeable, in spite of being prey to all the temptations. He embodies the dilemma fully, and from the male perspective (in later films it is more usually from a female one), having a heart fully alive to love as well as lust and self-esteem; however the young men in these early shorts are quite far from this. What you do get is Rohmer's feel for truth, shot with his characteristic elegance, both in the images and the text.