Lumières Françaises Presents: Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales

July 31–August 6 • The Main Cinema

To celebrate the release of a new translation of French New Wave director Eric Rohmer’s first and only novel, Élisabeth, MSP Film's annual Lumières Françaises showcases Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales at The Main Cinema.

Fifteen years before completing his first feature film—and ten before beginning a transformative editorial stint at Cahiers du cinéma that would usher the journal, and French cinema, into a new era—the man who would become known worldwide as Éric Rohmer published a single novel. Released by Éditions Gallimard alongside the early works of Claude Simon and Marguérite Duras, Élisabeth was part of the first flowering of what would come to be known as the nouveau roman—and was also the “matrix,” as Rohmer himself later put it, of the images, ideas, and formal concerns of his first sequence of films, Six Moral Tales. (courtesy McNally Edition – Six Moral Tales courtesy Janus Films)

A limited number of copies of Élisabeth are available to order here and may be picked up at The Main Cinema after July 24.

ABOUT THE FILM

Though happily married to his adoring wife Hélène, with whom he is expecting a second child, the thoroughly bourgeois business executive Frédéric cannot banish from his mind the multitude of attractive Parisian women who pass him by every day. His flirtations and fantasies remain harmless until Chloé (played by the mesmerizing Zouzou), an audacious, unencumbered old flame, shows up at his office, embodying the first genuine threat to Frédéric’s marriage. The luminous final chapter to Rohmer’s "Moral Tales" is a tender, sobering, and wholly adult affair that leads to perhaps the most overwhelmingly emotional moment in the entire series.