News

The Max Holiday 2024 collection That Time of Year is now live on the streaming service. The collection will serve as the hub for holiday content, showcasing an extensive selection of series, films, and more, guaranteed to bring joy and cheer to viewers during the festive season.

The That Time of Year collection kicks off the festivities today by spotlighting themed curations like “Comfort & Joy,” “Families We’re Thankful For” and “Season of Romance,” featuring new Max Original film Sweethearts (debuting Nov. 28) and others, making it seamless for subscribers to discover holiday classics and new favorites on Max.

On top of celebrating the 20th anniversary of Polar Express, viewers can also dive into nostalgic fan favorite films such as A Christmas Story, Elf, Holiday Harmony, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and ageless holiday classics like A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Story, A Carol for Another Christmas, Meet Me In St. Louis (Dec.

‘That Time of Year’ 2024 on Max

Max is celebrating the winter holidays with the “That Time of Year” collection, a special page featuring selected holiday films and series. The streamer’s also bringing back its special Yule log collection, with the 2024 selection including “World of Westeros Dragon Egg Yule Log,” “Harry Potter: Fireplace,” and “A Very Merry Rickmas Yule Log.”

2024’s been a tough year so holiday favorites Elf, A Christmas Story, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation will help take our minds off the world. Max’s lineup also includes the classic holiday films A Christmas Carol, A Carol for Another Christmas, Meet Me In St. Louis, and The Shop Around the Corner. And beginning November 29, the streamers highlighting favorite holiday episodes of Friends, Abbott Elementary, Young Sheldon, and The Big Bang Theory.

Max’s “That Time of Year” Highlights:

Holiday Essentials

8-Bit Christmas (2021)

A Carol for Another Christmas (1964)

A Christmas Carol...

Streaming now in various virtual cinemas in new restorations, Éric Rohmer’s “Tales of the Four Seasons,” the last of his three major film cycles, offers a fresh chance to consider the methods of one of cinema’s most quietly perceptive artists. Compared to his “Six Moral Tales” and “Comedies and Proverbs,” films that probed the strident yet misplaced confidence of young people as they attempt to find their place in the world, the “Tales of the Four Seasons” found Rohmer—70 years old the year that the first film in the series, 1990’s A Tale of Springtime, premiered—turning his attentions to middle-aged characters.

Perhaps for that reason, this is the most narratively driven cycle in Rohmer’s oeuvre, focusing on characters who may still show flashes of impertinence but generally have a far more solid grasp of self than the pseudo-intellectuals and flighty dreamers of his earlier work. This...

Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacques Perrin to be posthumously honoured with special screenings.

The American French Film Festival (formerly Colcoa, will honour producer and CG Cinéma founder Charles Gillibert at its 2022 edition.

Gillibert, the former mk2 executive, who has worked with Olivier Assayas, Xavier Dolan and Abbas Kiarostami, is part of the festival’s Focus On The Producer strand.

He will travel to Los Angeles for the October 10-16 event and present a restored version of Jean Eustache’s 1973 classic The Mother And The Whore. Gillibert produced the 4K restored version, which will receive its Los Angeles premiere at the festival.

The Mother And The Whore...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

The Fever (Maya Da-Rin)

The Fever, director-cum-visual artist Da-Rin’s first full-length feature project, puts a human face to a statistic that hardly captures the genocide Brazil is suffering. This is not just a wonderfully crafted, superb exercise in filmmaking, a multilayered tale that seesaws between social realism and magic. It is a call to action, an unassuming manifesto hashed in the present tense but reverberating as a plea from a world already past us, a memoir of sorts. – Leonardo G. (full review)

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

French New Wave

Dive into one of the most fertile eras of moving pictures with a new massive 45-film series on The Criterion Channel dedicated to the French New Wave. Highlights include Le...

Distributor, Kinology reunite after Oscar-nominated Mustang.

Cohen Media Group has picked up all North American rights from Kinology to actress Aurélie Saada’s feature directorial debut Rose starring Françoise Fabian.

The film received its world premiere inat Locarno Film Festival in August and centres on a 78-year-old woman who has just lost her husband of more than 50 years. Devastation gives way to a strong desire to live life to the full even though the woman’s newfound joie de vivre threatens to upset the family balance.

The cast includes Aure Atika, Grégory Montel, Damien Chapelle, Pascal Elbé and Mehdi Nebbou.

American cartoonist Adrian Tomine uses the graphic novel to do what that other form of literature — the standard gray-words-on-white-paper short story — simply hasn’t been able to achieve. Like any writer, he can go inside his characters’ heads, taking the X-ray of their most private insecurities and rendering it visible to the reader. “Is there a term for being paranoid about being paranoid?” asks the young woman in “Amber Sweet,” who is not the internet porn star of the story’s title but realizes that others see a resemblance and starts to worry that it’s ruining her life.

Not limited by words, Tomine can also show people’s faces, examining the way their expressions and body language change across a sequence of frames — revealing and concealing what they’re really feeling. These latter tools bring the medium far closer to cinema than the written word and may explain why...

If you’re a fan of what is referred to as the French New Wave, then you’re likely familiar with the works of Éric Rohmer. Breaking out in the late-‘60s with his Academy Award-nominated feature, “My Night at Maud’s,” Rohmer went on to become one of the most influential filmmakers in French cinema. And now, Film Forum and Janus Films are working with Films du Losange to provide fans a chance to look at new restorations of his iconic “Tales of the Four Seasons” film series.

Continue reading ‘Tales Of The Four Seasons’ Trailer: Éric Rohmer’s Quartet Of Features Returns With New Restorations at The Playlist.

Aure Atika, Grégory Montel, Damien Chapelle, Pascal Elbé and Mehdi Nebbou likewise star in the cast of this Silex Films and Germaine Films production, distributed by Apollo. Shot in Paris between 2 November and 15 December, Rose, the debut feature film by Aurélie Saada (who forms one half of musical duo Brigitte) is now in post-production. Gracing the cast is seasoned actress Françoise Fabian, Aure Atika, Grégory Montel (known for his role as Gabriel in the series Call My Agent! and recently at his best in...

Mubi's series Éric Rohmer: Comedies and Proverbs is now showing in many countries around the world.A devout Catholic and staunch cine-moralist, a director of marvelous consistency and constant reinvention, a miser whose unfashionably talky films turned a consistent profit well into his old age, a committed environmentalist and covert neo-royalist: Éric Rohmer developed, over the course of his storied career, a variety of reputations—often distorted, always encouraged. But if one feels that the great French director’s apparent contradictions and personal moral codes cannot so easily be summed up, this is only apropos, for his cinema conveys a sense of the world as too mysterious and variegated and unpredictable to accommodate our attempts at comprehending it—even, or especially, through fiction. Indeed, Rohmer’s deceptively spare cinematic practice constitutes a veritable confrontation with the multifarious materials of daily life, grounding its philosophical insight and sense of...

Éric Rohmer was notoriously secretive about his personal life, giving alternate birth names, birth cities, and birth dates. But according to biographers Antoine de Baecque and Noël Herpe, Rohmer was actually born Maurice Joseph Henri Schérer, in Tulle, on March 21, 1920. Whatever the truth, such resolute devotion to privacy reflected the exclusive and rigorous nature of Rohmer’s working life as well. Often going against the grain of his early French New Wave contemporaries, and from there enjoying a similar autonomy and singularity within the sphere of international cinema, Rohmer directed distinctive films most aligned—emphatically and productively—with his own filmography. Maintaining a remarkable dedication to consistent themes, dramatic interests, and, in nearly all cases, a comparable formal approach, Rohmer placed the nuanced behavior of the individual at the fore of all his work. Above: Le Signe du lionSteeped in studies of history, literature, and philosophy, Rohmer arrived at his burgeoning cinephile comparatively late.

Guest reviewer Lee Broughton returns with a review of a previously hard to find Gallic Spaghetti Western. Filmed in the Dolomites mountain range and primarily existing as a vehicle for the French rock ‘n’ roll singer Johnny Hallyday, this might well be Corbucci’s best looking Western. The respected French actresses Francoise Fabian and Sylvie Fennec bring a noticeable touch of class to a show that ends with wide shots of dozens of butt naked backsides.

The Specialists

Region B Blu-ray

Eureka Entertainment

1969 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 104 min. / Gli Specialisti, Drop Them or I’ll Shoot / Street Date May 18, 2020 / £14.99

Starring: Johnny Hallyday, Francoise Fabian, Gaston Moschin, Mario Adorf, Sylvie Fennec, Gino Pernice, Angela Luce, Serge Marquand, Gabriella Tavernese, Andres Jose Cruz, Christian Belaygue, Stefano Cattarossi.

Cinematography: Dario Di Palma

Film Editor: Elsa Armanni

Production Designer: Riccardo Domenici

Original Music: Angelo Francesco Lavagnino

Written by Sergio Corbucci and Sabatino Ciuffini

Produced by Edmond Tenoudji,...

From September 16 through 29, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be screening new restorations of all six films that make up Eric Rohmer's Moral Tales: The Bakery Girl of Monceau, Suzanne’s Career, My Night at Maud's, La collectionneuse, Claire's Knee and Love in the Afternoon. More goings on: Work by Curt McDowell and Tom Rubnitz, Derek Jarman's Will You Dance With Me?, David Miller's Sudden Fear with Joan Crawford in New York; The Monkees and Guillermo del Toro in Los Angeles; Rouben Mamoulian at Harvard; art inspired by Wes Anderson's films in San Francisco; remembering Abbas Kiarostami in Toronto; and a Mohsen Makhmalbaf series in London. » - David Hudson...

From September 16 through 29, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will be screening new restorations of all six films that make up Eric Rohmer's Moral Tales: The Bakery Girl of Monceau, Suzanne’s Career, My Night at Maud's, La collectionneuse, Claire's Knee and Love in the Afternoon. More goings on: Work by Curt McDowell and Tom Rubnitz, Derek Jarman's Will You Dance With Me?, David Miller's Sudden Fear with Joan Crawford in New York; The Monkees and Guillermo del Toro in Los Angeles; Rouben Mamoulian at Harvard; art inspired by Wes Anderson's films in San Francisco; remembering Abbas Kiarostami in Toronto; and a Mohsen Makhmalbaf series in London. » - David Hudson...

This time on the podcast, Scott is joined by David Blakeslee to discuss Eric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s.

About the film:

In the brilliantly accomplished centerpiece of Rohmer’s “Moral Tales” series, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis, one of the great conflicted figures of sixties cinema. A pious Catholic engineer in his early thirties, he lives by a strict moral code in order to rationalize his world, drowning himself in mathematics and the philosophy of Pascal. After spotting the delicate, blonde Françoise at Mass, he vows to make her his wife, although when he unwittingly spends the night at the apartment of the bold, brunette divorcée Maud, his rigid ethical standards are challenged. A breakout hit in the United States, My Night at Maud’s was one of the most influential and talked-about films of the decade.

Subscribe to the podcast via RSS or in iTunes

Buy The...

Subtle irony, minimal plot – and plenty of couples debating the meaning of love. This summer's cinema has all gone a bit Eric Rohmer. So why do today's directors love the French auteur?

After a handful of writers happened to publish novels that depicted Henry James as a character, or paid homage to his work, David Lodge – who was one of them – christened 2004 "the year of James". In the same spirit, it could be said that this is the summer of Eric Rohmer. Some of the season's most prominent films, including Frances Ha, Before Midnight, and Exhibition (which recently opened the Locarno film festival), show the influence of the French director, who died in 2010, and whose lithe and playful work extended the possibilities of a certain kind of small-scale, psychologically curious, dialogue-led drama.

Though Rohmer's name has been invoked whenever films include anything other than exploding fireballs and blood-drenched zombies, it's...

Time Out has put its heart on its sleeve and shouted its Brief Encounter infatuation from the rooftops. Will you join them in their lovebombing of the 68-year-old classic? Or have your tastes in romantic movies moved on?

Sam played it again, now it's our turn to plug in the turntable and petition you once more for your top romance films of all time. The peg? Time Out's 100 Most Romantic Films of all Time poll, which has been announced today, and which names Brief Encounter as the title most likely to get your heart a-flutter.

But by our reckoning, the Time Out folk are cruising for a bruising; when we came to the same conclusion three years ago, the readers felt we'd done them wrong, and suggested Casablanca was Mr Right when it came to romantic movies.

Do you feel the same? Has your taste for gin joints endured over the past three years?...

The octogenarian French actors Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant discuss their roles in Michael Haneke's Palme d'Or-winning film – and reveal their problem with Cannes

The last time we see Emmanuelle Riva in Amour, she's lying pale and lifeless on a double bed, petals strewn about her head, the lights turned down low and the shutters closed. The last time we see Jean-Louis Trintignant, he's the walking wounded, racked by grief and barely there. Michael Haneke's acclaimed new picture offers such an unflinching portrait of the grubby business of dying – focusing on the final days of an elderly French couple – that it precludes all talk of second acts or miracle cures. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, there's no such thing as a happy ending.

All of which makes it curious to find the film's stars abruptly reunited in the airy limbo of a Paris hotel, just south of the Arc de Triomphe.

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Green Ray is playing on Mubi UK starting today through December 5.

Smitten by a viewing of Eric Rohmer's 1972 film, Love in the Afternoon, French actress and filmmaker Marie Rivière felt compelled to write the director a letter expressing her fondness of the film and offering her professional services. By 1978, she had been given a small role in Perceval, the director's minimalist take on Chrétien de Troyes's 12 century romantic text. Rivière was later given an expanded role in 1981's The Aviator's Wife, the first entry in Rohmer's six-film cycle of Comedies & Proverbs. By 1986, Rivière was called upon to play Delphine in the director's semi-improvised masterpiece, The Green Ray, a film whose form and content innovatively draws upon the actor's personal experiences and fragile emotional state at the time. Such was her connection with Rohmer and his work,...

Dan Sallitt's new film, The Unspeakable Act, marks the return of an underseen, major American filmmaker (long esteemed as one of the superior cinema critics writing in English, often here at The Notebook) with a feature which surely ranks among the richest works of the last several years.

Additionally, the new Sallitt film introduces the world to Tallie Medel, a performer whose intellect, emotive capacity, and force of persona place her in the outstanding category of such ascendant figures as Greta Gerwig and Kate Lyn Sheil while outlining a contour of being, a persuasion, that are hers alone.

The Unspeakable Act has its New York premiere as part of BAMcinemaFest on Sunday, June 24th, and its international premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Friday, June 29th, with three screenings at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival to follow in July.

The conversation below took place over email across the last two months.

Michael Haneke’s most intimate film in nearly a quarter-century, “Amour” relates the tragic final months in a relationship with at least six decades’ worth of history, as a concerned French husband cares for his increasingly irritable wife in the wake of two debilitating strokes. Considering Haneke’s confrontational past, this poignantly acted, uncommonly tender two-hander makes a doubly powerful statement about man’s capacity for dignity and sensitivity when confronted with the inevitable cruelty of nature. Acquired by Sony Pictures Classics before Cannes, this autumnal heart-breaker should serve arthouse-goers well — not for first dates, but for those who’ve long since lost count.

With the exception of a single early scene in which retired music teachers Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) attend the concert of a former pupil, “Amour” takes place entirely within the protective cocoon of their Parisian apartment, where the couple lives comfortably surrounded by books,...

"Though Éric Rohmer's breakthrough film stateside was the lustrous black-and-white, winter-set My Night at Maud's (1969), the New Wave architect may be cinema's greatest chronicler of the summer vacation," suggests Melissa Anderson in the Voice. "Among the director's many holiday-set movies, Pauline at the Beach (1983) and A Summer's Tale (1996) explore both the languid pleasures and the romantic anguish of time off during the hottest season. Rohmer's 1986 masterpiece (being re-released with its original French title, which translates as 'The Green Ray'), Le Rayon Vert centers on those themes, too, but delivers something much richer: an absorbing, empathic portrait of a complex woman caught between her own obstinacy and melancholy."

"As Delphine, the lonely but defiant Paris secretary at the center of Le Rayon Vert, Marie Rivière creates an emotionally rich portrait of a young woman disappointed in love who transfers her energies into an anxious quest for the ideal summer vacation.

The French New Wave is not so new any more, but it has had a resurgence with the DVD issue of films from Agnès Varda's real-time Cleo from 5 to 7 to Eric Rohmer's classic morality tale My Night with Maud, via two suspense-filled volumes of Claude Chabrol thrillers and one collection of Alain Resnais's dissections of love.

The Rohmeresque English title seems to be offering a cross between Love in the Afternoon and My Night With Maud, but the French title, La tête en friche, means something like "the fallow mind", and refers to the middle-aged odd-jobman Germain (Gérard Depardieu), who strikes up an acquaintance in the square of a small French town with the 95-year-old Marguerite (the nonogenarian Gisèle Casadesus), a former international civil servant. A bloated giant in dungarees, more hulk than hunk, with low self-esteem and barely literate, he looks as if he could anchor a zeppelin. She's articulate, highly intelligent, frail, and looks as if a sharp breeze could send her floating away. Touchingly, their growing friendship centres on books and words – Marguerite's subtle love of them, Germain's inquiring wonder about them – and the first text is Camus's La Peste, which she reads to him. Gradually, if somewhat factitiously, his life is transformed through the experience,...

Our favorite Austrian director has been toying with a new project lately, but the usually authoritative filmmaker has been waffling a bit this time. After winning the Palme D'Or for the black-and-white intro to fascism "The White Ribbon," Michael Haneke announced that he would reunite with great French thespian Isabelle Huppert ("The Piano Teacher," "Time of the Wolf") and French icon Jean-Louis Trintignant (Bertolucci's "The Conformist," Eric Rohmer's "My Night at Maud's," Claude Chabrol's "Les Biches" to name just a few classics) in a brutal-sounding story about the agony of aging titled "These Two." Excitement rose, but then quickly deflated:…...

This list of all-time greats will no doubt have some readers flinging their cappuccinos in disgust. Which choices put the sin in cineaste?

There will be blood. Today's list, more than any other in our series of seven guides to the 25 best films in each genre, is guaranteed to ruffle feathers and provoke punch-ups, even of the online kind. As my colleague Michael Hann wrote yesterday in the action blogpost thread, we didn't intend it to be so: we'd have liked 21 supplements so every genre could be given the space and respect they all undoubtedly deserve. But sadly we could only stretch to seven, hence a few mash-ups, like the one today (kudos to Jason Solomons for an admirable wrangle of a definition from our picks).

So: how much of a triumph or a travesty is the final list? Myself, I'm unconvinced The Graduate should be that high (more of...

Michel Deville can't, or shouldn't, be considered forgotten, can/should he? He's still alive, and his last film was as recent as 2005 (Un fil à la patte, with Emanuelle Beart). Among his past works available with English subtitles are moderately acclaimed minor classics like On a volé la Joconde (The Mona Lisa Has Been Stolen, 1966), Death in a French Garden (1985), Le paltoquet (1986) and La lectrice (1988)—the last three made back-to-back in the eighties during Deville's hottest period internationally. Although it's hard to figure out how the same filmmaker could be responsible for the variety of Deville's work, which ranges from deadly serious political drama to quirky slapstick. Amid this confusion of disparate styles, Deville tends to disappear the more intently one looks for him.

And certainly we can't consider Francoise Fabian a forgotten star, can we? She too is still alive and is still working solidly, and her credits include...

As an end-of-summer treat, the Film Society of Lincoln Center offers up a comprehensive retrospective of Eric Rohmer, the founding father of the French New Wave. The next best thing to spending the summer in France is diving into the oeuvre of the most quintessentially French of all filmmakers, Eric Rohmer. On the 60th anniversary of the French New Wave, this comprehensive retrospective includes every Rohmer feature film, the U.S. premiere of his 1980 TV film Catherine de Heilbronn, and in person appearances by key Rohmer collaborators. This program is a fitting tribute to the master Rohmer, who died in January at the age of 89. The Collector Rohmer came to prominence in the late '60s and early '70s with a series of films known as Six Moral Tales, four of which were made with his longtime collaborator, the brilliant cinematographer Nestor Almendros: The Collector, My Night At Maud's,...

Jason Solomons talks to The Thorn Birds actor turned writer and director Rachel Ward about her film Beautiful Kate, a tale of sibling loss and sexual transgression in the Australian outback.

Next up we have film writer Demetrious Matheou, discussing his book The Faber Book of New South American Cinema and the challenges of programming a season of South American cinema at London's BFI.

Xan Brooks then steps into the pod to review Catherine Zeta-Jones in Rebound, Andy Garcia in City Island, Sicilian epic Baaria and the re-issue of Eric Rohmer's My Night At Maud's.

Jason SolomonsXan BrooksJason Phipps...

Rome -- The Ischia Film Festival will host a special homage to iconic French New Wave director Eric Rohmer at this year's event, organizers said Friday.

Rohmer, who died in Paris two months short of his 90th birthday in January, was nominated for an Oscar for "Ma nuit chez Maud" (My Night at Maud's) in 1971.

But he is probably best known for a prolific career that lasted nearly 60 years -- he was nominated for a Golden Lion in Venice as recently as 2007, for "Les amours d'Astree et de Celadon" (Romance of Astrea and Celadon), making him one of a small handful of directors nominated for Venice's top prize after already receiving the festival's lifetime achievement award, which Rohmer won in 2001.

Earlier, the Ischia festival announced it would honor actor George Clooney for his work in "The American," which was filmed in the earthquake-stricken Italian region of Abruzzo.

The Ischia festival,...

To celebrate its 20th Anniversary, it appears as though the Tiff Cinematheque is set to pull out all the stops.

According to Criterion, the Tiff, formerly known as the Cinematheque Ontario, will be bringing out a rather superb and cartoonishly awesome summer schedule, that will include films ranging from Kurosawa pieces, to films from Pier Paolo Pasolini. Other films include a month long series dedicated to James Mason, Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, a tribute to Robin Wood, and most interesting, a retrospective on the works of one Catherine Breillat.

Personally, while the Kurosawa, Pasolini, and Rohmer collections sound amazing, the Breillat series is ultimately the collective that I am most interested in. Ranging from films like the brilliant Fat Girl, to the superb and underrated Anatomy of Hell, these are some of the most interesting and under seen pieces of cinema of recent memory, and are more than...

Updated through 1/18.

"Eric Rohmer, a pioneer of the French New Wave which transformed cinema in the 1960s," reports Reuters. "He was 89." As in the barrage of other first reports hitting the wires, the milestones are just touched on now, an outline to be fleshed out over the coming days. And weeks. And years. Born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer in Nancy on April 4, 1920; first international acclaim with Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night at Maud's), nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay in 1969; founding La Gazette du Cinema with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette in 1950; editorship of Cahiers du Cinéma; the last film, Les amours d'Astree et de Celadon (The Romance of Astree and Celadon) in 2007.

"A former novelist and teacher of French and German literature, Mr Rohmer emphasized the spoken and written word in his films at a time when tastes - thanks in no small part to his...

One of the great masters of the French New Wave his no longer with us. Eric Rohmer passed away Monday at the age of 89. Rohmer was known for making movies about young, modern French people who fall in love and talk and talk and talk, spurring the infamous comment that his films were like "watching paint dry." But the secret of Rohmer is that, even though his characters are smart and educated and know a little something about human nature, they can't help themselves from succumbing to feelings of love and lust and jealousy, no matter how many words they use or how often they try to intellectually justify themselves.

That duality worked in almost all of Rohmer's films, which he tended to direct in specific groups. His "Six Moral Tales" is perhaps the most well-regarded, including La Collectionneuse (1967), My Night at Maud's (1969), Claire's Knee (1970) and Love in the Afternoon...

Idiosyncratic French film-maker who was a leading figure in the cinema of the postwar new wave

In Arthur Penn's intelligently unconventional private eye thriller Night Moves (1975), Gene Hackman's hero – who finds the mystery he faces as unfathomable as his personal relationships – is asked by his wife whether he wants to go to an Eric Rohmer movie. "I don't think so," he says. "I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry."

Behind that exchange lies a jab at ­Hollywood's mistrust of any film-maker, especially a French one, who neglects plot and action in favour of cerebral exploration, metaphysical conceit and moral nuance. The Dream Factory, after all, had proved through trial and error that cinema is cinema, literature is ­literature, and the twain shall meet only provided the images rule, not the words.

Of the major American film-makers, perhaps only Joseph Mankiewicz allowed his scripts,...

The French director's movies were quintessentially studenty - in the best possible sense

Eric Rohmer's death at the age of 89 is a reminder of the incredible energy, tenacity and longevity of France's great nouvelle vague generation. Rohmer had released his last film only last year, the sublimely unworldly pastoral fantasy Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon (The Romance of Astrea and Celadon): a gentle, reflective movie, of course, but by no means lacking in energy or wit. And, meanwhile, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol – at the respective ages of 79, 81, 81 and 79 – are all still with us, all nursing projects.

Rohmer came from the New Wave tradition of critic-turned-director; he was a former editor of Cahiers du Cinéma, and became the distinctively romantic philosopher of the New Wave and the great master of what was sometimes called "intimist" cinema: delicate, un-showy movie-making about not especially startling people,...

Eric Rohmer, the French New Wave icon who specialized in films about young love, died yesterday in Paris. He was 89. His work included "My Night at Maud's" (1969), "Claire's Knee" (1970), "Pauline at the Beach" (1983) and "Chloe in the Afternoon" (1972). His final film, "Romance of Astree and Celadon," appeared in 2007. In 2001, he was given a lifetime-achievement award at the prestigious Venice Film Festival. His 50 or so films, which usually featured nubile French actresses, eschewed action in favor of cerebral conversation and romantic entanglement.

As a repeatedly self-confessed french cinema enthusiast it embarrasses me to admit this but I'm relatively unfamiliar with Eric Rohmer's filmography. I wanted to note his passing here anyway because he's such an icon of the French New Wave. Rohmer was just a few months shy of his 90th birthday when he died earlier today in Paris.

Though I couldn't quite get in synch with Rohmer's recent work (The Lady and the Duke and his last feature Les Amours d'Astrée et de Céladon were the most recent I had seen and both escaped me ...though I adored the finale of the latter), I was quite fond of Pauline à la Plage (Pauline at the Beach) back in the day. It was one of the first handful of French films I sought on on VHS in the late 80s when I decided that French cinema was for me. Merci.

Rohmer's...

Erich Rohmer, the legendary director of many classic French films, is dead at age 89. Rohmer's work was acclaimed for its concentration on character development and long, conversation-driven sequences that sparkled with great dialogue. His two most famous films were released in English-language cinemas under the titles My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee. In praising Rohmer, President Sarkozy said, "Classic and romantic, wise and iconoclastic, light and serious, sentimental and moralistic, he created the 'Rohmer' style, which will outlive him." For more click here...

Award-winning French filmmaker Eric Rohmer has died, aged 89.

Rohmer passed away in Paris on Monday. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, the director's best-known films include My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee. His latest film, Les amours d'Astree et de Celadon, (Romance of Astree and Celadon), was released in 2008.

He was born in Lorraine and relocated to Paris to became a literature teacher and newspaper reporter.

As Gilbert Cordier, he released his first and only novel, Elizabeth, in 1946, and then became a critic and filmmaker.

He also co-wrote an indepth book about the films of Alfred Hitchcock, titled Hitchcock, The First 44 Films.

In 2001, he was awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in Italy for his work in cinema.

Rohmer would have turned 90 in April.

The great French filmmaker Eric Rohmer, who died today in Paris at the age of 89, made more than 50 movies, most of them about people for whom talk was life, as natural and necessary an activity as breathing. A member of that remarkable mid-20th-century group of influential critics and filmmakers known as the French New Wave (with Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette among its legendary members), Rohmer was the one whose movies stood still-est, while characters debated whether to act on their desires; as often as not, Rohmer's citizens ended up not doing but examining what they might have done.

Eric Rohmer (Getty)   Eric Rohmer, a member of the French New Wave who directed such films as "My Night at Maud's," "Claire's Knee" and "Chloe in the Afternoon," died Monday in Paris. He was 89. The cause of death was not known.

"Night at Maud's" (1969) garnered an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film and best screenplay. His "The Marquise of O" won the Special Jury Prize at the 1976 Festival de Cannes.

Rohmer also wrote and directed "Pauline at the Beach" (1983) and "Full Moon in Paris" (1984). "Paris" actress Pascale Ogier won the best actress prize at the Venice International Film Festival, and the film captured a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.

With a background in journalism, Rohmer's aesthetic bases were literary, not film. His ambition was, reportedly, to be the Honore de Balzac of film.

Rohmer was editor in chief of Cahiers du Cinema from 1956-63. He broke from...

Eric Rohmer, the French New Wave exile whose My Night at Maud's earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign-Language Film in 1969, died today in Paris. He was 89. Along with Maud's, Rohmer is especially famous for his subsequent "moral tales" Claire's Knee and Chloe in the Afternoon, the latter of which Chris Rock remade in 2007 as I Think I Love My Wife. More film cycles and series followed in the decades hence, winding down in 2007 also with The Romance of Astree and Celadon. His specific cause of death was not immediately disclosed. Two's enough for today, God; we'll keep the rest of our filmmakers for now, if You don't mind. [THR]...

French arthouse filmmaker Eric Rohmer has died at the age of 89, his production house confirmed today. Born Maurice Scherer in 1920, he directed the critically-lauded Four Seasons and was an instrumental figure in the post-war new wave cinema movement, completing 24 films over a career that lasted 50 years. Rohmer's most notable ventures included the Six Moral Tales series. Third in the franchise, 1969's My Night at Maud's propelled (more)...

Paris - Eric Rohmer, a pioneer of the French "New Wave" which transformed cinema in the 1960s, has died, his production house said on Monday. He was 89.Les Films du Losange, a company that produced his movies, said Rohmer died in Paris on Monday. The cause of death was not known.Rohmer directed such films as "My Night at Maud's" (Ma Nuit Chez Maud), "Claire's Knee" ("Le Genou de Claire") and "Chloe in the Afternoon" (L'Amour l'apres-midi")."My Night at Maud's" garnered an Oscar nomination for best foreign-language film and best screenplay.His "Die Marquie von O" won the Special Jury Prize at the 1976 Festival de Cannes.Rohmer also directed "Pauline at the Beach" and "Full Moon in Paris," whose lead actress Pascale Ogier won the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival. It won a Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.With a background in journalism,...

The French arthouse film-maker Eric Rohmer has died aged 89, according to his production house. Les Films du Losange said Rohmer, who was a key figure in the postwar French New Wave cinema movement, died in Paris earlier today. The cause of death was not immediately known. Rohmer's best-known films included Tales of Four Seasons, My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee. After the release of his last film, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon, at the Venice film festival in 2007, he said he was considering retirement.

Rohmer debuted in cinema in the early 1950s. In 2001, he was awarded a Golden Lion at the Venice film festival for his body of work.

France

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions...

By Brent Lang

Éric Rohmer, the french "New Wave" director behind such notable films as "Love in the Afternoon" and "My Night at Maud's" is dead, his production house announced on Monday. He was 89.

Over a career that spanned more than four decades, Rohmer was nominated for an Oscar for "Maud's" and won a best film award  at the 1970 San Sebastian Film Festival for "Claire's Knee."

In addi...

This is according to his producer, who told AFP and French 24. Eric Rohmer, the arthouse French filmmaker, screenwriter, and film critic (who was born Maurice Scherer), was 89. One of the key figures of the post-war New Wave cinema movement and an articulate and literate devotee of purism in the moviemaking, Rohmer made 24 films over a period of 50 years. His main works include his cycle of films Six Moral Tales: shot in 1969, the third in the series, Ma Nuit Chez Maud, brought him international recognition. He also was a former editor of influential French film journal Cahiers du [...]...

Michael Haneke is returning to the "aging" project he had begun scripting before The White Ribbon. French sources say that he'll be re-teaming with Isabelle Huppert and has set Jean-Louis Trintignant in the lead role of a man dealing with the notion of a deteriorating, aging body but a youthful mind. - Michael Haneke is returning to the "aging" project he had begun scripting before The White Ribbon. French sources say that he'll be re-teaming with Isabelle Huppert and has set Jean-Louis Trintignant in the lead role of a man dealing with the notion of a deteriorating, aging body but a youthful mind. The untitled project is said to contain a strong musical element and will be produced by Haneke's long-time producer Veit Heiduschka. Filming is set for next year. Trintignant is best known for Z (1969), My Night at Maud's (1969), The Conformist (1970) and one of his last...

MADRID -- San Sebastian Film Festival organizers said Friday they will honor French director, producer and actor Barbet Schroeder with a retrospective of his works at the 54th annual event to run Sept. 21-30. Schroeder "is a moviemaker who has always endeavored to portray the attitudes of his times," the festival said, and hailed some of the films he has directed such as Barfly, Single White Female, Kiss of Death and Reversal of Fortune, for which he received an Oscar nomination. Before turning to directing in the late 1960s, Schroeder founded a company that produced some of Eric Rohmer's earliest works including Claire's Knee, My Night at Maud's and The Collector. Organizers said the films to be shown for the retrospective will be announced later. Past honorees at the festival in northern Spain have included Woody Allen and Bette Davis.