Word: nuits
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...choosing his films and directors. Trintignant, 41, has emerged only in recent years as a superbly subtle technician of the screen. His taut, understated performances have included such diverse characterizations as the driven public prosecutor in Costa-Gavras' Z, the uptight Catholic in Rohmer's Ma Nuit Chez Maud and the intellectual fascist-killer in Bertolucci's The Conformist. Trintignant's acting style is condensed to a prodigious point of thrift in which complex characters are brought to life with extraordinary economy of gesture and expression. "The best actor in the world," he maintains...
...Nuit Chez Maud. Eric Rohmer wrote and directed this drama about the basic choices people make to determine the quality of their lives. Set in a claustrophobic French town and loaded with conversation about Pascal and Catholicism, this movie is so well done that it makes all its points in the camera work and in the performances of Jean-Louis Trintignant and Francoise Fabian. The involved dialogue is merely an added...
...Nuit Chez Maud exists simultaneously on both of these levels and depends on the tension between them, a kind of inverted love story that's interesting mainly for the reasons the love doesn't come off, which are metaphysical, contradictory, and above all, intellectual. A knowledge of Pascal seems important in sorting out patterns of thought, since the sophisticated conversations ("you're more of a Jansenist than I am") are often elliptical, but don't be put off: with Rohmer, as with his New Wave cohorts, academic expertise is neither necessary nor sufficient for understanding his intellectuality. Most...
...narrow milieu does not only limit, however; it also increases the probability of the chance encounters on which the narrative of Ma Nuit Chez Maud is based. Jean-Louis counts on chance. luck. And his luck is good because he scientifically applies his will to it, as when he picks up his wife-to-be with the full intention of marrying her. Comprehending his possibilities and limitations, he can neither renounce the world and become a saint, nor marry Maud. who is a free-thinker. Either way, to want everything or nothing, you've got to be crazy...
Through confusing academic discourse Rohmer leaves you with a murky residue, what Godard has called "a fabric of contradictions" between consciousness and action. Like See You At Mao, Ma Nuit Chez Mand is about "finding the right line" through the chaos, be it political or moral. Both films, however, resist solutions as well. How complete a human clarity is possible remains always questionable. With all his worrying about how to live, about his personal beliefs and his clear conscience, Jean-Louis fails to make an important human perception about the connection between Maud and Francoise, which his scientific outlook...