My Night at Maud’s (1969)

Ma nuit chez Maud, France, 111 minutes

Director/writer: Eric Rohmer

Photography: Nestor Almendros

Editor: Cecile Decugis

Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Francoise Fabian, Marie-Christine Barrault, Antoine Vitez

I was surprised to find My Night at Maud’s sitting highest among movies by director and writer Eric Rohmer on the big list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? It reminded me of the case of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul topping the aggregated critical roundup for Rainer Werner Fassbinder. They aren’t the first movies I associate with either of those directors, but fair enough. For that matter, Rohmer seems to me to be coming in a little low with Maud’s at #266 nor is he that well represented in the top 1,000 with only three titles (also The Green Ray and Claire’s Knee). On the other hand, I’m not sure what if anything should come before it—Pauline at the Beach? For one thing, I think of the look of Rohmer pictures as vibrant color flooded with light. My Night at Maud’s, in contrast, is a dreary black and white in a year when color was more the norm, even for low-budget affairs.

My Night at Maud’s struck me as dreary in other ways beyond the gray color palette. It exists somewhere between the heartbeats of the birth control pill and the next wave of feminism and features college dorm types of discussions about religion among Protestants, Catholics, and atheists in their 30s—not entirely convincing to me. Bachelors and marriage and divorce are well chewed over. The ‘60s are raging outside but you wouldn’t necessarily know as men’s needs are reduced to preferences of body types and everyone has an opinion about Pascal. Our guy, Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant), is 34 and a practicing Catholic, apparently successful in his work, comfortably middle-class or better. He doesn’t know it about himself yet but, as everyone else around him does know, he prefers blondes, which turns out to be true across the length of the movie.

Maud (Francoise Fabian) is actually a character more or less in this movie which bears her name (Rohmer went to the strategy more than once). She’s a brunette, a professional woman, a pediatrician, going through a divorce with a daughter of about 7. She is freewheeling, freethinking, outspoken, and daring, or relatively so. She would likely be as bewildered as anyone else born in 1933 by today’s ideas about gender, sexuality, and polyamory. She may not be of Hugh Hefner’s world, but certainly she is living in it and has made her accommodations to it.

For me, there are paradoxical comforts in My Night at Maud’s. It may have seemed challenging to convention in the same year that produced Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and gave Midnight Cowboy an X rating, but now it can seem almost quaint and certainly more naïve. The night in question is a chaste one even if lust hangs over it persistently. A man and a woman alone together in a room with a bed was still a highly dangerous situation in 1969. But I happen to know divorce is a good time of life for all-night bull sessions with old friends and new. The picture is set during Christmas week—it’s a snowstorm that keeps Jean-Louis overnight at Maud’s—which is another fine occasion for staying up all night blabbing about the cosmos and fate.

But the sexual tension between Jean-Louis and Maud is too often closer to screwball comedy than any psychological reality. It’s hard to believe. Trintignant and Fabian may have some chemistry, which helps, but more often it can be awkward and cringey, a version of Rock Hudson and Doris Day playing at being a thoughtful look at men and women and the issues that divide and unite them.

Jean-Louis is ultimately shown up as something of a rat, punctilious as he may claim to be about his personal morals. He goes to church a lot but also seems to sin a lot, by his own account, and even so is not particularly honest with himself about it. He picks up with a blonde woman the day after his night with Maud. Though Francoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) is hardly the intellectual equal of Maud—more likely Jean-Louis prefers her because of that—they end up marrying. And Rohmer implicitly seems to understand these dynamics. He’s not making a hero of Jean-Louis. But the feeling is more simply that Jean-Louis is exercising his natural privileges. The movie, including Maud though perhaps not Francoise, seems innocent of feminism and unlikely to accept it when it comes along.

But there is something to Rohmer’s talky approach to filmmaking I always like. Conversation is at the heart of his pictures even when glorious beach scenes in August provide the context. The talk here is a bit pretentious, especially on religion, so I’m not entirely sure why this is considered Rohmer’s best. Most of its ideas about men and women and love seem a little trite and outdated now. It still works as a kind of comfort fare for me, but it makes me think I should get to and/or revisit a few more of his titles sooner rather than later. In the end, by my lights, Rohmer might even be a little underrated by TSPDT.