Today's sad news is that Eric Rohmer has passed away. He was one of the great filmmakers, and he became an addiction. I've seen almost all of his films, and though they are uneven, the complete body of work is a source of constant joy. The first one I saw was L'ami de mon amie (Boyfriends and Girlfriends 1987) and among my favourites are Le rayon vert (The Green Ray 1986) and Conte d'automne (An Autumn's Tale 1998). Rohmer and I seems to have shared the same unconditional love of the sun, and that is probably one reason why he gets to me.
He, like me (and like Jacques Rivette who I wrote about last autumn) also had a great love for the films of Howard Hawks, to the extent that he once wrote in Cahiers du cinéma that "I think that one cannot really love any film if one does not really love the ones by Howard Hawks."
And about his own work, he once wrote: "After all I do not show, I say. I show people who move and speak. That is all I know how to do, that is my true subject."
