Ma nuit chez Maud (1969)
Directed by Eric Rohmer

Film Review

To bed or nor to bed, that is the profound existential choice that Eric Rohmer lays before us in his six moral tales (contes moraux), of which the best-known and most perfectly constructed is Ma nuit chez Maud, the third in the series.  This was the film that brought Rohmer international recognition (as well as two Oscar nominations) and established him as one of France's leading auteur filmmakers.  Because of his association with François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Claude Chabrol on the review paper Les Cahiers du cinéma, Rohmer is considered one of the leading lights of the French New Wave, although his career only really took off when la Nouvelle Vague was in terminal decline.   Rohmer's films have none of the revolutionary fervour that we associate with the French New Wave.  Instead, they are invariably low-key dialogue-heavy dramas (all too often dismissed as talky romances for intellectuals) which are content merely to explore the complexities of human relationships.  It is the consistency and perceptiveness of Rohmer's work that distinguish it from that of his contemporaries and allowed him to retain a loyal following, in spite of some infantile criticism from those who failed to see the beauty of his art.  The cinema of Eric Rohmer has an irresistible charm for anyone who can appreciate quiet films that explore matters of the heart with insight, poetry and perfectly judged emotional restraint.

Rohmer began his six moral tales in 1963 with two short films, La Boulangère de Monceau and La Carrière de Suzanne.  Ma nuit chez Maud was to have been next but the director instead shot La Collectionneuse (1967), the fourth in the series and Rohmer's first excursion into colour.  Ma nuit chez Maud followed, and the series concluded with Le Genou de Claire (1970) and L'Amour l'après-midi (1972).  In each of these films, a man is confronted with a stark moral dilemma: should he remain faithful to the woman he thinks he is in love with, or should he allow himself to be tempted by another woman who offers immediate gratification but perhaps nothing else?   In Ma nuit chez Maud, the dilemma is posed in reference to Blaise Pascal's famous wager.  The latter states that even if the likelihood of the desired outcome is minuscule, you should always bet on this outcome if you expect the rewards to be worth it.

The central irony of the film is that the main character Jean-Louis is a die-hard Catholic who has an almost psychotic loathing for Pascal, presumably because his wager has been used to provide the most cynical argument for believing in God.  (If you believe, you gain everything if God exists and lose nothing if he does not; if you do not believe, you gain nothing in either case.  Hence, it is logical to believe in God.)  Despite his antipathy for Pascal, Jean-Louis ends up applying his wager to resolve his moral conundrum - he rejects an easy but meaningless amorous liaison in favour of one that, whilst less likely to end the way he wants it, offers a far greater return.   Just as we should suspect the integrity of those whose belief in the Almighty is based on Pascal's argument, so we scent more than whiff of bourgeois hypocrisy in Jean-Louis' decision to repulse the lubricious seductress Maud in favour of the inhibited Françoise (the latter is, after all, 12 years his junior).

Much of the humour of this film (and there is humour in most of Rohmer's films, if you know where to look) arises from Jean-Louis's moral confusion and pathetic attempts at self-justification.  Early on in the film, he admits that the reason he is a Catholic is because he came from a Catholic family - just after Rohmer has flashed up a quote from Pascal's Pensées which scorns unthinking belief as a kind of delusion intended merely to check our animal passions.  After being out-manoeuvred intellectually by his old friend Vidal, Jean-Louis soon finds himself at the tender mercies of an even greater enemy, the predatory man-eater Maud.  A wiser man, a man with an ounce of sense and moral conviction, would have left the scene long before Maud took down her stockings, slipped under the covers and put her "come hither" routine into overdrive.  Instead, Jean-Louis sticks around and allows his moral confusion to slowly transform him into a quivering pop-eyed eunuch.  Only after he has wrapped himself from head to foot in a bed cover does he feel safe from the she-Devil he is compelled to spend the night with.  Then, once this ordeal is over, Jean-Louis does something even more bizarre.  He goes out and propositions a complete stranger in the street, putting Pascal's wager to the test a second time.  If the woman he accosts slaps him in the face, he loses nothing; if she falls into his arms and swears undying love, it's happy ever after.  (He overlooked the possibility that she might run off to the nearest gendarme and have him thrown into jail for sexual harassment.)   Fortunately, the gods are on Jean-Louis's side and the bet comes off.  Or does it?   Are we to take seriously the film's twee happy ending?  By putting his faith in mathematics rather than instinct, Jean-Louis not only demonstrates his lack of moral fibre, but he may also have sacrificed true love for a bland bourgeois imitation.

Ma nuit chez Maud is not only one of Rohmer's most probing and intelligent films, it is also one of his most visually alluring compositions.  Nestor Almendros's lush black and white photography, which is particularly beautiful in the nocturnal exterior scenes, makes a striking contrast with the sumptuous colour of La Collectionneuse, the director's previous film.  It is strange that Rohmer chose to make all of his subsequent films in colour, because monochrome seems to be so well-suited for his style of cinema, bringing a focus and sharp veracity that colour often tends to diminish.  As in many of the films of the French New Wave, Almendros's black and white photography conveys modernity and sophistication, but here it also serves the story, emphasising the moral ambiguity of the main protagonist and adding immensely to the tension in his scenes with the two women he must choose between.  The superiority of monochrome over colour is apparent in the sequence in which Françoise Fabian makes her sultry seduction of Jean-Louis Trintignant, the most erotic scene of any Rohmer film - and also the funniest.

Film Synopsis

Jean-Louis is a devout Catholic who discovers his ideal partner, an attractive blonde student named Françoise, whilst attending mass one evening.  Although he is certain that Françoise will be his wife, Jean-Louis cannot bring himself to approach her.  He then meets up with an old friend, Vidal, whom he has not seen for 14 years.  Vidal takes Jean-Louis back to the apartment of his current girlfriend, Maud, and the three spend the evening discussing philosophy, religion and love.  As the weather has taken a turn for the worst, Jean-Louis risks a serious accident if he attempts to drive back home, so Vidal persuades him to spend the night in Maud's apartment...