Ma nuit chez maud (My Night at Maud's)

During the turbulent year of 1968, Rohmer shot Ma nuit chez Maud far removed from the Paris May revolt. Set in wintry Clermont-Ferrand, Nestor Almendros’s stunning black-and-white cinematography creates a world of snow, cold and cosy interiors. The film is regarded as Rohmer’s first – and perhaps his absolute – masterpiece and one of cinema’s great ‘talking films’. The Catholic engineer Jean-Louis is torn between the free-spirited, intellectual Maud and the angelic young Christine, whom he sees as his future wife after just one encounter. Long conversations about Pascal, free will, faith, chance and seduction form the core of the film, in which words and body language constantly contradict one another. Rohmer suggests how the erotic and the spiritual are inextricably intertwined. Thanks to the subtle direction and the brilliant performances by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Françoise Fabian, Ma nuit chez Maud offers an ideal introduction to his unique cinematic world.