Product Description

The film that made eric rohmer an international name. A man thinks he has finally found his perfect match however ends up accidentally spending the night with a sexy divorcee. Studio: Genius Products Inc Release Date: 06/10/2003 Starring: Jean-louis Trintignant Marie-christine Barrault Run time: 110 minutes Rating: Pg Director: Eric Rohmer

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #83622 in DVD
• Brand: Genius
• Released on: 1998-01-14
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 110 minutes

Amazon.com
French director Eric Rohmer, former critic and Cahiers du Cinema editor, created a very special romantic film series around the difficult choices men make when they fall in love with two women called "Six Moral Tales." My Night at Maud's was the third entry, and it was so well received in 1969 that it gave Rohmer international prominence. To this day, it remains Rohmer's masterpiece, a brilliantly insightful and sublime meditation on adult indiscretions. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays a chaste engineer who thinks he's met his soul mate in church (Marie-Christine Barrault), yet winds up accidentally spending the night with the seductive Maud (Francoise Fabian), who is more his intellectual equal. Filmed in stark black and white by Nestor Almendros, this is one of those rare films in which questions about philosophy translate into unexpected answers about the heart. It's slow and methodical, but well worth the experience. --Bill Desowitz

Customer Reviews

YOU SHALL NOT ...
How to find the right words to make you want to discover french author/director Eric Rohmer ? I would lie if I'd say MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S is an action movie. It's not a boring arty work either. Eric Rohmer is a very peculiar case among french directors. He's interested in morals, in the deep psychology of his movies' characters, in literature and philosophical problems. Vast program, rich but not rebarbative at all.

MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S is the third of the six moral tales he shot in the sixties and early seventies. The action takes place in Clermont-Ferrand, in southern France. Jean-Louis Trintignant (leading actor of Lelouch's A MAN AND A WOMAN) is a catholic 34 years old man looking for a girl to marry. Observing a young blonde girl at the Mass celebration, he decides she will be the one.

His friend Antoine Vitez invites him to pass an evening at Françoise "MAUD" Fabian's place. Light dialogs become soon a conversation about the Grace, the Predestination, the Sin and the Faith. Antoine Vitez leaves and let the not-so puritan Trintignant alone with a Maud still chatting and lying in bed almost naked.

Will Trintignant succumb to the charm of Maud or be faithful to the blonde girl he hasn't had the chance to meet yet ? That's the moral point of the movie. MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S is a 1968 movie, shot in black and white with english subtitles you can't remove (!), that has won two Oscars. I sincerely hope you'll have the curiosity to take a look at it since 5 or 6 Rohmer's movies have hit the DVD market these last months, all of them being pure gems. Oh yes ! I forgot. MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S is one of these movies that can deeply change in you the way you approach movies.

Take the risk to consider MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S as a DVD for your library.

My Night With Rohmer
There are few filmmakers whom I can say truly put me in a good mood and Rohmer is one of those filmmakers. What I love about Rohmer's films is the delicacy and the subtleness in them.
"My Night At Maud's" was the third film in Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales". And many see it not only as the best of the six, but, also as Rohmer's best film. And, they have a good case to give it that credit.
To those who are unaware of the story it goes something like this, and I'll try not to reveal any major plot-points.
A young man, Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is searching for the perfect mate. A woman who must share his religious beliefs, which are catholic, and his views of love. He has set quite a high standard for himself, considering it's the "modern world". Where religion doesn't really play a big part in most people lives or at least in the women whom he meets. That is until he meets a beautiful blond,Francoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) in of all places, church! He soon finds himself, along with a friend, Vidal (Antoine Vitez) spending the night at Maud's. A "modern" woman with "modern" views. These two seem to be as different as they come. She is not really what he's looking for and he is too "old-fashion" for her.
What happens afterwards is truly priceless. As Rohmer has made a film that is about as funny as a film could be dealing with sexual morals. It also has some of the "smartest" dialogue I've ever heard. If you've never seen a Rohmer film, this is a wonderful place to start. One of the best French films of all-time and one of the true "classics" in cinema.
"My Night At Maud's" was nominated for two Oscars; "Best Foreign Film" and "Best Screenplay". It was also hailed as the best film of the year in 1970 by the late Gene Siskel.

This film is so tight!
Sublime. To me, this stealthily thrilling film exploits both the living quality of a theatrical performance and the privileged intimacy that cinema offers -- close-ups, mobile perspectives, and so on. Rohmer's tale seems put together to resemble a peculiarly intrusive documentary, an impossibly close piece of observational cinema. Half the joy of experiencing his fiction stems from the convincing impression that one is (secretly) watching a group of interesting adults socializing spontaneously in the manner of their culture and class. The other half of one's pleasure lies in the awareness, as the film concludes, that an intricate and subtle structure has been unfolding and cleverly weaving the tale's elements together all along. Rohmer's film works on several levels, and is well worth viewing by the socially curious and the open-minded.