Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88620 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-09-05
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 102 minutes

Amazon.com
After Eric Rohmer completed his "Six Moral Tales," and before launching into the "Comedies and Proverbs," he tackled two projects very different from anything else in his career. In the first of these, The Marquise of O, based on the novel by Heinrich von Kleist, Rohmer leaves the young intellectuals of Paris for Italy during the Napoleonic wars. During the Russian invasion, the beautiful young marquise (Edith Clever) is saved from certain assault by a handsome and dashing count (Bruno Ganz). She spends the night guarded by her chivalrous savior, who returns months later to rather insistently court her. Only when he leaves does she discover that she is, unaccountably, pregnant. Rohmer's style is both more lush (shot in rich colors by Néstor Almendros) and less intimate than his previous romantic comedies, directed in painterly compositions at a removed distance. Unlike the self-obsessed young adults of his modern films, the count and the marquise act out of moral duty and social responsibility, and their actions reverberate through family and community. Yet this is still a Rohmer film, filled with carefully tooled dialogue (spoken in German) and informed by irony. The story of innocence and corruption, and the shades that lie within even the best of men, ends on a note of delicate forgiveness and understanding. Rohmer followed this with an even more unexpected stylistic experiment, the beautiful and beguiling Perceval. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

A Top Ten Film Fairy Tale For Me
I better warn you that not everyone agrees with me on this film. Some people find it too understated and slow. However, it is more accurate to say that it is a fairy tale delivered in a very painterly manner. Since I am an artist, this enhances the film for me rather than acting as a negative. The visual style reminds me most strongly of a Vermeer painting. If you can get into the dry nature of it, the film is LOL funny in many parts. This was my first Bruno Ganz, the male lead, film and I thought he was wonderful. Most of writer-director Eric Rohmer's films remind us of Woody Allen's work, if he were French, with that accompanying cynical eye on relationships. This film is not like that except for the basic set up. Set back a few centuries, the young noblewoman believes that Ganz has saved her from rape one night during a war. Yet several months later she finds she is pregnant despite her savior's noble act that night. This film is also a happy-ever-after film, unlike most of Rohmer's other work. I can't say that this film really resembles Cocteau's "Beauty and The Beast" but if you enjoyed that fairy tale, you may well also enjoy this fairy tale. I love both of them although they are told and filmed quite differently.

true to the Kleist--in spirit and text
Kleist's writing interests me because of the frailties and strengths of his characters. Is it possible to save a woman from rape, rape her yourself, seek to hide what you've done and to make ammends, and in the end still be something like a decent person? Maybe. Do good people do bad things? Yes. Is not a certain willingness to forgive weakness necessary between humans? Certainly.
Rohmer captures the feeling Kleist's story beautifully. He is careful to show the strengths of the women, they aren't passive and dominated within a patriarchal society--important in a film wherein the leading man commits rape, and the leading woman eventually forgives him.

Somewhat strange, but extremely original...
"Marquise of O" is a film directed by Eric Rohmer (Jean Marie Maurice Schérer), and based on a story written by Heinrich von Kleist a long time ago. That story was somewhat strange, but extremely original. The same can be said about this movie.

The main character is the beautiful marquise of O (Edith Clever), a young French woman that lives with her parents and her two daughters, leading a virtous life after the death of her husband. During the late nineteenth century Franco-Prussian war, the marquise is saved from rape by a handsome Russian count (Bruno Ganz). Overwrought by the incident, the marquise is given a potion to sleep. The following day she wants to thank the count, but is informed that he has left with the Russian troops.

The marquise of O goes on with her life, until two extremely unusual things happen. First, the count returns to her life, wanting to marry her immediately. Secondly, the marquise discovers that she is pregnant, and is immediately banished from her parents' house. But how did that happen, if the marquise swears that she has remained chaste after the death of her husband?

All in all, I can say that this movie is interesting, capable of entertaining but also of making you reflect on temptation, standards of propriety, and what is right and wrong. Moreover, the cinematography is so good that the spectator starts to believe that he is indeed watching something that happened a long time ago. Even though this is far from being my favourite Rohmer film, it is more than good enough to recommend, and that is the reason why I give it 3.5 stars.

Belen Alcat