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| Marquise Of O, The |
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  (6/10)
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Runtime: 102 |
| Public Rating: 8.60 (5 votes) |
Director: Eric Rohmer |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama |
Year: 1976 |
| Writer(s): Eric Rohmer |
| Reviewed by: Vadim Rizov |
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First, the context Rohmer made this film in: returning to film after a four-year break, this was his first feature-length, made for the cinema non-cyclical work. He followed this up with another oddball film, Perceval, the story of a French knight, done in verse no less just like the original book. Then it was back to the cycles again for Rohmer, for whom it would take another 20+ years to make another period film (the upcoming The Lady And The Duke). Next, the audience context: mostly a rambunctious group of young college students, with no knowledge of Heinrich von Kleist's original short story, which serves as the unchangable template for this story, and certainly with no empathy for the intolerant mores of olden times, laughing their asses off at the old-fashioned scenes of daughter-parent acrimony. Back to Rohmer, a man who with great acuteness sketches out the details of contemporary life for the well-off, with rarely a false note to throw the audience off. This requires a great understanding of how much an audience can relate to and understand people totally different from it. The question arising from all this: how much of this quite literal and seemingly unironic film does Rohmer intend to be taken at face value from the perspective of the past, and how much of it, if any, is supposed to be a commentary on the past?
Now that I've set up, rather tediously, a question for a better critic to answer, on with the actual review. The Marquise Of O is a terrific example of how to make a period film on a limited budget. Aided, as he often was, by flawless and ingenious cinematographer Nestor Almendros, Rohmer made a film which almost never leaves one location: a house occupied by a German family that, after the film begins, has moved down a notch economically due to German military defeat to the Russians. During the battle, a rape attempt on the widowed Marquise (Edith Clever, an actress with minimal range and a tiresomely miserable attitude; as the lead, she is totally inadequate) is stopped by a valiant Russian soldier dressed in white (improbably, Bruno Ganz, but nicely played in his first major film part), but now, months later, she's inexplicably preganant. Her family, refusing to believe her innocence in the matter, kicks her out of the house. Fear not, for all ends well...from von Kleist's perspective, at least.
The major feeling I had following this movie was puzzlement: what, exactly, was this movie intended as? (And, of course, I'd love to know what Rohmer's Catholicism has to do with all this.) Of course, I could mention everything else: the exceptionally good supporting cast, especially Peter Luhr as the father, who has been in not a single other movie I've heard of. The pacing, which is deliberate and feels a little bit like a joke played on the audience. The fact that the film deviates so little from the story as to include title cards with excepts of the story that are not depicted on-screen. That, while watching, the film feels like an elegant, interesting puzzle. But in the end, I need to know (and have no idea what) the ultimate point was. Watch, find out for yourself, then tell me.
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