Éric Rohmer's First Two "Moral Tales"

The Bakery Girl of Monceau (Éric Rohmer, 1963)

Barbet Schroeder and Claudine Soubrier in The Bakery Girl of Monceau

Young Man: Barbet Schroeder
Jacqueline: Claudine Soubrier
Sylvie: Michèle Girardon
Voice of Young Man: Bernard Tavernier

Director: Éric Rohmer
Screenplay: Éric Rohmer
Cinematography: Bruno Barbey, Jean-Michel Meurice

Suzanne's Career (Éric Rohmer, 1963)

Philippe Beuzen and Catherine Sée in Suzanne's Career

Suzanne: Catherine Sée
Bertrand: Philippe Beuzen
Guillaume: Christian Charrière
Sophie: Diane Wilkinson

Director: Éric Rohmer
Screenplay: Éric Rohmer
Cinematography: Daniel Lacambre

One-third of Éric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales series, the first two films, The Bakery Girl of Monceau and Suzanne's Career, together take up about an hour and a half of screen time and were shot on the cheap, using 16 mm film and available locations. But their greatest virtue is economy of storytelling. By "moral," of course, Rohmer meant anything but didactic; instead, his films are about the way people behave, especially in matters of sexual attraction. He leaves any judgment of what his characters do up to the audience, though sometimes his characters deliver their own verdicts about what has been done and said. Especially "said," because Rohmer's films are typically more about talk than action. Both films are also about the young in Paris in the early 1960s, a period and place on the brink of a revolution not only in politics but also in morals, manners, and style. This was a time just before the young of Paris reinvented themselves as what Jean-Luc Godard would call, in Masculin Féminin (1966), "The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola." The students in these films still wear suits and neckties, not bluejeans, to class, and even among themselves maintain a kind of politesse. The protagonist-narrators of both films are shy guys, dithering on the edges of their infatuations and needing help from more outgoing friends to make the first move at the young women they have fallen for. The young man played by future director Barbet Schroeder in The Bakery Girl is a bit more outgoing than Bertrand in Suzanne's Career, but both blunder their way into romance. In fact, the former has a touch of the caddishness of Guillaume in the latter film, hitting on Jacqueline, the lower class bakery girl, while trying to catch a glimpse of the more sophisticated Sylvie, a member of his own social class. Even when the tables are turned, and he learns that Sylvie, laid up with a broken ankle, has been spying on him while he is toying with Jacqueline, he still throws over the bakery girl for her. We don't see Jacqueline's reaction to being dumped -- that might have tilted the moral tale toward didacticism. And Sylvie seems to feel no remorse about either her voyeurism or his touches of caddishness: She marries him anyway. Suzanne's Career is more complex, with money (or the lack of it) playing a key role in the amatory games being played by its quartet of characters. As in The Bakery Girl, it's the woman who apparently wins out in the end: Suzanne, after her on-again, off-again relationship with Guillaume, winds up happily married -- at least if we can judge from Bertrand's assessment of the situation. As always in Rohmer's films, the talk is what matters.