Who
was Éric Rohmer? Well, for a start he wasn't Éric Rohmer. The man we celebrate
as one of the central figures in the nouvelle
vague began life as Maurice Schérer, and Éric Rohmer was just one of many
names he adopted throughout his lifetime. When he wrote the novel Elizabeth in 1946 he published it under
the name Gilbert Cordier, and when he was trying to raise money to make his
first 16mm short films he did so as Antony Barrier. The Ciné-Club du Quartier
Latin's Bulletin introduced Barrier as “a young
American avant-garde director who has just won the prize given in the United
States for the best amateur film.” The report was written by Chantal Dervey,
another pseudonym.
Why
so secretive? In Éric Rohmer: A Biography
(published in France in 2014 and now translated by Steven Rendall and Lisa
Neil), authors Antoine de Baecque and Noël Herpe describe secrecy as “the true
passion of his life” but note that this clandestine nature “did not conceal
scandals, anti-conformist habits, or provocative commitments, and still less a
complicated family romance or a closeted second emotional life.” Rohmer simply
kept his personal and professional lives completely separate, to the extent
that the Schérer clan (with the exception of his wife Thérèse, who was
complicit in the lie) didn't know what he actually did for a living. Rohmer had
grown up in a family driven by the importance of a classical education that
looked down on cinema as a low artform, and Rohmer's mother died in 1970
believing that her son was working a teacher, rather than an acclaimed
filmmaker and critic. “That would have killed her,” he said.