Customer Reviews

The Marquise of O [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

"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

Eric Rohmer's 1976 take on Heinrich Von Kleist's story "The Marquise of O" is a movie right up my alley. While I'm not necessarily a fanatic about foreign films, I do love watching period piece pictures. Rohmer's picture may well be the best period film I have ever seen, and that includes Kubrick's masterful "Barry Lyndon." What surprised me even more after watching this film was finding out it is one of the few period pieces Rohmer has made in his long career. I read up on the man in the process, discovering that most of his other films are considerably different from this one. Rohmer is actually French, born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer in Lorraine, France in 1920. After a short career as a novelist and film critic, he moved into the world of filmmaking in 1955. Critics associate Rohmer with the French New Wave school of filmmaking, placing him squarely alongside more recognizable names like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. The director ran into a few snags in his early career, toiling in obscurity for quite awhile as he continued to write about film until his first hit in 1969, "Ma nuit chez Maud." Rohmer's pictures deal with "arty" themes, moral quandaries such as infidelity and clashing value systems. Some of his French stuff sounds quite above my head, so I'm glad I saw this German language piece based on a story I am at least familiar with.

"The Marquise of O," set during the Napoleonic turmoils of nineteenth century Europe, focuses on the misfortunes of lovely young lady known as the Marquise (Edith Clever). Her father is a colonel who must surrender the town he is defending to the Russians. One of these Russian soldiers, a noble officer referred to as the Count (Bruno Ganz), saves the Marquise from a band of rapacious Slavic soldiers. Later, when he takes the barely conscious woman to her family's house, he revisits her in the middle of the night in a scene with deeply suspicious overtones. Fast forward a bit, when the Count comes to visit the Marquise and her parents. He proposes a marriage between himself and the young lady, much to the shock of everyone involved. The Marquise tries to put him off for a bit, but the Count is undeterred. He presses for a commitment, which apparently is a big no-no in the early nineteenth century as evidenced by the increasing sourness of the father and mother, but eventually settles in to wait. A complication arises when the Count learns he must head back to Russia to fill a post, an assignment he incredibly considers disobeying in order to stay near the Marquise. Her parents are appalled-what sort of man would spurn a direct order from the leader of his country? It soon becomes obvious why the Count tried to put off his trip.

The Marquise begins to feel unwell. As time progresses, she fears she may be pregnant, something the implications of which will be disastrous for her and her family. She's not married and doesn't have any overt suitors other than the Count, so aside from a miraculous virgin birth, someone's been up to no good. When her parents find out about what happened, the unfolding hysterics are quite something to watch. Nineteenth century Europe is a place and time when an unwed mother might as well commit suicide rather than birth a child. The pregnancy places the family's honor in grave jeopardy, which the Colonel will not allow. He disowns his child, banishing her from the house to a distant country estate. The Marquise's mother is torn, at first expressing outrage at her daughter's state and then softening later. A risky plan to reconcile the family involves placing an advertisement in the local newspaper seeking the father of the child. Even I groaned aloud at such an audacious endeavor. The locals do too, finding great amusement in the fact that a highborn woman doesn't know who fathered her child. And who did? We have a good idea, but must wait for it to play out at the end of the film.

I loved this film. The movie is all about how a strict sense of honor, fused with repressive ideas about how a woman should conduct herself, play out in a small family. While we may laugh over how concerned the characters are about the situation, and Rohmer certainly laughs as well, that doesn't make for a less interesting film experience. If "The Marquise of O" were nothing more than a quaint little picture about moral conundrums two hundred years ago, it would not merit attention. What sets the film apart is the sumptuous cinematography and compelling atmosphere. I don't know a whit about painted art, but it is obvious Rohmer set out to create a world resembling a painting. I shouldn't say ONE static painting, as the movie looks like one huge moving painting. The colors, atmosphere, and background are simply amazing to look at. Each frame of the film looks as though Rohmer carefully pulled it off a canvas. It's not as obvious as "Barry Lyndon," where Kubrick had his actors strike poses, but "The Marquise of O" looks like it should be hanging in the Louvre.

I suspect Rohmer's movie is the sort of project true thespians pray for everyday of their careers. No one takes a backseat to effects as even the war scenes are small and centered on the characters. What you do get instead are lengthy scenes of dialogue and tons of close-ups. If you dislike talky pictures, you'll need to skip "The Marquise of O." If you love conflict and moral predicaments, acting and meaningful dialogue, Rohmer's film should serve you well.

If it is possible to be ostentatiously chaste, Eric Rohmer's THE MARQUISE OF O... is an example of it. Sometimes witty, always stunningly beautiful, the film is so self-consciously muted in style, so obviously different from the blare of standard Hollywood, it can't help calling attention to itself. It is thus not quite as modest as the style would suggest. Even understatement, pursued doggedly enough, can become a form of showing off. Besides, there is plenty to testify to Rohmer's ambitions.

Based on Heinrich Kleist's novella of the same name, MARQUISE is a perfect example of "literary cinema," with all the baggage such a label implies. None of Rohmer's films are meant for a mass audience. They announce their refinement with their limited situations, articulate characters and toney references. Here, after Kleist's novella, the primary proofs of cultural worth are painterly: set in the Napoleonic era, the film's visual style is obviously modeled after Neo-classical and early Romantic painters. With a heavy reliance on the skills of master cinematographer Nestor Almendros, Rohmer uses Kleist to create a cozy, Biedermeier world of diaphanous Empire gowns, heavy velvet draperies and formalized domestic routine.

In itself, there is nothing wrong with this. Certainly Rohmer's work is preferable to, and much more interesting than, such similarly respectable literary adaptations as the bloated, otiose and cinematically dreary Merchant/Ivory productions. No matter how precious or theatrical the film may get, you never doubt that you're in the presence of a real filmmaker. Rohmer has *chosen* to reduce the experience to essentials, he's refined and polished the experience to a high gloss, so there's nary a gesture, inflection, camera movement or lighting set up that hasn't been thought out in terms of the overall design.

Which no doubt structures how most people reaction to it. If you can respond to such highly mediated and controlled experiences, you will probably enjoy the film, not just for the delicious ironies of Kleist's story, but for the elegant skill with which it has been mounted. If you find such refinement insufferably mannered, pretentious and more than a bit self-preening, you'd best stay away. For myself, this is only one of three Rohmer films that I have seen. I found the other two almost unbearably arch. With the help of Kleist and Almendros, however, Rohmer makes MARQUISE into a delightful, visually exquisite comedy of manners.

I feel this is simply a perfect film. Every element works together to create a complete vision in intricate detail. This is a special joy for art lovers.

Before you see this film, look up the 1818 painting by Thomas Sully "Lady with a Harp: Eliza Ridgely." This painting was clearly a major image for the production team, it's simplicity and detail beautifully echoed throughout the production. Other images here equally echo other great works of art.

(note: DO NOT be put off by the title, this is not at all anyting to do with the infamous "story of O.")

The marquise, a widow with two children, feels that she is pregnant, but has no idea when or how it could have happened. This is a very small story, and a story that could be laughable or silly in other hands, but here, with Romer's attention to detail it is a beautiful rhendition of a small family matter in post French revolution Europe.

(I saw this after seeing Rohmer's later "L'anglaise et le duc" (The Lady and the Duke) which is also a great art film, technically innovative, where people actually walk within paintings in the outdoors scenes. That one, however is more talky and stagy and slower than this. I think this is the better film - although The Lady and the Duc is visually mesmerizing.)

In this, the locations, the rooms, the costumes, the sets, every detail is perfect. This is one film where you just want to stop the frame to look at a chair.

Then you add the magnificent, flawless acting of Edith Clever (who I had never seen before), Bruno Ganz, and the entire ensemble cast. This is a period film, but there is nothing showy or splashy about this story or film. There are no huge special effects or action, but the small internal family workings, and a mystery. A quiet story of contrition, forgiveness, honor and the changeable nature of each.

This now rivals Garbo's Camille as my favorite film!

"Marquise of O" is a film directed by Eric Rohmer (Jean Marie Maurice Schérer), and based on a story written by Heinrich von Kleist it centers around the beautiful Marquise who is a widow and lives with her parents and two daughters. She is saved by a Russian count, from an assault by a group of Slavic soldiers, later on she tries to find the father of her child after having been raped while she was unconscious after being saved from the Slavic soldiers.

I did a bit of research on Rohmer born in March 1920 who was an editor and teacher before he became a filmmaker. He is well known for the Six Moral Tales features. The best things about the film are its dialogue and art and the wonderful sense of humor the actors show in the dialogue. The colors, scenes and backgrounds are absolutely beautiful every frame looks as if it was pulled from the Louvre and is a work of art. If action and plots are more your thing you may not be interested in this film but if you enjoy dialogue and amazingly beautiful scenes it should be perfect. Great acting.

This Franco-German coproduction is the weakest of Rohmer's historical movies (a group of films that includes such accomplished works as The Lady and the Duke, Perceval, and Triple Agent), perhaps because its subject matter seems hopelessly dated. Based on a novel by Heinrich von Kleist and set during the Napoleonic wars, it tells the tale of a young marquise rescued during an assault to her estate by a mysterious count (a young Bruno Ganz). Unfortunately, from that brief encounter the marquise gets pregnant, a huge problem during that time and on account of her position in society. Aside from a dated central conflict, the film is also dull and static, without the redeeming dialogue and interaction between the actors that one sees in other Rohmer films. The director, by the way, plays an amusing cameo as a French general.

First thing - although this is a DVD - there is no control to turn off the English subtitles. I like to do that with "Run Lola Run" or "Goodbye Lenin" - it forces me to improve my German.

I bought this movie because all the German films I own are more recent with modern German spoken, including lots of profanity - not that I'm complaining about those movies - but thought it might be good to have a film with "Hoch Deutsch", you know, to improve myself.

The event that this movie is centered around is disturbing. A young woman - a widow with 2 children, who lives with her parents and brother - is at first saved from a violent sexual attack by a group of men, but then later raped by her savior while she's asleep/unconscious. She doesn't realize that she is raped, until she becomes pregnant. Her family does not believe her innocence to the event, and throws her out, refusing to speak to her.

The man who saved her, then raped her, does come back to the family and tries to marry her on the spot. At that time he doesn't realize that she is pregnant. He seems to care for her and wishes he hadn't raped her.

I won't give away the ending, but it is odd to think that someone who is honorable could have a moment where they take advantage of and hurt another human being, to this level. And I guess the question is, once they do that, can anything healthy every come out of the situation?

All of the actors are great in the movie. The actress who plays the widow is captivating. I also like to see the family interact around these odd events.