On the Square Today

Matthew Schmitz has a remembrance of French New Wave director Eric Rohmer :

Among the best known of Rohmer’s films are his Six Moral Tales, movies imbued with delicate longing and keen moral awareness in which characters struggle to come to terms with their duties and desires. It’s easy to see, in these films, why some have suggested that the central principle of Rohmer’s personal life was fidelity, a quality exhibited as much in his unfailing punctuality as his deep Catholic faith.

It’s natural that Rohmer’s faith shaped his films; the movies played a large part in leading him to belief. Rohmer experienced a “road to Damascus” moment while watching Stromboli, a film by Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Rohmer was so inspired by Rossellini’s Catholic vision that he turned away from the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism and adopted an outlook grounded in the Catholic faith and animated by the reality of incarnation and being.