My Night at Maud’s

The third of Éric Rohmer's “Six Moral Tales,” My Night at Maud's (1969) brought the most cerebral of the New Wave directors his widest acclaim, with two Academy Award nominations — a rarity for so talky and intellectual a film. It is the purest expression of Rohmer's cinema of conversation and conscience.

Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the reserved Catholic engineer whose plan to marry a pious young woman is complicated by a night spent, chastely, in the apartment of the worldly Maud (Françoise Fabian). The film's heart is talk — about Pascal's wager, probability, fidelity and desire — shot in wintry black and white by Néstor Almendros, in long, patient takes that make philosophical debate as charged as any seduction.

Rohmer's insistence that grown-up flirtation and moral reasoning could carry a feature struck a chord far beyond France, influencing dialogue-driven film-makers from Whit Stillman to Richard Linklater. Its wit lies in the gap between what its characters profess and what they want. Elegant, intelligent and quietly suspenseful in its own restrained way, My Night at Maud's proves that few things on screen are as gripping as articulate people arguing about how to live. Its faith in the cinematic power of articulate talk has inspired dialogue-driven film-makers for decades, and it remains the most acclaimed of Rohmer's moral tales. Shot in wintry monochrome by Néstor Almendros, it makes a long night of talk as charged as any thriller, and its admirers include Linklater and Stillman.