The Green Ray

Éric Rohmer's The Green Ray (French: Le Rayon vert; sometimes released in English-speaking territories as Summer) won the Golden Lion and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1986 Venice International Film Festival. It was Rohmer's only Golden Lion in more than twenty completed features. The film is the fifth in his Comedies and Proverbs cycle, after The Aviator's Wife, A Good Marriage, Pauline at the Beach and Full Moon in Paris; My Girlfriend's Boyfriend concluded the cycle the following year.

Rohmer and the cinematographer Sophie Maintigneux shot on 16mm with natural light only and almost none of the usual production equipment: no dolly, no crane, no rigged audio. The screenplay grew out of workshops with the cast, who improvised their dialogue around an outline Rohmer had prepared, and the lead, Marie Rivière, is credited as co-writer for her part in it. Rivière had already appeared in three Rohmer features and would go on to appear in three more.

The title refers to a real atmospheric effect, the green flash visible briefly at sunset under specific conditions, which Jules Verne described in his 1882 novel Le Rayon vert; the film refers to the book explicitly. Rohmer filmed the phenomenon on the Île de Ré, on the French Atlantic coast, in difficult circumstances, waiting across several evenings for the right conditions; he reportedly caught it on the third or fourth attempt. Sight & Sound returned the film to its 2022 Greatest Films of All Time list.