The Taste for Beauty

A collection of essays by the film-maker and critic Eric Rohmer written between 1948–1979.

Eric Rohmer (Author), Carol Volk (Translated by)

9780521385923, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 23 February 1990

236 pages, 40 b/w illus.
23 x 15.4 x 1.6 cm, 0.395 kg

"Film scholarship is richly served in...The Taste for Beauty.... Carol Volk's translation is notable for its lucid rendering of the subtleties of the French language." George L. George, American Cinematographer

The Taste for Beauty is a collection of essays by the film-maker and critic Eric Rohmer which were originally written for the French Film review Cahiers du Cinema between 1948-1979. Rohmer, one of the founding members of the French 'New Wave' cinema, was also one of the journal's original critics and served as its editor. Divided into four sections, the essays deal with fundamental and theoretical questions of film-making from a single theoretical viewpoint. Rohmer, a film-maker of great eloquence and erudition, writes in depth on the issues most fundamental to film: what the camera best portrays; the role of sound and colour; the use of drama and comedy; the role of speech; and the problem of literary adaptation; he also includes a personal defence of his films. The final section is devoted entirely to the film-maker Jean Renoir. The Taste for Beauty will be appreciated by students and critics of film, as well as those who love French cinema in general.

Foreword to French Edition
1. The Critical Years - Interview with Eric Rohmer Jean Narboni
Part I. The Classical Age of Cinema Cinema: 2. The art of space
3. For a talking cinema
4. The romance is gone
5. Reflections on color
6. The classical age of cinema
7. Such vanity is painting
8. Isou or Things As They Are?
Of three films and of a certain school Of taste and colors
The taste for Beauty Letter to a critic - Concerning my moral tales
9. Film and the three levels of discourse?
Part II. For an unpure cinema Andre Bazin's 'Summa': 10. Lesson of a failure - Moby Dick John Houston
11. Explanation of a vet - South Pacific Joshua Logan Faith and mountains - Les Etoiles de Midi Marchel Ichac
12. The photogenics of sport
Alfred Hitchcock: 13. Vertigo IV. Jean Renoir
14. The American Renoir Elena and Her Man (Venus and the Apes)
15. Renoir's youth
16. The Little Theater of Jean Renoir
17. Filmgraphy of Rohmer films
Index.

Subject Areas: Films, cinema [APF]