Ideological figuration in Rohmer’s first two Moral Tales: ‘voice of memory’, clinamen of the image, and colonial fantasies

Abstract

ABSTRACTOn the surface, Rohmer’s first two Moral Tales deal with romantic episodes in the lives of young people. As with his other works, here the director does not make explicit his political point of view. In this paper, the author shows how Rohmer’s construction of these stories functions as a compensatory figuration through which he could cope with the historical problems of his time, namely the Algerian War, which weighed heavily on him both professionally and intellectually in his position as editor in chief of Cahiers du cinéma. The author analyses how the formal construction of these two films reflects the ideological framework projected onto them, particularly through Rohmer’s use of memorial perspective (in the form of voice-over) that drives the stories, both told as youthful memories. At the same time, the author shows how this ideology intertwines with a self-deconstructive agency able to undo the coherent production of meaning. This reading shows how Rohmer’s depiction of relationships between men and women – so important for the later development of his cinema – both conceals and transforms a colonial ideology that needed to find a new way to express itself to survive in a supposedly ‘post-colonial’ France.