Director/Screenplay – Eric Rohmer, Based on the Poem Perceval, The Story of the Grail by Chretien de Troyes, Producer – Margaret Menegoz, Photography – Nestor Almendros, Music – Guy Robert, Production Design – Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko. Production Company – Les Films du Losange/Barbet Schroeder/FR3/ARD/SSR/Rai Gaumont.
Cast
Fabrice Luchini (Perceval), Andre Dusollier (Gauvain), Raoul Billerey (Gornemant de Goort), Arielle Dombasle (Blanchefleur), Marc Eyraud (King Arthur), Sylvain Levignac (Anguingueron), Michel Etchevery (The Fisher King), Clementine Amoroux (The Woman in the Tent), Gerard Falconetti (Sir Ke), Gilles Raab (Sagremor), Marie-Christine Barrault (Guenivere), Claude Jaeger (Thiebault de Tintaguel), Frederique Cerebonnet (Thiebault’s Daughter), Anne-Laure Meury (Virgin with Small Sleeves)
Plot
The youth Perceval sees a knight for the first time and is so awed he sets out to become one. On the way he forcibly takes seven kisses from a woman he meets and steals her ring. Her brother Gauvain swears vengeance against the man responsible. Perceval is directed to the castle of King Arthur, who proves lazy. Perceval decides he will be a knight without being knighted and kills a knight outside, taking his armour. From there the naive Perceval ventures forth into the land, having many experiences and encounters that teach what being a knight means.
Eric Rohmer (1920-2010) was one of the directors of the French New Wave. Like a bunch of the other directors of the New Wave, Rohmer emerged as a film critic with the influential La Cahiers du Cinema and was in fact the magazine’s editor. Rohmer made his directorial debut with The Sign of Leo (1959) and went on to works that include My Night at Maud’s (1969), Claire’s Knee (1970), Love in the Afternoon (1972), The Marquise of O (1976) and Pauline at the Beach (1986), among others.
Rohmer had a style that favoured the naturalistic, eschewing any music that was not diegetic and using non-professional actors. He placed a focus on dialogue and mundane elements, frequently concerned with intellectual subject matters and characters grappling with issues of morality. Perceval le Gallois was the only film that Rohmer made that falls within fantastic cinema. The title incidentally translates as ‘Perceval the Welsh’ and is usually just shortened to Perceval in English release.
As many of the regular readers here may or may not know, one of the works that had enormous influence over Moria was Peter Nicholls’ Fantastic Cinema (1983). I have over the years worked my way through watching and writing up almost every single film that Nicholls lists. I agree with him on most counts, not on others – he bizarrely praises Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) as superior to the original, for instance. One of the big points of difference between us is his appraisal of works of the French New Wave such as Weekend (1967) and Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974). Perceval le Gallois is one of these that Nicholls give a four star rating, whereas it left me largely indifferent.
Perceval (Fabrice Luchini) travels through the forest of beaten metal trees
Visually, Perceval le Gallois is a scratch of the head. It takes place on very artificial sets – the backgrounds of the hills, castles etc are often painted flats and you can see the shadow of the actor or horse pass across the painted backdrop. There are forests that consist of skeletal shapes of beaten metal trees, while the frontage for the castles feels like the sort of thing you might get in a play – a wooden or cardboard wall where the portcullis and crenellations stand at about the height of a regular ceiling in a room. Rohmer stated that what he was trying to achieve was a visual equivalent of the one of the mediaeval tapestries to which I can say “maybe” – up on screen, the effect just seems odd more than anything else. There is also the oddity of the narrative where a troupe of wandering minstrels turn up to offer musical accompaniment at various points. Not to mention that characters are often given to describing what is happening and referring to themselves in the third person.
Like Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac (1974), the one other Arthurian film of the French New Wave, Rohmer seems to be puncturing the nobility of the Arthurian Legends. One of the first things that Perceval does upon leaving home is to ignore all his mother’s advice and steal seven kisses from a girl he meets (Clementine Amoroux), moreover clearly forcing them onto her when she is protesting no, followed by stealing her ring. He arrives at Camelot but finds King Arthur (Marc Eyraud) lazy and indulgent at the dining table. Refusing to dismount his horse, which he just rides straight into the dining room, in order to be knighted, Perceval leaves and promptly challenges a knight then kills him to take his armour and weapons. The rest of the story concerns his journey to discover knightly honour but such a prelude to his quest feels as though it everything back several steps from the starting gate. Admittedly, all of this is taken from the original Chretien de Troyes poem Perceval, The Story of the Grail (circa 1181-90) (which was left uncompleted on his death).
I don’t really get the Eric Rohmer cult. What he gives us is slow, dull, talk heavy. Scenes are static and consist of characters just talking at one another. In the piecemeal picaresque of a plot we get, it is one static scene followed by another. However, the lack of directorial affect given to the scenes – Rohmer refused to shoot in closeups – seems almost the complete antithesis of what we could consider cinematic drama.
