Film School: The Green Ray

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Film School: The Green Ray

Welcome to Film School! This is a column focused on movie history and all the stars, filmmakers, events, laws and, yes, movies that helped write it. Film School is a place to learn—no homework required.

Éric Rohmer once said in an interview with Cahiers du Cinéma, the French publication where he began his career as a film critic, “The art of cinema takes us back to the world… It has forced us, throughout its history, to take the world into consideration.” Making movies on the streets, rather than in the studio, was a major characteristic of the French New Wave, the movement of which he was a key member, alongside fellow Cahiers critics Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

More than his contemporaries however, who often used technical tricks to remind the audiences they were watching a movie, Rohmer’s desire for naturalism extended to every area of his filmmaking. “You can always make the camera less visible,” he stated in another Cahiers interview, and that certainly seemed to be his goal. Though his characters liked a long, philosophical conversation, the way they interacted with their environments, whether they were relaxed or tightly-wound, respectful or entitled, provided just as much vital commentary as to who they really were. Rohmer’s camera was a tool through which we could watch this interaction take place, not a self-indulgent obstruction. 

While he made films in all seasons, Rohmer’s career is perhaps mostly renowned for his summer stories. Across many a languid day, his characters would sun themselves together on a terrace, or walk along a beach, or sit in a Parisian park, as they talked and talked about whatever romantic or existential drama was plaguing them. In movies like La Collectionneuse, Pauline at the Beach, Claire’s Knee and A Tale of Summer, the characters seem to exist in a state of perpetual vacation. With the trivial of the workaday life put aside, they have time, endless time, to consider matters of the heart and soul. 

Which is not good news for Delphine (Marie Rivière), protagonist of The Green Ray. She’s excited for her holiday, but her boyfriend ditching her two weeks before they were due to go away puts a real dampener on the trip. She’s desperate for a vacation, but she does not want to go alone. The film follows her over one summer, as she attempts to push herself into various excursions, trying to connect to the joy that seems to come so easily to other people. Eventually, through many an awkward encounter and aborted sojourn, she finds what she’s been looking for.

“He loved the idea of mixing documentary and fiction. He loved the idea of making a documentary, but doing it with someone who could lead it forward.” said Rivière of her director, in an interview with Mubi. Throughout The Green Ray, Rivière improvised dialogue based on a framework provided by Rohmer. Sometimes he’d give her little more direction than telling her to walk around, and his quiet camera would capture her in her solitude. 

This naturalistic way of shooting adds a tangible authenticity to Delphine’s isolation. Her surroundings are idyllic, yet she looks ever hunched and uncomfortable, as if she’s trying to curl up into herself. Multiple times, both alone and with others, she bursts into tears over nothing in particular. She spends a lot of time trying to explain herself to polite but non-comprehending strangers, and gets closer to the truth the more succinct she is: “I’m not very operational in life.” 

It could have been hard to empathize with Delphine. “Oh no, I can’t find anyone to accompany me on my idyllic month-long vacation!” is hardly the gravest of concerns. Her irritability with the numerous well-meaning people she encounters (many of whom are willing to lend her their summer homes at the drop of a hat) can get frustrating. “I’m not stubborn—life is stubborn towards me!” she proclaims, as a group of acquaintances enquire about her persistent refusal to join in with their activities. There’s a self-pity to her attitude that can make her a difficult person to be around. 

But Rohmer’s willingness to sit with Delphine’s prickliness underlines his strengths as a filmmaker. He was a man who felt for the socially awkward—he himself had no telephone, and once wore a fake mustache as a disguise to his film premiere in an attempt to avoid attention. Though his characters liked to talk, the most garrulous extroverts often exposed themselves as pompous and vacuous. His people were the introverts, those for whom long lazy summers left them with, as critic John Fawell puts it: “too much time on their hands and too many thoughts in their heads.” Rohmer was even more interested in complex interior landscapes than he was striking exterior ones; at his most fluid and poetic, he’d use the latter to comment on the former.

This happens repeatedly in The Green Ray. The first time Delphine enters the sea, she’s in a sweater and shorts and looks so uncomfortable someone may as well be holding a gun to her head just off camera. The second time, she wears a modest swimsuit. After that, she’s in a bikini. It’s not a subtle metaphor, but it’s nevertheless effective: gradually, haltingly, we watch Delphine immerse more of herself in the world outside. 

The best example of this, however, comes in the movie’s beautiful finale. The title “The Green Ray” stems from a rare phenomenon first named by Jules Verne in his novel of the same name—it refers to a rare emerald flare seen on the horizon just before the sun sets. Delphine overhears a group of friends talking about the Verne book and the science behind the phenomenon on one of her solitary walks by the beach. She pauses and listens, fascinated.

A little later, yet another attempt at a holiday has failed. She’s sitting in the station, waiting for a train back to Paris, when a man catches her eye. He comes over to chat. There’s instant chemistry. Somehow still with two weeks left off work, and really not wanting to return to her lonely apartment before she has to, she decides impulsively to accompany him for a stay in a pretty fishing village.

Once they’ve arrived, they walk and talk for a while, and it occurs to Delphine that the sun is setting. They head up a hill, and watch the sun lower over the sea, as she explains the concept of the Green Ray to him. In the film’s final seconds, she, and we, see it. For the first time in the entire movie, Delphine looks truly happy. 

Next week: We end this summer season with the swan song of the legendary Agnès Varda: Varda by Agnès.


Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can read her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Podcast Review, and Paste.

 
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