Michel Bozon, ” The random fact well the things. Sociology of love and the couple in Eric Rohmer “, Information sociales, n°144, 2007/8
Love in the afternoon (1972), The knee of Claire (1970), The Wife of the aviator (1981), The Nights of the full moon (1984)…the cinematographic work of Eric Rohmer is known to be focused on romantic relationships. To Michel Bozon, the films of Rohmer can be used by sociology to ” the representation that[they] will give[nt] of the birth of romantic relationships and marriage, and their evolution over the films and of the time “. This is the goal it sets for itself through the study of the sixteen feature films of Rohmer.
Through the films of Rohmer, Michel Bozon finds social developments, which he described in his Sociology of sexuality1) : the decline of marriage and rise of cohabitation, aspirations of individuals to guidance the individual, defence of their freedom of choice in their choices in love and marriage, which testify of the advent of a ” sexuality of individuals “2, lower initiative of male, decline of the standard of loyalty, more and more women are acting…
So if the marriage is present in all the films of the series of Six moral tales (The Baker of Monceau (1962), The Career of Suzanne (1963), My night at Maud’s (1969), The Collector (1967), The Knee of Claire (1970), Love in the afternoon (1972)), which are all variations on a theme : its social burden fluctuates. Michel Bozon
“note an evolution from The baker of Monceau (1962), where the marriage is the main aspiration of the young hero, and The knee of Claire (1970), where the hero, a dissolute age, is an end in marrying, or The love in the afternoon (1972), where the narrator, married at the beginning of the story, renounces to go to the end of an affair to return to his wife.”
Moreover, while marriage is the inevitable end of the story in all the series of moral Tales, this is not the case of the Comedies and proverbsfilms that are spread out between 1981 and 1987.
“The marriage disappears almost completely from the horizon of the” Comedies “, and the only marriage announced does not ultimately to have been too premeditated (The beautiful wedding). “