Antoine Vitez

Le Grand Échiquier

My Night at Maud's

The Catholic Jean-Louis runs into an old friend, the Marxist Vidal, in Clermont-Ferrand around Christmas. Vidal introduces Jean-Louis to the modestly libertine, recently divorced Maud and the three engage in conversation on religion, atheism, love, morality and Blaise Pascal's life and writings on philosophy, faith and mathematics. Jean-Louis ends up spending a night at Maud's. Jean-Louis' Catholic views on marriage, fidelity and obligation make his situation a dilemma, as he has already, at the very beginning of the film, proclaimed his love for a young woman whom, however, he has never yet spoken to.

Changing Landscapes

A sophisticated and beautifully constructed account of landscape change in and around Paris in the early 1960s. The film raises complex issues about the meaning and experience of modern landscapes and the enigmatic characteristics of features such as canals, pylons and deserted factories. Rohmer also explores the role of landscape within different traditions of modern art and design and refers to specific architects, artists and engineers.

The Confession

In 1950s communist Czechoslovakia, a government minister, a war veteran long a loyal party man, leads a relatively comfortable life with his wife. However, he soon finds himself under surveillance, then under arrest. Unclear what his offense is, agents for the totalitarian regime interrogate and torture him, aiming to use their unending power to gain a false confession for these supposed crimes against the state.

The Green Room

A widower maintains a memorial room filled with his late wife's belongings. When fire destroys it, he transforms a chapel into a new shrine to preserve her memory.

The War Is Over

Diego is one of the chiefs of the Spanish Communist Party. On his way from Madrid to Paris, he is arrested at the border for an ID check but manages to get free. When he arrives in Paris, he starts searching for one of his comrades to prevent him from going to Madrid where he could be arrested.

La nuit bulgare

A youngish sales employee of a computer firm is blackmailed into helping a group of mysterious Bulgarian industrialists who have come to his office. A government contract is being sought for a businessman who is in danger of bankruptcy.

A Modern Coed

Eric Rohmer directs this short documentary that narrates the presence of women in French universities as of the time of its release -- 1966. During the film's short run, the narrator continues to point out that during the advent of World War II, only 21,000 women attended college and made only a 30 % of the student body, a number that by the 1964-1965 school year had passed the 120,000 mark. Instead of opting to live according to what was expected of them, now they were joining the work force, trading in aprons for lab jackets and becoming professionals even after getting married.

Hiver 54, l'abbé Pierre

Postwar France was slow to recover from the after-effects of the World War Two. The economy was doing poorly, and many people were poor and homeless, sleeping under bridges, etc. The winter of 1953-54 proved particularly difficult for these people, as it was one of the coldest on record. Father Pierre (Lambert Wilson), a parish priest, on seeing the suffering of these people (and their frequent death from the cold), was moved to write the French government seeking help for them. When his letter, which was published in the newspapers, succeeded in rousing overwhelming popular support for helping the homeless, he was able to form a charitable group (still active today) titled "Les Chiffoniers d'Emmaus," or "The Ragpickers of Emmaus" to channel help to them. This biographical film tells the true story of Abbe Pierre's successful efforts in those years.

See Here My Love

Young aristocrat Arnaud de Maule hires female private detective Claude Alphand to investigate a strange cult, the Church of the Final Revival, that tried to recruit his girlfriend Chloé, who then disappeared, and it now stalks him.