ORIGINAL TITLEMa nuit chez Maud
GENREDrama · Romance · Philosophical comedy
ABOUT THIS FILM
RUNTIME
111 min
FAMOUS QUOTE
“I feel very comfortable with you.”
Vibe
French-New-WavephilosophicalwintryintimatetalkyCatholicromanticausterechanceadult
During Christmas in Clermont-Ferrand, a devout Catholic engineer who thinks he has identified his future wife spends a long night talking with atheist divorcée Maud, challenging his certainty about morality, desire and chance. Pascal, catholic ritual, winter solitude and romantic self-deception; christmas creates the theological and social setting rather than spectacle.
MOVIE NIGHT RANK
#65 of 100
Watch for
- Watch how Rohmer builds tension through conversational duration rather than plot escalation; changes in posture, distance and silence matter as much as the arguments.
- Snow and winter streets repeatedly make chance meetings plausible while also isolating the characters in intimate interiors.
- Pascal’s Wager is not just intellectual decoration: the characters’ abstract discussion mirrors the way Jean-Louis tries to calculate desire, faith and risk.
- Compare Jean-Louis’s confident self-description with what the film allows us to observe about his choices; Rohmer’s irony often lives in that gap.
Production notes
Criterion Channel lists Rohmer, 1969 France, about 1h51m, Jean-Louis Trintignant/Françoise Fabian/Marie-Christine Barrault/Antoine Vitez; part of Six Moral Tales.
Trivia
- Rohmer wrote/directed
- Criterion lists about 111 minutes
- part of Six Moral Tales
- Trintignant leads
- set over Christmas in Clermont-Ferrand
Legacy
international breakthrough and one of Rohmer's most studied works; Christmas identity is subtle but integral to the moral encounter.