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Release: February 14, 2023

$7.99

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Brilliant and daring, writer/director François Truffaut (The 400 Blows, Mississippi Mermaid) marries passion with vengeance for one of the most haunting love stories ever filmed. The incandescent Jeanne Moreau (Jules and Jim) is Julie, who has just wed her childhood sweetheart. But just moments after the ceremony, her beloved is murdered on the steps of the church. Emotionally distraught, Julie becomes obsessed with her bridegroom’s death and begins a descent into madness as she relentlessly pursues the men responsible. Adapted from Cornell Woolrich (Rear Window) and scored by Bernard Herrmann (Psycho), The Bride Wore Black unveils itself as a Hitchcockian thriller and gradually evolves into the fascinating portrait of a woman ravaged by grief. Featuring sumptuous cinematography by Raoul Coutard (Shoot the Piano Player) and pitch-black performances by Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Brialy, Charles Denner, Claude Rich, Daniel Boulanger, Michael Lonsdale and Alexandra Stewart. Special Features: -Audio Commentary by Film Historians Julie Kirgo, Steven C. Smith and Nick Redman -Theatrical Trailer -In French with Optional English Subtitles -Reversible Cover Art Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews The Bride Wore Black [Blu-ray]

Release: February 23, 2016

$7.99

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This prismatic portrait of the days and nights of a party girl in sixties Rome is a revelation. On the surface, I Knew Her Well, directed by Antonio Pietrangeli, plays like an inversion of La dolce vita with a woman at its center, following the gorgeous, seemingly liberated Adriana (Divorce Italian Style s Stefania Sandrelli) as she dallies with a wide variety of men, attends parties, goes to modeling gigs, and circulates among the rich and famous. Despite its often light tone, though, the film is a stealth portrait of a suffocating culture that regularly dehumanizes people, especially women. A seriocomic character study that never strays from its complicated central figure while keeping us at an emotional remove, I Knew Her Well is one of the most overlooked films of the sixties, by turns hilarious, tragic, and altogether jaw-dropping. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES - New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack - New interview with actor Stefania Sandrelli - New interview with film scholar Luca Barattoni about the career of director Antonio Pietrangeli - Trailer - New English subtitle translation - PLUS: An essay by journalist and author Alexander Stille

Release: June 3, 2019

$7.99

Description

Two Suspense Classics from Acclaimed Director Claude Chabrol Cohen Film Collection celebrates the Inspector Lavardin detective series in this digitally remastered special edition. Police inspector Jean Lavardin (Jean Poiret) is tasked with solving a series of grisly murders in Chicken with Vinegar, and in the follow up, Inspector Lavardin, he travels to a small coastal town to investigate the puzzling death of a wealthy writer murdered on a beach. Bonus Content: Disc 1 - Chicken with Vinegar: Feature-Length Audio Commentary by Film Critics Wade Major and Andy Klein The Black Snail (1988) - From the Television Series "The Secret Files of Inspector Lavardin" 2014 Re-release Trailer Disc 2 - Inspector Lavardin: Feature-Length Audio Commentary by Film Critics Wade Major and Andy Klein Danger Lies in the Woods (1989) - From the Television Series "The Secret Files of Inspector Lavardin" 2014 Re-release Trailer

Release: June 12, 2018

$6.99

Description

One of the most popular foreign films of all time, playing continuously in some theatres for over five years, King of Hearts is a "bright, lilting, whimsical, lyrical" (Cue) comedy thatcleverly satirizes the absurdity of war with a "message [that is] meaningful and entertaining" (Boxoffice). Bumbling Scottish Private Plumpick (Alan Bates) is sent to a village in the beautiful French countryside during World War I on a suicide mission to detonate explosives set bythe retreating German army. The village, soon to be blown sky-high, has been abandoned by its inhabitantsand replaced with escapees from the local insane asylum. Now, with the mentally challenged running the town, Plumpick is crowned King! But his new title brings him his first horrible decision: to carry out his deadly mission or join the ranks of the blissfully ignorant who know nothing about war. King of Hearts is subtle, visually striking and, in short, the "ultimate display of madness" (Life)!

Release: September 22, 2026

$7.99

Release: September 20, 2011

$7.99

Description

In Les cousins, Claude Chabrol (Les bonnes femmes) crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures a piercing, darkly comic character study that questions notions of good and evil, love and jealousy, and success in the modern world. A mirror image of Le beau Serge, Chabrol’s debut, Les cousins recasts that film’s stars, Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain, in startlingly reversed roles. This dagger-sharp drama won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and was an important precursor to the French New Wave.

Release: January 5, 2021

$7.99

Description

More than four decades after he took a razorblade to an eyeball and shocked the world with Un chien andalou, arch-iconoclast Luis Buñuel capped his astonishing career with three final provocations—The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty, and That Obscure Object of Desire—in which his renegade, free-associating surrealism reached its audacious, self-detonating endgame. Working with such key collaborators as screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière and his own frequent on-screen alter ego Fernando Rey, Buñuel laced his scathing attacks on religion, class pretension, and moral hypocrisy with savage violence to create a trio of subversive, brutally funny masterpieces that explore the absurd randomness of existence. Among the director’s most radical works as well as some of his greatest international triumphs, these films cemented his legacy as cinema’s most incendiary revolutionary. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New high-definition digital restorations of all three films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks • The Castaway of Providence Street, a 1971 homage to Luis Buñuel made by his longtime friends and fellow filmmakers Arturo Ripstein and Rafael Castanedo • Speaking of Buñuel, a documentary from 2000 on Buñuel’s life and work • Once Upon a Time: “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” a 2011 television program about the making of the film • Interviews from 2000 with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière on The Phantom of Liberty and That Obscure Object of Desire • Archival interviews on all three films featuring Carrière; actors Stéphane Audran, Muni, Michel Piccoli, and Fernando Rey; and other key collaborators • Documentary from 1985 about producer Serge Silberman, who worked with Buñuel on five of his final seven films • Analysis of The Phantom of Liberty from 2017 by film scholar Peter William Evans • Lady Doubles, a 2017 documentary featuring actors Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina, who share the role of Conchita in That Obscure Object of Desire • Portrait of an Impatient Filmmaker, Luis Buñuel, a 2012 short documentary featuring director of photography Edmond Richard and assistant director Pierre Lary • Excerpts from Jacques de Baroncelli’s 1929 silent film La femme et le pantin, an adaptation of Pierre Louÿs’s 1898 novel of the same name, on which That Obscure Object of Desire is also based • Alternate English-dubbed soundtrack for That Obscure Object of Desire • Trailers • New English subtitle translations • PLUS: Essays by critic Adrian Martin and novelist and critic Gary Indiana, along with interviews with Buñuel by critics José de la Colina and Tomás Pérez Turrent THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-class sextet sits down to a dinner that is continually delayed, their attempts to eat thwarted by vaudevillian events both actual and imagined, including terrorist attacks, military maneuvers, and ghostly apparitions. Stringing together a discontinuous, digressive series of absurdist set pieces, Buñuel and his screenwriting partner Jean-Claude Carrière send a cast of European-film greats—including Fernando Rey, Stéphane Audran, Delphine Seyrig, and Jean-Pierre Cassel—through a maze of desire deferred, frustrated, and interrupted. The Oscar-winning pinnacle of Buñuel’s late-career ascent as a feted maestro of the international art house, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is also one of his most gleefully radical assaults on the values of the ruling class. THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY Luis Buñuel’s vision of the inherent absurdity of human social rituals reaches its taboo-annihilating extreme in what may be his most morally subversive and formally audacious work. Zigzagging across time and space, from the Napoleonic era to the present day, The Phantom of Liberty unfolds as a picaresque, its main character traveling between tableaux in a series of Dadaist non sequiturs. Unbound by the laws of narrative logic, Buñuel lets his surrealist’s id run riot in an exuberant revolt against bourgeois rationality that seems telegraphed directly from his unconscious to the screen. THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE Luis Buñuel’s final film brings full circle the director’s lifelong preoccupation with the darker side of desire. Buñuel regular Fernando Rey plays Mathieu, an urbane widower, tortured by his lust for the elusive Conchita. With subversive flair, Buñuel uses two different actors in the latter role—Carole Bouquet, a sophisticated French beauty, and Ángela Molina, a Spanish coquette. Drawn from the surrealist favorite Pierre Louÿs’s classic erotic novel La femme et le pantin (The Woman and the Puppet, 1898), That Obscure Object of Desire is a dizzying game of sexual politics punctuated by a terror that harks back to Buñuel’s avant-garde beginnings.

Release: March 8, 2016

$6.99

Description

One of the original critics turned filmmakers who helped jump-start the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette (La belle noiseuse) began shooting his debut feature in 1957, well before that cinema revolution officially kicked off with The 400 Blows and Breathless. Ultimately released in 1961, the rich and mysterious Paris Belongs to Us offers some of the radical flavor that would define the movement, with a particularly Rivettian twist. The film follows a young literature student (Betty Schneider) who befriends the members of a loose-knit group of twentysomethings in Paris, united by the apparent suicide of an acquaintance. Suffused with a lingering post World War II disillusionment while evincing a playful temperament, Rivette s film marked the provocative start to a brilliant directorial career. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES - New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack - New interview with Richard Neupert, author of A History of the French New Wave Cinema - Jacques Rivette s 1956 short film Le coup du berger, featuring cameos by fellow French New Wave directors Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, and François Truffaut - New English subtitle translation - PLUS: An essay by critic Luc Sante

Release: May 5, 2020

$7.99

Description

The multifaceted, deeply personal work of Eric Rohmer has had an effect on cinema unlike any other. One of the founding critics of the history-making Cahiers du cinéma, Rohmer began translating his written manifestos to film in the 1960s, standing apart from his New Wave contemporaries with his patented brand of gently existential, hyperarticulate character studies set against vivid seasonal landscapes. This near genre unto itself was established with the audacious and wildly influential series Six Moral Tales. A succession of encounters between fragile men and the women who tempt them, Six Moral Tales unleashed on the film world a new voice, one that was at once sexy, philosophical, modern, daring, nonjudgmental, and liberating. THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 2K digital restorations, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks • Conversation between director Eric Rohmer and filmmaker Barbet Schroeder from 2006 • Four short films by Rohmer—Presentation, or Charlotte and Her Steak (shot in 1951 and completed in 1961); Véronique and Her Dunce (1958); Nadja in Paris (1964); A Modern Coed (1966)—and one on which he advised, The Curve (1999) • “On Pascal,” a 1965 episode of the educational TV series En profil dans le texte directed by Rohmer, on the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, the subject of debate in My Night at Maud’s • Archival interviews with Rohmer; actors Jean-Claude Brialy, Béatrice Romand, Laurence de Monaghan, and Jean--Louis Trintignant; film critic Jean Douchet; and producer Pierre Cottrell • Video afterword from 2006 by filmmaker and writer Neil LaBute • Trailers • PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critics Geoff Andrew, Ginette Vincendeau, Phillip Lopate, Kent Jones, Molly Haskell, and Armond White; excerpts from cinematographer Nestor Almendros’s 1980 autobiography; and Rohmer’s landmark 1948 essay “For a Talking Cinema”; along with an English translation of Six Moral Tales, the book of stories by Rohmer on which the films are based THE BAKERY GIRL OF MONCEAU Delicate and jazzy, The Bakery Girl of Monceau, the first entry in the Six Moral Tales series, evinces stirrings of what would become the Eric Rohmer style: unfussy naturalistic shooting, ironic first-person voice-over, and an “unknowable” woman. A law student (played by producer and future director Barbet Schroeder) with a roving eye and a large appetite stuffs himself with sugary pastries daily in order to gain the affection of a pretty brunette who works in a quaint Paris bakery. But is he truly interested, or is she just a sweet diversion? SUZANNE’S CAREER Bertrand bides his time in a casually hostile and envious friendship with Guillaume. But when Guillaume seems to be making a play for the spirited, independent Suzanne, Bertrand watches dis-approvingly. With its ragged black-and-white 16 mm photography and strong sense of 1960s Paris, Suzanne’s Career, the second of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, is a wonderfully evocative portrait of youthful naivete and the complicated bonds of friendship and romance. MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S In My Night at Maud’s, the brilliantly accomplished centerpiece of the Six Moral Tales series, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis, one of the great conflicted figures of 1960s cinema. A Catholic engineer in his early thirties, he lives by a strict moral code and immerses himself in mathematics and the philosophy of Blaise Pascal. After spotting the delicate Françoise at Mass, he vows to make her his wife, although when he spends an unplanned night at the apartment of the bold divorcée Maud, his rigid standards are challenged. LA COLLECTIONNEUSE A bombastic, womanizing art dealer and his painter friend go to a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohemian Haydée, accused of being a “collector” of men. Eric Rohmer’s first color film, La collectionneuse pushes Six Moral Tales into new, darker realms while showcasing the clever, delectably ironic battle-of-the-sexes repartee (in a script written by Rohmer and the three main actors) and effortlessly luscious Nestor Almendros photography that would define the remainder of the series. CLAIRE’S KNEE “Why would I tie myself to one woman?” asks Jerôme in Claire’s Knee, though he plans to marry a diplomat’s daughter by summer’s end. He spends his July at a lakeside boardinghouse, nursing crushes on the sixteen-year-old Laura and, more tantalizingly, her long-legged, blonde, older half sister, Claire. Baring her knee on a ladder under a blooming cherry tree, Claire unwittingly incites a moral crisis for Jerôme while creating an image that is both the iconic emblem of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales and one of French cinema’s most enduring moments. LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON Though happily married to the adoring Hélène and expecting a second child with her, the thoroughly bourgeois executive Frédéric cannot banish from his mind the attractive Paris women he sees every day. His flirtations and fantasies remain harmless until the appearance at his office of Chloé, an audacious, unencumbered old flame played by the mesmerizing Zouzou. Love in the Afternoon, the luminous final chapter in Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, is a tender, sobering, and wholly adult affair that leads to perhaps the most overwhelmingly emotional moment in the entire series. Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews Six Moral Tales (The Bakery Girl of Monceau / Suzanne’s Career / My Night at Maud’s / La collectionneuse / Claire’s Knee / Love in the Afternoon) (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Release: May 5, 2020

$7.99

Description

The multifaceted, deeply personal work of Eric Rohmer has had an effect on cinema unlike any other. One of the founding critics of the history-making Cahiers du cinéma, Rohmer began translating his written manifestos to film in the 1960s, standing apart from his New Wave contemporaries with his patented brand of gently existential, hyperarticulate character studies set against vivid seasonal landscapes. This near genre unto itself was established with the audacious and wildly influential series Six Moral Tales. A succession of encounters between fragile men and the women who tempt them, Six Moral Tales unleashed on the film world a new voice, one that was at once sexy, philosophical, modern, daring, nonjudgmental, and liberating. THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 2K digital restorations, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks • Conversation between director Eric Rohmer and filmmaker Barbet Schroeder from 2006 • Four short films by Rohmer—Presentation, or Charlotte and Her Steak (shot in 1951 and completed in 1961); Véronique and Her Dunce (1958); Nadja in Paris (1964); A Modern Coed (1966)—and one on which he advised, The Curve (1999) • “On Pascal,” a 1965 episode of the educational TV series En profil dans le texte directed by Rohmer, on the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, the subject of debate in My Night at Maud’s • Archival interviews with Rohmer; actors Jean-Claude Brialy, Béatrice Romand, Laurence de Monaghan, and Jean--Louis Trintignant; film critic Jean Douchet; and producer Pierre Cottrell • Video afterword from 2006 by filmmaker and writer Neil LaBute • Trailers • PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critics Geoff Andrew, Ginette Vincendeau, Phillip Lopate, Kent Jones, Molly Haskell, and Armond White; excerpts from cinematographer Nestor Almendros’s 1980 autobiography; and Rohmer’s landmark 1948 essay “For a Talking Cinema”; along with an English translation of Six Moral Tales, the book of stories by Rohmer on which the films are based THE BAKERY GIRL OF MONCEAU Delicate and jazzy, The Bakery Girl of Monceau, the first entry in the Six Moral Tales series, evinces stirrings of what would become the Eric Rohmer style: unfussy naturalistic shooting, ironic first-person voice-over, and an “unknowable” woman. A law student (played by producer and future director Barbet Schroeder) with a roving eye and a large appetite stuffs himself with sugary pastries daily in order to gain the affection of a pretty brunette who works in a quaint Paris bakery. But is he truly interested, or is she just a sweet diversion? SUZANNE’S CAREER Bertrand bides his time in a casually hostile and envious friendship with Guillaume. But when Guillaume seems to be making a play for the spirited, independent Suzanne, Bertrand watches dis-approvingly. With its ragged black-and-white 16 mm photography and strong sense of 1960s Paris, Suzanne’s Career, the second of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, is a wonderfully evocative portrait of youthful naivete and the complicated bonds of friendship and romance. MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S In My Night at Maud’s, the brilliantly accomplished centerpiece of the Six Moral Tales series, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis, one of the great conflicted figures of 1960s cinema. A Catholic engineer in his early thirties, he lives by a strict moral code and immerses himself in mathematics and the philosophy of Blaise Pascal. After spotting the delicate Françoise at Mass, he vows to make her his wife, although when he spends an unplanned night at the apartment of the bold divorcée Maud, his rigid standards are challenged. LA COLLECTIONNEUSE A bombastic, womanizing art dealer and his painter friend go to a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohemian Haydée, accused of being a “collector” of men. Eric Rohmer’s first color film, La collectionneuse pushes Six Moral Tales into new, darker realms while showcasing the clever, delectably ironic battle-of-the-sexes repartee (in a script written by Rohmer and the three main actors) and effortlessly luscious Nestor Almendros photography that would define the remainder of the series. CLAIRE’S KNEE “Why would I tie myself to one woman?” asks Jerôme in Claire’s Knee, though he plans to marry a diplomat’s daughter by summer’s end. He spends his July at a lakeside boardinghouse, nursing crushes on the sixteen-year-old Laura and, more tantalizingly, her long-legged, blonde, older half sister, Claire. Baring her knee on a ladder under a blooming cherry tree, Claire unwittingly incites a moral crisis for Jerôme while creating an image that is both the iconic emblem of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales and one of French cinema’s most enduring moments. LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON Though happily married to the adoring Hélène and expecting a second child with her, the thoroughly bourgeois executive Frédéric cannot banish from his mind the attractive Paris women he sees every day. His flirtations and fantasies remain harmless until the appearance at his office of Chloé, an audacious, unencumbered old flame played by the mesmerizing Zouzou. Love in the Afternoon, the luminous final chapter in Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, is a tender, sobering, and wholly adult affair that leads to perhaps the most overwhelmingly emotional moment in the entire series. Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews Six Moral Tales (The Bakery Girl of Monceau / Suzanne’s Career / My Night at Maud’s / La collectionneuse / Claire’s Knee / Love in the Afternoon) (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Release: May 5, 2020

$7.99

Description

The multifaceted, deeply personal work of Eric Rohmer has had an effect on cinema unlike any other. One of the founding critics of the history-making Cahiers du cinéma, Rohmer began translating his written manifestos to film in the 1960s, standing apart from his New Wave contemporaries with his patented brand of gently existential, hyperarticulate character studies set against vivid seasonal landscapes. This near genre unto itself was established with the audacious and wildly influential series Six Moral Tales. A succession of encounters between fragile men and the women who tempt them, Six Moral Tales unleashed on the film world a new voice, one that was at once sexy, philosophical, modern, daring, nonjudgmental, and liberating. THREE-BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 2K digital restorations, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks • Conversation between director Eric Rohmer and filmmaker Barbet Schroeder from 2006 • Four short films by Rohmer—Presentation, or Charlotte and Her Steak (shot in 1951 and completed in 1961); Véronique and Her Dunce (1958); Nadja in Paris (1964); A Modern Coed (1966)—and one on which he advised, The Curve (1999) • “On Pascal,” a 1965 episode of the educational TV series En profil dans le texte directed by Rohmer, on the French philosopher Blaise Pascal, the subject of debate in My Night at Maud’s • Archival interviews with Rohmer; actors Jean-Claude Brialy, Béatrice Romand, Laurence de Monaghan, and Jean--Louis Trintignant; film critic Jean Douchet; and producer Pierre Cottrell • Video afterword from 2006 by filmmaker and writer Neil LaBute • Trailers • PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critics Geoff Andrew, Ginette Vincendeau, Phillip Lopate, Kent Jones, Molly Haskell, and Armond White; excerpts from cinematographer Nestor Almendros’s 1980 autobiography; and Rohmer’s landmark 1948 essay “For a Talking Cinema”; along with an English translation of Six Moral Tales, the book of stories by Rohmer on which the films are based THE BAKERY GIRL OF MONCEAU Delicate and jazzy, The Bakery Girl of Monceau, the first entry in the Six Moral Tales series, evinces stirrings of what would become the Eric Rohmer style: unfussy naturalistic shooting, ironic first-person voice-over, and an “unknowable” woman. A law student (played by producer and future director Barbet Schroeder) with a roving eye and a large appetite stuffs himself with sugary pastries daily in order to gain the affection of a pretty brunette who works in a quaint Paris bakery. But is he truly interested, or is she just a sweet diversion? SUZANNE’S CAREER Bertrand bides his time in a casually hostile and envious friendship with Guillaume. But when Guillaume seems to be making a play for the spirited, independent Suzanne, Bertrand watches dis-approvingly. With its ragged black-and-white 16 mm photography and strong sense of 1960s Paris, Suzanne’s Career, the second of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, is a wonderfully evocative portrait of youthful naivete and the complicated bonds of friendship and romance. MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S In My Night at Maud’s, the brilliantly accomplished centerpiece of the Six Moral Tales series, Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis, one of the great conflicted figures of 1960s cinema. A Catholic engineer in his early thirties, he lives by a strict moral code and immerses himself in mathematics and the philosophy of Blaise Pascal. After spotting the delicate Françoise at Mass, he vows to make her his wife, although when he spends an unplanned night at the apartment of the bold divorcée Maud, his rigid standards are challenged. LA COLLECTIONNEUSE A bombastic, womanizing art dealer and his painter friend go to a seventeenth-century villa on the Riviera for a relaxing summer getaway. But their idyll is disturbed by the presence of the bohemian Haydée, accused of being a “collector” of men. Eric Rohmer’s first color film, La collectionneuse pushes Six Moral Tales into new, darker realms while showcasing the clever, delectably ironic battle-of-the-sexes repartee (in a script written by Rohmer and the three main actors) and effortlessly luscious Nestor Almendros photography that would define the remainder of the series. CLAIRE’S KNEE “Why would I tie myself to one woman?” asks Jerôme in Claire’s Knee, though he plans to marry a diplomat’s daughter by summer’s end. He spends his July at a lakeside boardinghouse, nursing crushes on the sixteen-year-old Laura and, more tantalizingly, her long-legged, blonde, older half sister, Claire. Baring her knee on a ladder under a blooming cherry tree, Claire unwittingly incites a moral crisis for Jerôme while creating an image that is both the iconic emblem of Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales and one of French cinema’s most enduring moments. LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON Though happily married to the adoring Hélène and expecting a second child with her, the thoroughly bourgeois executive Frédéric cannot banish from his mind the attractive Paris women he sees every day. His flirtations and fantasies remain harmless until the appearance at his office of Chloé, an audacious, unencumbered old flame played by the mesmerizing Zouzou. Love in the Afternoon, the luminous final chapter in Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, is a tender, sobering, and wholly adult affair that leads to perhaps the most overwhelmingly emotional moment in the entire series. Top About this item Similar From the Brand Reviews Six Moral Tales (The Bakery Girl of Monceau / Suzanne’s Career / My Night at Maud’s / La collectionneuse / Claire’s Knee / Love in the Afternoon) (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]