The Lady and the Duke
(L’anglaise et le duc)
Screening on Film
Directed by Eric Rohmer.
With Lucy Russell, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Alain Libolt.
France, 2001, 35mm, color, 125 min.
French with English subtitles.
With Lucy Russell, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Alain Libolt.
France, 2001, 35mm, color, 125 min.
French with English subtitles.
Famous for insisting on precise real-life locations for his films, Rohmer made a surprise volta face with his decision to use digital video to create a computer-generated 18th century for The Lady and the Duke. For his adaptation of the memoirs of a Scottish noblewoman living in Paris during the French Revolution, with friends both at the royal court and among supporters of the uprising, Rohmer used digital technology to transform a series of perspective paintings, based on period engravings, into vivid tableaux backgrounds. The result is a virtual Paris that hovers between the historical and the imagined, a haunting expression of Rohmer’s stated intention “to find the true by way of the false.”