The failure of this, his first feature, which was independently produced by Claude Chabrol, meant that Rohmer was unable to direct another film for several years while the rest of his cohorts were busily making names for themselves. Critics at the time faulted the passivity of The Sign of Leo’s main character, a Parisian layabout buffeted by forces beyond his control as he waits for a long-anticipated inheritance. Yet the tension between chance and free will that is the driving force in Rohmer’s work finds its first crucial expression in The Sign of Leo, a film championed (and acknowledged as an influence) by the likes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Rohmer’s rarely-screened directorial debut contains fascinating footage of bohemian life in 1959 Paris, for example, a cameo appearance by Godard in a party scene.