Hacker Cinema
The Green Ray
Le Rayon vert
1986 · Film · 99 min
Directed by Éric Rohmer
A lonely Parisian woman comes to terms with her isolation and anxieties during a long summer vacation.
3 positive3 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
Thanks! Here's the full list: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 8½, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, All That Heaven Allows, Apocalypse Now, Ashes and Diamonds, A Woman Under the Influence, Barry Lyndon, Bicycle Thieves, Breathless, Casablanca, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Chinatown, Chinese Roulette, Citizen Kane, City Lights, City of Pirates, Contempt, Daisies, Damnation, Dishonored, Earth, Electra My Love, El Topo, Eraserhead, Eyes Wide Shut, Film Socialisme, Fitzcarraldo, Fuego en Castilla, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Holy Motors, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, In a Year with 13 Moons, India Song, Inland Empire, Irma Vep, Koyaanisqatsi, La Dolce Vita, La Jetée, Late Spring, L'Eau de la Seine, Le Voyage dans la Lune, Lolita, Los Olvidados, Lost Highway, Lucifer Rising, Man with a Movie Camera, Metropolis, Mirror, Mulholland Drive, Night Music, Ordet, Orpheus, Persona, Pickpocket, Playtime, Psycho, Rebecca, Rosemary's Baby, Rumble Fish, Scarface, Seven Samurai, Sherlock Jr., Singin' in the Rain, Stalker, Sunset Boulevard, Taste of Cherry, Taxi Driver, Testament of Orpheus, The 400 Blows, The Blood of a Poet, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Color of Pomegranates, The Green Ray, The Holy Mountain, The Isle, The Lady from Shanghai, The Night of the Hunter, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Seventh Seal, The Spirit of the Beehive, The Tales of Hoffmann, The Tree of Life, The Turin Horse, Time of the Gypsies, Tokyo Story, Touch of Evil, Trans-Europ-Express, Ugetsu, Un Chien Andalou, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Vampyr, Videodrome, Wavelength, Werckmeister Harmonies, Wild Strawberries, Moonlight Sonata, Stellar, The Haunted House Biased toward European art cinema, experimental work, and directors who broke conventional narrative rules.
I think I particularly like this film because it is a highly structured story around feelings that can be illogical. The Green Ray is an improvised film, so the polar opposite in a way!
Any movie that’s someone’s favorite movie is one I’ll watch. So, watching it tonight. Thanks for the rec.
The only one of “Comedies and Proverbs” that I’ve seen so far is The Green Ray which is a very sweet film.
Let me offer you some not Canal+ French films I've enjoyed: Breathless; Hiroshima Mon Amour; Diva; My Life as a Zucchini; Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles; The Rules of the Game; Last Year at Marienbad; La Collectionneuse; The Green Ray; One Sings, the Other Doesn’t; The Kid with a Bike; The 400 Blows; My Night at Maud's; The Wages of Fear.
His conservatism transcends such considerations, though as Brody mentions, could certainly be tied to a certain occidental mystique - which he later obliquely denied.
Paradoxically the films of his which deal most explicitly with sexual mores (Claire's Knee, La Collectionneuse) are those that carry the most regressive lessons: consider them in the context of the free love ideology of the 60s and 70s.
And then of course there is the masterpiece of fidélité, My Night at Maud's.
For me though, more than anything else Rohmer is remembered as the chronicler of bourgeois ennui - certainly there is a political dimension here but it is ambivalent. And even then he always depicted his protagonists with care and love, never as caricutures (The Green Ray is emblematic, few other filmmakers could depict the protagonist as anything but pathetic, not Rohmer though).
For those interested- an earlier review by Brody of a Rohmer film (Summer's Tale) with these words that convey what Brody possibly regards as the root of Rohmer's conservatism: "what emerges is the ironic truth, the confidence that from self-denial, from refusal, from negation, from evasion, from self-effacement, from withdrawal, and from an active self-marginalization, a positive image will ultimately emerge."https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/eric-rohmers-tribute-to-his-younger-self"
I don’t think Netflix is entirely at fault. It’s sad how most people seem to be super ok with flushing the past down a toilet. Like anything from before they were born is irrelevant. I think it’s selfish in a way but mostly I think people are terrified of coming across as weird.
Like imagine going to work at a generic office and trying to talk about a half forgotten French movie like The Green Ray. There are too many unknowns (no recognizable cast, foreign film, kind of old) and I don’t think the average person has the fortitude to stand up to that kind of social situation so they avoid it instinctively.
But Netflix could definitely try harder instead of nurturing lazy entertainment. I don’t expect much from them since they made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2 in English. What a lame decision.
There is a fantastic French film by Eric Rohmer called Le Rayon vert (The Green Ray) where this phenomenon is a central element to the story.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Green_Ray_(film)
I cannot recommend this film highly enough. Beautifully shot, heartfelt, and often hilarious dialogue. I discovered Rohmer and this film through a screening Richard Linklater and the Austin Film Society hosted. Linklater introduced the film and he hosted a nice audience discussion afterwards (you can watch his introduction and the audience discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTfV3tA054s)