My Night at Maud's Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.5

My Night at Maud's Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 9, 2024

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales from Criterion.

One of the rather interesting if simultaneously peculiar trivia points about world cinema is how fecund the French movie critic community has been in producing titans of film making. The iconic French publication Cahiers du Cinéma was a virtual hotbed of activity in this regard, and if names like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut may be at the apex of any list culled from those who began as writers for the magazine and who went on to storied careers in film, there are any number of others, including Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, and the man responsible for the six films (some shorts) in this collection, Éric Rohmer. Rohmer's fame may have at least temporarily eclipsed the likes of Godard and Truffaut, for a little while anyway, when the trifecta of My Night at Maud's, Claire's Knee, and Love in the Afternoon became international sensations as the sixties gave way to the seventies. An obituary for Rohmer in a major newspaper mentioned his "durability" and suggested that even if he didn't have the immediate name recognition of some of his peers, his work had outlasted any flash in the pan sensibility that may have attended releases of films by other former critics. Really fascinatingly in the "trivial pursuit" category is the fact that all six of the "tales" aggregated as exemplars of "morality" by Rohmer are based, at least tangentially, on F.W. Murnau's legendary Sunrise.

My Night at Maud's remains one of Rohmer's best remembered efforts, and one of the things that may have piqued interest for American film fans in particular at the time of its original release and extended theatrical exhibition is the fact that due to the vagaries of screenings and award eligibility rules, the film actually got two Oscar nominations over the course of two years. While its screenplay was feted by the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics in 1970, its sole Academy Award nomination for that year was Best Foreign Language Film (where it perhaps understandably lost to Costa-Gravas' Z). It wasn't until 1971 that the Academy bestowed a second nomination on the film for Best Screenplay (where Patton defeated it). Award trivia aside, My Night at Maud's revisits a Rohmer staple of a somewhat inept (romantically, at least) man thinking he wants one woman, only to potentially fall for the charms of another.

What's kind of fascinating about My Night at Maud's is how it overtly addresses a religious aspect which is frankly only kind of broadly hinted at in the film that supposedly inspired this entire series, Sunrise. That 1927 classic was unabashedly a melodrama, with almost Grand Guignol aspirations at times as its inept man struggled with conflicting desires, but its "morality" was basically a simple "good girl" vs. "harlot" sort of equation. Here, in My Night at Maud's, which despite a certain heaviness of tone is probably still not as roiling as Sunrise, the focal male Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is a devout Catholic, and in fact spies his supposed "dream girl" Françoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) while attending Mass. Kind of interestingly, at least in a meta sense, the "other woman" Maud in the film is played by an actress sharing the first name of the "nice girl" character, Françoise Fabian.

My Night at Maud's Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

My Night at Maud's is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. Criterion's insert booklet states that "the restoration of all six films was undertaken by Les Films du Losange, with the support of the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC)", and further specifies that this particular film was transferred in 3K from a 35 mm interpositive. After the decidedly "ragged" (in Criterion's own words) appearance of Suzanne's Career , this presentation is like a breath of fresh air, with a much more consistent accounting of virtually all the aspects we try to mention in reviews. Contrast is generally spot on, navigating slight but noticeable lighting value changes as things range from interiors to out of doors. Detail levels are typically excellent throughout, though once again Rohmer tends to favor midrange framings quite a bit of the time. There's virtually no noticeable age related wear and tear. Grain is tightly resolved throughout.

My Night at Maud's Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

My Night at Maud's features another LPCM Mono track in the original French, though the fame of this feature may have resulted in better overall curation of elements through the years, as this track is substantially more full bodied in overall tone than either of the shorts offered as "warm up acts" in Criterion's Rohmer set. There's still not a very "baroque" approach toward sound design, and things are really rather basic here, with the bulk of the presentation given over to dialogue, with occasional ambient environmental sounds creeping into the proceedings. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

My Night at Maud's Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Criterion has packaged My Night at Maud's and La Collectionneuse together on one disc with the following supplements, some of which, while "officially" listed under one particular film, may be more general in nature.

My Night at Maud's

• "On Pascal" (HD; 22:01) is culled from a 1965 television episode from a series whose title translates as Reading Between the Lines. This was directed by Rohmer, where he interviews philosophers Brice Parain and Dominque Dubarle about "Pascal's wager". Subtitled in English.


• Télécinéma (HD; 13:39) is a 1974 episode of a French television show, featuring interviews with Jean Douchet, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Pierre Cottrell. Subtitled in English.


• Trailer (HD; 2:45)

La Collectionneuse

• A Modern Coed (1966) (HD; 12:49) is a documentary detailing the "infiltration" of women to French academies of higher learning.


• Parlons Cinéma (HD; 50:43) is a 1977 interview with Rohmer done for Ontario television. Subtitled in English.


• Trailer (HD; 2:16)

My Night at Maud's Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Trivia fans may know that My Night at Maud's is not the only foreign film to see its Oscar nominations unspool over two (or more) years, with Amarcord and The Battle of Algiers also belonging to that august group. While obviously tangential, that unusual situation may at least subliminally hint at the "staying power" the film has, and it continues to impress with its distinctly French take on the vagaries of romance (and, eventually, marriage), with that unique tout est juste dans l'amour et la guerre sensibility that may be the romantic equivalent of laissez faire. Technical merits are generally solid, and My Night at Maud's comes Highly recommended.