Eric Rohmer's film version of Heinrich von Kleist's 1808 novella, The Marquise of O …, is as intelligent and successful as such an undertaking can get….

There is no way for a filmmaker to convey the Pyrrhic victory over chaos of Kleist's utterance on screen, even if, like Rohmer, he wisely makes the film in German and follows the text with almost fanatical fidelity. The very fact of Kleist's obsessively indirect discourse, with the wonderfully alienating device of those conditionals and subjunctives its use in German requires, cannot be rendered on film; it has to be put into direct discourse and into the characters' mouths, thus conventionalizing, de-electrifying, and slowing down the speed of thought to that of action. Rohmer's insistence on dissolves—which may be necessary to convey the passage of time—further delays what in the text hurtles ahead….

Rohmer's … liberties taken with the text are minimal, and...