Eric Rohmer's Ma Nuit chez Maud deals … explicitly with Jansenism; the characters discuss and analyze it in relation to modern Christianity, general moral attitudes, and the conduct of their own lives. Yet the film is by no means a turgid exegesis on the subject; the work is most interesting because of the way it reveals character and establishes relationships rather than for what is intellectualized. (p. 7)

Eric Rohmer's skill lies in his ability to lend aesthetic weight to visual understatement. He is sparse but not puritanical, since his use of black and white can be stunning in its unsensational candor…. (p. 9)

Rohmer is able to capture the sincerity and frankness of each gesture during conversations without arduous close-ups that call more attention to themselves than their subjects. His dialogue is neither cliched nor does it allude to pretensions beyond the limits of the film itself; his characters are...