Conte d'hiver, E. Rohmer

the colors and the costumes

"I'm always concerned with the look of a film, even if that's not obvious. Does it succeed? It's not for me to judge. But even in this film, which is dingy and dull, there is a pictorial bias in the choice of locations, in the choice of spaces, lines, sets and costumes, and finally in the choice of colors. Here I chose colors which are fairly dull... Brown... Browns and indeed blacks and browns. You deal with the costumes yourself? Yes, I deal with the detail of everything. I don't have a designer and I don't want one because I think that it's something very important in a film and that when the director likes to take care of it and wants to do so, well, in that case, it's good that he does it. So you are your own costume designer? I am, but I can tell you that choosing costumes is very complicated and very long and it takes up a lot of time. It depends on the film. In some films a character's costume is dedicated to their job, but it also has to match the color scheme that I want. My films all have a color and generally the cover of the screenplay indicates the color. Here ir was a grey color. And for the Comedies and Proverbs there were two colors. For example, the Aviator's Wife even had three. The colors were green, blue and yellow. In Pauline at the Beach they were blue, white and red. You talk about the screenplay... It's the notebook. So it's a very precise task, and since the costumes are very important - the costumes take up a lot of space in a film, in the foreground in the picture - you must take great care over them and that is what I do. For example, in the choice of the coat worn by the heroine, which is a sort of parka, it was quite complicated to chose that color. Did you choose it with her? Yes. She suggested one that she had but the color was a little bit too dark and this one was bought for the film."

(entrevista com Eric Rohmer, parte dos extras desta edição do Conto de Inverno. a tradução para inglês não é excelente)