Claire’s Knee (Le Genou de Claire)
Part of the BAMcinematek series Winners of the Prix Louis Delluc
Sat, April 25 at 2, 4:30, 6:50, 9:15pm
Directed by Eric Rohmer
With Jean-Claude Brialy, Beatrice Romand
(1970) 105min
“[Claire’s Knee] comes very close to being a perfect movie of its kind, something on the order of an affectionate comedy of the intellect that has no easily identifiable cinema antecedents except in other films by Mr. Rohmer, most notably My Night at Maud’s.” —The New York Times
The penultimate film in Rohmer’s brilliant Six Moral Tales, Claire’s Knee stars the excellent Brialy as an affianced diplomat who meets two teenaged girls on holiday—one of whom captures his imagination as he becomes infatuated with her shapely knee. This sublime meditation on lust, sensuality, love, and self-deception is brilliantly scripted and directed by Rohmer and warmly photographed by Nestor Almendros.
The New York Times review of Claire's Knee
"It is the product of a literary sensibility, and it grows out of a literary tradition, but it is, first and foremost, a superlative motion picture. Like "Intolerance," "My Darling Clementine," "Rear Window" and "Le Gai Savoir"—movies I mention only because it resembles them not in the least—"Claire's Knee" could exist in no other form." More