Trivia

This short is the first of Éric Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales".

Éric Rohmer said: "My intention was not to film raw events, but the narrative that someone makes of them. The story, the choice of facts, their organization... not the treatment that I could have made them submit to. One of the reasons that these Tales are called 'Moral' is that physical actions are almost completely absent: everything happens in the head of the narrator."

Using the word "moral" does not mean that there is a moral in the story. According to Rohmer: "So Contes Moraux doesn't really mean that there's a moral contained in them, even though there might be one and all the characters in these films act according to certain moral ideas that are fairly clearly worked out."

"They are films which a particular feeling is analyzed and where even the characters themselves analyze their feelings and are very introspective. That's what Conte Moral means."

In each of the "Six Moral Tales", Éric Rohmer filmed only during the time and in the place that the film was set. There was no use of sets.

This short is part of the Criterion Collection, spine #343.

The themes of this short are guilt - that all are guilty and none are completely innocent; love, desire, and free will - this is marked by the conflict within the protagonist. The conflict is the debate of being in another's arms. They "prefer to emphasize the possibility of choice rather than the activity of it." And lastly, courtly love - according to James Monaco, there is an "inborn suffering" for the protagonist caused by "excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex". It is a "love based in idleness".