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Le Rayon vert by Eric Rohmer: An ethnography of summer holiday

Rohmer has described Le Rayon vert, the 5th film of “Comedies and Proverbs” series, as ‘a fictional documentary or a documentary fiction.’ The film chronicles a summer like a ethnographer’s report. Ethnography provides a proper qualitative method for Rohmer who always scrutinizes people’s ordinary way of thinking and feeling. The ethnographer becomes Rohmer itself and also the camera has a visual anthropologist’s eye. It is closer in spirit to Jean Rouch, French ethnographic film director, than to conventional narrative cinema. Therefore, Le Rayon vert was largely improvised and filmed almost as a documentary without script. As a matter of fact, Rohmer always takes summer holiday seriously. In this film, he observes daydreams of Delphine conflicting between reality and the idea which she has, and her travelling alone across France in search of a romance. Unfortunately, she does not know very well where she is going and she goes wrong. She is brutally obliged to recognize the complexity of this world. Tracing her wander from place to place, Rohmer explores summer holiday sites, especially beaches, with great geographical authenticity. The film also uses the colour green as its important motif and carefully organizes its central metaphor of green ray through the repetition. Eventually, the color green expands to the green ray itself. However, the film does not suggest simple solution. Delphine believes that she has seen the green ray with a suitable partner. Yet what she has seen is an illusion. Rohmer sees the final scene with uncertainty. Therefore the beach remains a complex location of realism and illusion.