Mapping Rohmer: cinematic cartography in post-war Paris

"How can films map? Is cinematic ‘mapping’ more than a metaphor? Can films be regarded as cartographic documents? This chapter explores mapping as a cinematic process. It explores ways in which film-making can take on a mapping function, as well as ways in which maps can act as analogies for films (in other words, how films can sometimes be said to have map-like qualities). It does so by means of a set of examples: Eric Rohmer’s Paris films. In thirteen of the twenty five feature films that Rohmer made between the early 1960s and mid-2000s, characters journey through Paris – on foot, by train, and occasionally by car. Through these characters, I argue, Rohmer enacts what Teresa Castro (2009) refers to as ‘cinema’s mapping impulse’. Various basic cartographic processes (for example, drawing lines, connecting points, and reconciling accurate geographic representation with graphic simplification) recur throughout Rohmer’s cinematic representations of the city. As a result, the map of Paris appears as an implied presence in his films, as filmed journeys through city streets and on railway lines. This chapter takes the form of a spatial narrative, or ‘tour’ (De Certeau 1984: 119), through Rohmer’s cinematic map of post-war Paris.