My edition of Élisabeth was written by a man called Gilbert Cordier and published by Gallimard in 1946. The novel didn’t go far and eventually disappeared from circulation. Sixty years later Gallimard reissued it under the altered title of La maison d’Élisabeth. Now, almost eighty years after its initial publication in France, it has been translated into English by Aaron Kerner for McNally Editions under its original title of Élisabeth.Article continues after advertisement
Its author, however, was never Gilbert Cordier. Cordier never existed. Cordier is the pen name for Éric Rohmer (1920-2010), the famous French film director who gave us My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee, The Green Ray, A Summer’s Tale, Pauline at the Beach, A Good Marriage, Chloé in the Afternoon, and so many other classics of the Nouvelle Vague. Indeed, Éric Rohmer, once the editor of the Cahiers du cinéma and frequently eclipsed by notable directors such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Louis Malle, and Jacques Rivette, is now perhaps the most visible of them all, and his films are regularly shown, sometimes independently, sometimes in assorted compilations with other Éric Rohmer films. Many, but not all of his films, are grouped: Six Moral Tales, Comedies and Proverbs, and Tales of the Four Seasons. He wrote all of them.
