Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for The Green Ray (1986) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Marie Rivière, Amira Chemakhi, Sylvie Richez, María Luisa García, Béatrice Romand, Rosette DIRECTOR: Éric Rohmer CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sophie Maintigneux MUSIC: Jean-Louis Valéro PRODUCTION: Les Films du Losange

Box Office Performance

Theatrical box office data is not publicly available for The Green Ray (1986). This may indicate a limited release, direct-to-streaming, or a release predating modern box office tracking.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Production

In 1980, Rohmer began a series of films each based on a proverb, the "Comedies and Proverbs". The fifth of the series was The Green Ray in 1986. The theme was given by a phrase from Arthur Rimbaud, ("Oh! May the time come when hearts fall in love"). Rohmer said that "I was struck by the naturalness of television interviews. You can say that here, nature is perfect. If you look for it, you find it because people forget the cameras". As was becoming his custom in pre-production, Rohmer gathered his cast together to discuss the project and their characters and allowed each actor to invent their dialogue. Rohmer stated that lead actress Marie Rivière "is the one who called the shots, not only by what she said, but by the way she'd speak, the way she'd question people, and also by the questions her character evoked from the others"

The film was shot chronologically and in 16 mm so as to be "as inconspicuous as possible, to have Delphine blend into the crowd as a way, ultimately, of accentuating her isolation". Rohmer also instructed his cinematographer, Sophie Maintigneux, to keep technical aspects of the shoot to a minimum so as to not interrupt or distract the actors. The film's only major expense was a trip to the Canary Islands to film the green rays there. Rohmer chose to premiere the film on Canal Plus, a pay-TV station that paid $130,000 for the film, which was one fifth of its budget. Rohmer stated, "Cinema here will survive only because of television. Without such an alliance we won't be able to afford French films". The experiment paid off when the film was a commercial success after being released three days after its initial broadcast.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: 5 wins

Awards Won: ★ Golden Lion

CRITICAL RECEPTION

The Green Ray won the Golden Lion and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 43rd Venice International Film Festival. It was mostly praised by film critics, although Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote an unfavourable review, stating, "I didn't like it very much". In the 2012 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films ever made, The Green Ray made the top-10 lists of six critics and three directors. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 and wrote Rohmer "is interested in the times between the big moments, the times when boredom and disenchantment set in" and "Perhaps he believes that you can best judge a person's character by observing how they behave when they feel they are not being judged".