I bought myself a present.

If I'm in a city or a place where city-dwellers go for holidays or weekends and I pass by a street vender of any age who's neither poor nor desperate, selling sincere but terrible paintings or other attempts at marketable creation (that rarely pass kitsch) I think of Rohmer. No character in Rohmer's films is equal in intelligence or perception to his creator; though there may be a claim to something, inevitably it's less then s/he imagines. The people are small and the author's presence is outside, superior but benign. My first reaction to the sidewalk painter is contempt, but Rohmer remains a gentle moral conservative.