(1970, b/w; Ma nuit chez Maud, French) Director/writer Eric Rohmer's philosophical film, another in his series, Six Moral Tales, takes the shape of a love triangle. In church during mass, having noticed Françoise (Marie-Christine Barrault), an attractive blonde, the narrator (Jean-Louis Trintignant), whom I'll call Jean-Louis, pursues her on her motorbike in his vehicle, but in the narrow streets of Clermont loses sight of her. On December 21st, seeing her again on her motorbike, he experiences an epiphany, though he has yet to speak a word to her, that she will become his wife.

A 34-year-old engineer for Michlin, since October residing in Ceyrat, recently returned from Canada and Chile, Jean-Louis looks at a volume of mathematics (in which he dabbles) in a bookstore and then thumbs through Pascal's Pensées: "unthinking belief … It's the way you diminish the passions, which are your stumbling blocks."

By chance (calculating the probability of the encounter fascinates him) when entering an unfamiliar bar he runs across an old friend from school, Vidal (Antoine Vitez), a professor of philosophy in the college, whom he hasn't seen for fourteen years; both having varied their ordinary paths, which hadn't previously crossed, they renew acquaintanceship.

Another coincidence occurs when Vidal, a Marxist and atheist, brings up Pascal's name: "The mathematician and the philosopher are one." In rereading Pascal, whom he says he knows "by heart," Jean-Louis, saying of himself, "I'm a Catholic or at least I try to be," hasn't removed the emptiness he found in the great writer's words about Christianity: "doesn't fit in with my notion of Catholicism."

Pascal's wager has significance for Communists such as himself, doubting that "history has any meaning," Vidal expostulates: when considering two propositions, either history has meaning or it doesn't, betting on the former, even if the probability of the latter's being true is far greater, is justified as the wiser choice because it gives meaning and purpose to one's life. "Mathematical hope," Jean-Louis acknowledges: "Potential gain divided by probability … though the probability is slight, the possible gain is infinite."

Even with just one chance in a thousand, responds Vidal, the Communists recognized that "hope became infinitely greater if you took that chance than if you didn't take it." Offering Jean-Louis a ticket to a musical recital, the two men attend a violin and piano performance, followed by lapsed-Catholic Vidal's agreeing to accompany Jean-Louis to midnight mass where the priest speaks of Christ as the "guarantee of our hope."

Neither married, "stinking of holy water" on the day after Christmas, Vidal (saying his motive as a puritan is to have an excuse for not making love) brings Jean-Louis to his remarkable female friend's apartment where he introduces Maud (Françoise Fabian), a beautiful divorcee and pediatrician, to Jean-Louis.

During dinner they discuss religious views. Repeatedly Jean-Louis denies he's a Jansenist (one who does not accept the existence of free will, believing in the corruption of humanity and Christ's salvation only for an elect few). Vidal says that even to an atheist the contradictions within Christianity are fascinating; he avers that Maud's irreligion is a type of religion. "It's not nothing. It's another way of looking at problems," she justifies her pragmatism: "It has its principles, sometimes very strict ones, but it's free of preconceived notions."

After Jean-Louis points out Pascal's assertion that "marriage was the lowest state in Christianity," below celibate priests, Vidal counters that religion enhances a woman: "Religion enhances love, and love enhances religion." While Maud sees to her daughter Marie, the two men find a copy of Pensées in a bookcase in which Vidal refers Jean-Louis to the line: "renounce reason if you value your life."

When Jean-Louis expresses his dislike for Pascal's wager's exchange, choosing between the finite and the infinite, Vidal asks about girls. Admitting to having had three, maybe four, lengthy affairs - dismissing any claim to being an example to others - Jean-Louis says he's never taken such relationships lightly as mere romantic flings. What if circumstances brought him together with an amorous woman for a one-night stand, hypothesizes Vidal, would he not take advantage of the opportunity? "In the past, not now," answers Jean-Louis because he has converted from his earlier attitude.

Vidal suspects his friend of being in love, which Jean-Louis denies. His Christianity and love affairs are different and conflicting matters, Jean-Louis concedes, though chasing girls is not prohibited by God any more than is mathematics. By the end of his life, Pascal condemned good food and mathematics, says Vidal. "Mathematics turns you away from God," assents Jean-Louis, as "useless, intellectual diversion - worse than other diversions … completely abstract, thus inhuman."

Outside as snow falls, the philosopher takes his leave, leaving Jean-Louis with Maud, who argues against the engineer's taking chances in treacherous weather. (As she will explain later, the most attractive, brilliant, passionate man in her life died in a car crash a year before.)

Calling Jean-Louis a "shamefaced Christian and shamefaced Don Juan," Maud says she's shocked and disturbed, to which he says real love requires mutual commitment. His moral education has come from his relationships with women in which the physical aspect can't be separated from the moral. Having no aspiration for sainthood, he says if not bliss for himself, he desires "at least a certain justness," in the Scriptural sense.

Vidal is in love with her, Maud informs Jean-Louis, for which she makes him suffer: "I'm very hard to please when it comes to men." By bringing him to be with her, she tells Jean-Louis, Vidal is testing her, supplying a reason to hate or despise her.

In response to her asking about Christians supposedly judged by their deeds, he explains that deeds are enormously important, but "the whole cloth of life," not just a single act, matters far more: "purity of heart is the most important thing." One aspect of the Church he dislikes is the bookkeeping of good deeds versus sins.

Adamant in his absolute confidence of his ability to be faithful to the woman he marries, regarding a vow as eternally sacred, Jean-Louis nonetheless assures Maud that though divorce for himself would be an impossibility, dismissing the possibility of "insurmountable circumstances," he doesn't condemn her for being divorced since he's respectful of different beliefs and attitudes. She tells him that both she and her husband, also a physician, had lovers and irreconcilable differences, though she continues to regard him with great respect. Of her last lover, she says: "I was sure I'd found the love of my life."

With the weather conditions worsening outside, Jean-Louis accepts her hospitality for the night and, after attempting to settle into an armchair to sleep, joins her (wearing only a nightshirt) in bed - taunting him for doubting his self-control, questioning if he's afraid of her or himself - though wrapped in a separate blanket with his clothes on.

The next morning he rushes out from a café when he sees Françoise, tossing his principles for an opportunity to approach the right girl. Women aid progress of morality, he says to Maud, who criticizes his lack of spontaneity and his calculating, classifying nature (e.g., wife must be Catholic, ergo eternal love), to which he replies that shared beliefs accord to marriage harmony.

Once again he makes a detour when he recognizes Françoise, for the first time speaking to her (both confessing they're not in the habit of striking up conversation with strangers on the street), though he says one should "make the most of chance opportunities," though his encounters with her seem to him more than just luck, a reward for keeping his principles, perhaps predestination; she, a dozen years his junior, adheres to having freedom of choice, later revealing her recent separation from a lover, a married man with a family.

They go to her apartment (a lodging for students, she's studying biology at the same college where Vidal teaches) for the night after he insists on driving her rather than letting her ride her motorbike on the icy streets; he sleeps in a separate bedroom. In church together for mass the next morning, they listen to the priest expound on how man wants to follow Christ, though he's beset with temporal tribulations and temptations.

Five years later Jean-Louis with his wife and son on their way to the beach crosses paths with Maud, who says she's practicing medicine in Toulouse, unhappily married, and previously an acquaintance with his blonde wife, with whom she'd suspected he'd been in love all along. For each has made his/her wager with Pascal.

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