Eric Rohmer, 89, leading director of New Wave films

His producer, Margaret Menegoz, confirmed his death, which took place at a Paris hospital, but she provided no other details.

Aesthetically, Mr. Rohmer was perhaps the most conservative member of the New Wave, the internationally influential movement led by a group of aggressive young critics, among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, who parlayed their writings into careers as filmmakers beginning in the late 1950s.

A former novelist and teacher of French and German literature, Mr. Rohmer emphasized the spoken and written word in his films at a time when tastes - thanks in no small part to his own pioneering writing on Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks - had begun to shift from literary adaptations to genre films grounded in strong visual styles.

In a statement, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said of Mr. Rohmer, “Classic and romantic, wise and iconoclastic, light and serious, sentimental and moralistic, he created the ‘Rohmer’ style, which will outlive him.’’

His most famous film in America remains “My Night at Maud’s,’’ a 1969 black-and-white feature set in the grim industrial city of Clermont-Ferrand. It tells the story of a shy young engineer (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who passes a snowbound evening in the home of his best friend’s lover, an attractive, free-thinking divorcee (Francoise Fabian).

The conversation, filmed by Mr. Rohmer in a series of unobtrusively composed long takes, covers philosophy, religion, and morality, and while the flow of words takes on a distinctly seductive subtext at times, the encounter ends without a physical consummation. But the pair form a bond that movingly re-emerges five years later, when they meet again in a brief postscript that closes the film.

“My Night at Maud’s’’ was the third title in his “Six Moral Tales,’’ a series of films that Mr. Rohmer began in 1963, though for economic reasons it was the fourth to be filmed. In each of the six films, a man who is married or committed to a woman finds himself tempted to stray but is ultimately able to resist. His films are as much about what does not happen between his characters as what does, a tendency that enchanted critics as often as it drove audience members to distraction.

“I saw a Rohmer movie once,’’ observes the Gene Hackman character in Arthur Penn’s “Night Moves’’ (1975). “It was kind of like watching paint dry.’’

On the set, Mr. Rohmer, tall, with piercing blue eyes, was a quiet, intensely absorbed director presiding over a hushed atmosphere, his crews and actors engaging in little of the chatter common on other film projects.

In his private life, he was reclusive if not secretive. “Eric Rohmer’’ was a pseudonym, one of several that he experimented with early in his career. According to Who’s Who in France, he was born Maurice Henri Joseph Scherer in Tulle, a city in southwestern France, on March 21, 1920; other sources give his birth name as Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer and place his origins in the northeastern city of Nancy.

After publishing the novel “Elisabeth’’ under the name Gilbert Cordier, he moved to Paris in 1950 and began frequenting the cine-clubs of the Latin Quarter, making the acquaintance of four other young cinephiles with whom his career would remain intertwined: Godard, Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette. With Rivette he founded a film magazine, La Revue du Cinema. When that initiative collapsed after five issues, he joined the reviewing staff of Les Cahiers du Cinema, a publication that acquired a fashionable notoriety for the violently iconoclastic reviews of the young Truffaut.

In 1952, Mr. Rohmer made his first attempt to direct a feature film, to be titled “Les Petites Filles Modeles,’’ but the project was abandoned when its producer declared bankruptcy. No footage is known to exist.

Not until his Cahiers colleagues began to enjoy a measure of success as filmmakers - the term Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) was coined by a journalist for L’Express in 1957 - was Mr. Rohmer able to mount another long-form production. But “Le Signe du Lion’’ (“The Sign of Leo,’’ 1959), a moody tale of an American expatriate who finds himself down and out in Paris, did not capture the public imagination the way Truffaut’s “400 Blows’’ and Godard’s “Breathless’’ did, and Mr. Rohmer returned to editing Cahiers, a job he held until 1963.

His breakthrough came in 1962 with the 26-minute “La Boulangere de Monceau’’ (“The Bakery Girl of Monceau’’). Filmed in 16-millimeter black and white, it was the first of the “Six Moral Tales,’’ based on fictional sketches he had written long before became a filmmaker.

After a second short film, “La Carriere de Suzanne’’ (“Suzanne’s Career,’’ 1963), he returned to the feature-length format with “La Collectionneuse’’ (“The Collector,’’ 1967), the fourth episode of the series but the third to be filmed. The story of a young woman (Haydee Politoff) who systematically collects lovers, the film won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and placed Mr. Rohmer in the front rank of the New Wave. The series continued with three more features: “My Night at Maud’s,’’ “Claire’s Knee’’ (1970), and “Chloe in the Afternoon’’ (1972).

After experimenting with two stylized period films, “The Marquise of O... ’’ (1976) and “Percival le Gallois’’ (1978), Mr. Rohmer initiated a new series, “Comedies and Proverbs,’’ in 1981 with “La Femme de l’Aviateur’’ (“The Aviator’s Wife’’). The six films in this group illustrated traditional sayings or quotes from celebrated authors and were largely built around the flirtations and fickle emotions of young people. They also incorporated, notably in “Le Rayon Vert’’ (“Summer,’’ 1986), an element of improvisation.

Mr. Rohmer undertook a final series, “Tales of the Four Seasons,’’ with “Conte de Printemps’’ (“The Spring Tale’’) in 1990, this time providing a philosophical love story for each season. The series ended with the exquisite “Conte d’Automne’’ in 1998.