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Robert Bresson: Films
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Robert Bresson's masterpiece is a magnificent drama about a thief, his techniques, motives and secret existence. Loosely based on Crime and Punishment, it tells the compelling story of an insignificant man who drifts into crime. "One of the four or five great dates in the history of cinema! A film with deep inspiration, free, instinctive, burning, bewildering" (Louis Malle). The DVD is a Criterion Collection edition and includes audio commentary by film scholar James Quandt, video introduction by Paul Schrader, The Models of "Pickpocket" documentary featurette, 1960 interview with Bresson, Q&A with actress Marika Green and filmmakers Paul Vecchiali and Jean-Pierre Ameris, footage of slight-of-hand artist Kassagi from 1962, trailer, essay by culture critic Gary Indiana, and more. In French with English subtitles.
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With his unique and wholly idiosyncratic methods and style, and general contempt for "cinema" as defined by himself, Robert Bresson was little influenced by other filmmakers. The critic and director Paul Schrader links him, not wholly convincingly, with Dreyer and Ozu, while Schrader’s own films owe a thematic debt to him (the final shot of American Gigolo (1980) is a direct quote from that of Pickpocket). Films like Alain Cavalier’s Thérèse (1986), Maurice Pialat’s Sous le soleil de Satan (1987), the Dardennes Brothers’ Rosetta (1999), and Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher (1999) have been liberally described as "Bressonian".
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Despite awards and critical praise, the films of French minimalist Robert Bresson are screened more rarely in the U.S. than those of many other directors of art films. However, there seems to be something of a Bresson boom of late. In 1994, L'Argent (1983), an adaptation of a Tolstoy short story, became available in subtitled video; that was followed by Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945), based on a work by Diderot, and Lancelot du Lac (1974) in 1995; and in 1996 we have seen the similar release of Une Femme Douce (1969). He has made fourteen films in all, among which are two based on works by Dostoevsky and two on works by Georges Bernanos. He first attained his mature style in his fourth film, Diary of a Country Priest (1950), a style which he refined until it reached rarefied heights in L'Argent.
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Robert Bresson's acclaimed Au Hasard, Balthazar presents an unfettered view of human cruelty, suffering and injustice, filtered through the eyes of a donkey over the course of his long life. The burro at the film's center begins life peacefully and happily, as the unnamed play-object of some innocent children in bucolic France, but his circumstances change dramatically when he becomes the property of a young woman named Marie - who christens him Balthazar. As she grows up and encounters tragedy and heartbreak, so does Balthazar; he passes from owner to owner, who treat him in a variety of ways, from compassionately to cruelly. The donkey, of course, lacks the capacity to comprehend the motivations of each individual but accepts whatever treatment (and role) is handed him, nobly and admirably. Bresson ultimately uses the story as a heart-rending allegorical commentary on human spiritual transcendence. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
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Robert Bresson was born in either 1901 or 1907, a discrepancy never fully resolved, though his death in 1999 led many to favour the neatly century-spanning option. He initially trained as a painter, a discipline that left him with an acute awareness of the need "not to make beautiful images but necessary ones." (The first irony of Bresson's cinema is that his films, while in no way abandoning that precept, are often rapturously beautiful.)
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Robert Bresson's spare imagery and poetic realism depict the harsh existence of the prison camp without emotional manipulation or overt symbolism. The objective distance of retrospective narration divorces the precise and factual revelation of the story from the bias of perspective associated with the tension of his singular objective. The dialogue between the prisoners is minimal, reflecting their largely solitary confinement and introspection: finding redemption through purpose. Furthermore, several close-up shots of Fontaine's hand pervade the film: exchanging notes and useful items between prisoners, chiseling the door panels of his cell, crafting his escape equipment. These images reflect the film's underlying theme of activity. In essence, it is through human action - distractive ritual, meaningful creation, compassionate assistance - that the soul is redeemed.
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