Synopsis wrote:
A well-off young woman decides to become a nun, joining a convent that rehabilitates female prisoners. Through their program, she meets a woman named Thérèse who refuses any help because she says she was innocent of the crime she was convicted for. After being released from prison, Thérèse murders the actual perpetrator of the crime and comes to seek sanctuary in the convent.Read More »
Quote:
Bresson’s brilliant adaptation of Dostoevsky’s short story (A Gentle Creature) exhibits in its lapidary sequences the political and existential revolt of a young student in Paris. Sharing a theme that can be traced from Bresson’s Mouchette to his fantastic exploration of revolutionary choices in The Devil Probably, Une Femme Douce articulates in its inimitable minimalist mode a range of issues from the ideological options of France post-May ’68 to human relationships. Dominique Sanda is not the conventional, recognizable student revolutionary, but a “gentle” philosopher whose powers of sensitivity and social scrutiny exceed and tease the prosaic, crude disposition of her bourgeois husband. The sequences in the zoo, the museum of natural history and the performance of Hamlet are powerful. On another note, look out for Indian experimental filmmaker Kumar Shahani who was assisting Bresson at this time, sitting diagonally behind Sanda in the sequence at the movie theater.
Read More »
Quote:
A Man Escaped opens with the indelible image of a pair of restless hands belonging to a French resistance officer named Lieutenant Fontaine (Francois Leterrier). His face is inscrutable and impassive, concealing his calculated attempt to flee from the escorted prison transport vehicle. He reaches for the door handle, retreats, then reaches again. At a momentary distraction of a crossing railcar, he seizes the opportunity, but is immediately recaptured, and is severely beaten by the German guards for the attempt. Imprisoned and condemned to die, Fontaine finds the courage and determination to escape his certain fate. Based on a true account by Andre Devigny, A Man Escaped is a visually minimalist, emotionally austere film about friendship, hope and perseverance. Read More »
Description: Filmed mostly in his country home in 1965, ROBERT BRESSON – WITHOUT A TRACE is a revealing discussion with Bresson. Bresson at this time had completed six of his most well known films and was in the process of shooting Au Hasard Balthazar.
Usually a man of few words, having never before granted an interview on camera, Bresson agreed to answer the questions of a then-unknown writer François Weyergans, for the Cineaste de Notre Temps series.
Ranging over topics from the inspiration behind his films, to his ideas on the use of sound, actors, editing and music, and the state of (the then) contemporary cinema (from James Bond to the New Wave), Bresson describes his singular approach to filmmaking.Read More »
Quote:
Robert Bresson plumbs great reservoirs of feeling with Mouchette, one of the most searing portraits of human desperation ever put on film. Faced with a dying mother, an absent, alcoholic father, and a baby brother in need of care, the teenage Mouchette seeks solace in nature and daily routine, a respite from her economic and pubescent turmoil. An essential work of French filmmaking, Bresson’s hugely empathetic drama elevates its trapped protagonist into one of the cinema’s great tragic figures*.Read More »
Un metteur en ordre: Robert Bresson (62 min.) is from a 1966 French television broadcast of Pour le plaisir, a cultural television program. This episode concentrates on Au Hasard Balthazar and includes interviews with Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Marguerite Duras and members of the film’s cast. Bresson explains the origin of the film’s title, while his contemporaries describe their reactions to the film. Several extensive clips from the film are presented, after which Bresson and his cast members offer their opinions of the meaning or consequences of those scenes.Read More »