Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)
Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962)
RANKED:
8. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)
1945's "Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne," only Robert Bresson's second film of his career, is perhaps his most un-Bressonian film. Playing more like an Ophuls film, "Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne" centers on a scorn woman who seeks vengeance against her lover for the crime of falling out of love with her. She financially helps a prostitute and her mother escape their destitute situation, only to maniacally arrange her lover to fall for the young daughter. After marrying her, the woman reveals to her former lover that his new bride is a prostitute. Although the film is full of stark lushness, the tone of the film is rather bleak. The soul of our protagonist is corrupted by hatred and seeks a vendetta and an innocent mother and daughter in financial destitution gets caught up in her wrath. If you look at the film through the lens of France's occupation at the time, you may see it for the pitch black depiction of a seething and unscrupulous human soul that chooses to step over the meek for the sake of its own hateful vendettas. For that, the film becomes a product of its time and its melodrama offers a blackened look at the despair happening in France.
7. The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962)
With Carl Theodor Dryer's 1928 film "The Passion of Joan of Arc" being the monolithic masterpiece that it is, you would think that no one would dare feign to replicate this iconic story. However, with his 1962 work "The Trial of Joan of Arc," Robert Bresson attempts to do just that. And like with a typical Bresson piece, the actors are non-professional and the delivery is very dry and lacks emotionality. Through his dryness, the brutality thrown at Joan seems all the more cold and unsettling. Whether or not you draw anything from the film, there is still a complexity to its harrowing story. There lies something all the more disturbing when you begin to scrape away at the surface of the recreation of these historical events. It may leave you bored and uninterested, or it may just leave you disquieted and hollow.
6. L'Argent (1983)
A typical Robert Bresson film demonstrates that cruelty and amorality is an inherent feature of humanity. However, with the final film in his career, 1983's "L'Argent," he decides to attribute a source of this behavior, making it his most political film. "L'Argent" demonstrates the domino effect of consequences on one innocent man's life after he is given counterfeit money. Like a cancer, the money spreads its corruption and amorality through the tapestry of characters. The inherent lack of money creates the driving force behind all of their actions, leading to devastation and even tragic consequences. Bresson is not just critically examining the disruptive effects of a capitalist, materialist society, he is also illustrating the amorality in France in the 1980s - a decade of wealth and materialism. "L'Argent" was Bresson's last bow. It was also one of the most significant accomplishments of his career.
5. Pickpocket (1959)
The plot of Robert Bresson's 1959 film "Pickpocket" is deceptively simple: an economically destitute and unemployed Parisian man becomes addicted to the art of pickpocketed, despite the condemnation from the few people he knows in his life. What's so interesting about this simplistic depiction is Bresson's lifeless and emotional landscape he places his titular pickpocket. A world of cold emptiness that provides nothing but isolation and loneliness, our pickpocket continues to perform his criminal deeds simply to feel something, simply to 'feel alive in a world becoming dead.' It's a film that is drenched in the post-war malaise of a French and overall European society that had become all too empty and dead. Bresson's "Pickpocket" has inspired innumerable filmmakers to come and is considered to be one of Bresson's masterpieces.
4. Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
With his 1951 masterpiece, "Diary of a Country Priest," Robert Bresson managed to strip away the focus on 'genre' that had come to be expected in cinema and ushered in a new era of spirituality in film that would pave the way for the more existential films of the 1950s and 1960s. The film focuses on a young priest attempting to create a congregation in a small, rural village. However, his increasing illness and the cruelty of those around him forces him to question the grace and mercy of the Almighty God. With the horrors witness in the preceding war and the cruelty of humanity on full display, the general global temperament of humanity shifted into a nihilistic outlook. A new, cold world was forming and leaving grace behind. "Diary of a Country Priest" reconciles these notions and questions regarding the beauty and love of God in an increasingly cruel and selfish world.
3. Mouchette (1967)
Often considered one of Robert Bresson's best films, 1967's "Mouchette" takes the typical minimalist style that Bresson employs and elevates to something truly beyond reproach. Centering on a young named Mouchette growing up in a small village, the film makes sure to demonstrate to its audience the levels of cruelty every character is willing to exert without any logic or reason. The mechanical manner of the non-professional actors' performances, the detachment from emotionality by Bresson's visual renderings, and the overall tone of a cold, empty existence all allow the film to paint a tapestry of human cruelty full of senselessness. Similar in theme to his previous film, 1966's "Au Hasard Balthazar," Bresson's slight change to the tone of having our protagonist victim just as cruel as the environment around her differs dramatically from the saintly donkey of "Balthazar." It is a pitch black and cold film that you can't shake after watching and will leave you existentially empty about the very nature of existence and the human soul.
2. A Man Escaped (1956)
The film that film scholars will often consider Robert Bresson's masterpiece is his 1956 film "A Man Escaped." On paper, the film sounds relatively simple: a French Resistance fighter is thrown into a Nazi internment camp and attempts to escape. Throughout the film, we watch as our prisoner carefully and conspicuously try various methods of escape using various tools at his disposal. Despite this simplicity, the film feels as though you are watching a high-wire act. Every action and movement by our prisoner becomes heightened and suspenseful through Bresson's claustrophobic and restrictive direction. Every sound our protagonist makes sounds like lightening bolts, as we suspensefully hang on every moment, hoping he doesn't get discovered. What's even more great about this film is its underlying existentialism hidden under the tactile plot. Through these various attempts to continue his escape, we feel a sense of resiliency. We feel a sense of unyielding hope, despite the insurmountable odds, setbacks, and pushbacks. In the post-war landscape of nihilistic viewpoints by many European countries, even in the films of Bresson himself, Bresson chooses resiliency and hope as his moniker for "A Man Escaped."
1. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
In a film in which the protagonist is a donkey watching the senseless and cruel nature of humanity, it would be too easy to use the animal's reactionary expressions to demonstrate the filmmaker's personal interpretations of those actions. However, if you're dealing with a filmmaker like Robert Bresson, that option would be too uninteresting. In his 1966 masterpiece "Au Hasard Balthazar," Bresson simply uses the titular donkey as merely an observer. This, along with his typical instruction for his human 'models' to behave as mechanical as possible, provides the viewer a blank slate with which to interpret the behavior of its characters. Rather than attaching any biases to the human characters, we are left with making sense of their actions alone. This puts us directly into the perspective of Balthazar. The actions of the human characters appear senseless, without logic, self-destructive, and most of all, cruel. However, like Balthazar, we are trapped as simple observers, unable to affect anything and certainly unable to do anything except bare this cruelty. In typical Bressonian fashion, "Au Hasard Balthazar" epitomizes the cold, callousness of life and views it as a desolate, confusing wasteland.
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