“Four Nights of a Dreamer” (1971)
Bresson returned again to Dostoevsky’s short stories for inspiration with “Four Nights of a Dreamer,” based on a story called “White Nights“; an understated and highly stylized look at the unexplained power of love, whether returned or unrequited. The film follows Jacques, the dreamer of the title, a solitary painter, whose artistic process involves recording himself and replaying the recordings aloud. He walks the streets of Paris but is always alone. At Pont Neuf, he meets Marthe, a young girl standing on the edge of the bridge about to jump. Her lover went away to America, and was supposed to meet her on the bridge that night but didn’t turn up. Together they decide to contact Marthe’s lover, with Jacques acting as messenger. From then on Jacques cannot escape the thought of the unattainable Marthe, recording her name and listening to it constantly. He meets her on the bridge for the next three nights with no reply from her lover to deliver, until on the fourth night Jacques confesses his love to her, albeit with classic Bressonian restraint. As Marthe tries to work out her feelings, they walk the streets of Paris together and Marthe runs into her former lover. After hesitating for a moment she runs to his arms, leaving Jacques to return to his studio, once again alone, to paint. “Four Nights of a Dreamer” could be seen as Bresson’s most romantic film, both in subject matter and visual style, and the ethereal night scenes where the two meet are incredibly evocative of the first blush of romance, one-sided or no. However, there is an arch sense of absurdity and irony within making it perhaps his most playful effort. Everything seems heightened, the city of Paris, people, lights, rivers and songs — here we get Bresson’s only use of popular music, but again it is all diegetic, from wandering buskers to a house band on a passing boat, to a circle of hippies sitting and singing. “Four Nights of a Dreamer” is also one of the few Bresson films still unavailable on DVD or VHS, which hopefully someone will be able to rectify sooner rather than later. [B-]
“Lancelot of the Lake” (1974)
While for Bresson enthusiasts “Lancelot of the Lake” is often cited as the purest distillation of the director’s unique language of image and sound, newcomers may well find the film a particular challenge. First conceived in the early ‘50s and finally released in 1974, Bresson’s third color feature sees the director adopt a resolutely revisionist approach to Arthurian legend, subverting all expectations of chivalry and visceral spectacle. Particularly when experienced for the first time, its consummately “cinematographic” style results in a jarring mixture: a lavishly realized period setting, peopled by a cast of clanking, armor-clad somnambulant robots. In addition to the actors’ affectless performances, Bresson departs with tradition by beginning the film with the knights of Camelot already vanquished and returning empty-handed from their vainglorious pursuit of the Holy Grail. What little is shown of their actual quest is confined to a Monty Python-esque opening montage, which, with its stiltedly barbaric exchanges, immediately forestalls conventional notions of knightly heroism. The thinly sketched plot concerns the illicit liaisons between Lancelot (Luc Simon) and Guinevere (Laura Duke Condominas), though in typical Bressonian fashion, these are thoroughly de-romanticized. Bresson’s true concern is with the moral decline the affair represents, and the manner in which lapsed allegiances threaten to destabilize Arthur’s already disenchanted entourage. Arguably, however, “Lancelot” is most notable for a celebrated central scene, which abstracts a jousting tournament into a hypnotic audio-visual loop of horns, fluttering flags, and clattering hooves. [B-]
The Devil, Probably” (1977)
Bresson’s bleakest, most controversial film, 1977’s “The Devil, Probably” has been among the greatest beneficiaries of the critical reevaluation that has taken place since James Quandt curated North America’s first major Bresson retrospective in 1998. Which isn’t to say the film was entirely without its early champions. At the 1977 Berlinale, German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder famously threatened to boycott the festival jury if the film went unrecognized, and it was duly awarded the special jury prize. But censors in Bresson’s native France were less appreciative, and banned ‘Devil’ from exhibition to viewers under the age of 18 as an incitement to suicide. Self-annihilation is the chosen fate of Charles (Antoine Monier), the film’s protagonist, a young intellectual who resignedly concludes that he can neither affect change in, nor adapt to, a world in irreversible physical and social decline. The failure of 1968’s upsurge in global student radicalism hangs heavily over ‘Devil,’ with the disillusioned Charles unable to embrace his cohorts’ political activism. He finds himself similarly unfulfilled by organized religion, sexual companionship, and psychoanalysis, blithely protesting to his therapist that his only illness is in “seeing too clearly.” And it’s difficult to argue with his assessment, such is the potency of Bresson’s withering condemnation of contemporary society, punctuated by documentary excerpts of stricken oil tankers, nuclear bomb tests, and the clubbing of a baby seal. But if thematically, ‘Devil’ occasionally threatens to subject viewers to a similar hammering, the director’s customary detachment ensures it never becomes an overbearing, sanctimonious screed. Bresson’s lament is resonant, but also laced with deadpan irony, down to the fact that it’s the witless therapist who ultimately tips off Charles to the perfect way to off himself. [A-]
