One's immediately aware of women’s high heels clicking their way up along a hard stone floor; a cacophony of metallic sounds comes from over there, incessant horns honk outside in the street and the constant, eerie sound of flowing traffic, human and otherwise fills the air inside and outside. People are always on the go, going places and doing things.
Flow
They’re marching dutifully into shops and bistros, deliberately sitting, drinking and watching the traffic go by. Then they get up and take their place in it again. The street and its sounds come inside the shop reminding us that the constant flow will never stop. It’s our duty to be part of it, to let society move onwards, to conform.
Conform
Same thing in the convent, traffic flows from place to place, flowing robes moving along quickly, novitiates prostrate themselves on stone floors, then move into rooms and sanctuaries, hurrying. There is little doubt being in these places that society and indeed life is determined, narrow and irrevocable. You’d better get into that flow of traffic and conform to its waves or you’ll be left behind. Don’t try to go against it.
Hands
The closer Bresson gets to his “model” (he didn’t use “actors”) the more intimate our view becomes. We are allowed to look at a face, body, feet and hands in long, hungry shots and witness their stillness and movement. The hands are capable of amazing things – they can pick pockets elegantly, efficiently and beautifully, they can wash clothes in a river against a piece of wood, slap a woman, put on a crucifix, click handcuffs on other’s hands, pass a bill around, carve up a prison door or pick up an axe and butcher people. Busy hands dominate the films of Robert Bresson.
Sinned Against
The French master creates a world that is founded in a false kind of order or precision that is naturally unattainable. It is his ideal but beyond the grasp of most people including his “heroes” and that’s the tension of his films. His characters are high minded and goal oriented and often see themselves as superior, and sinned against. They have often found themselves victims of cruel fate, imprisoned actually or in prisons of their own making. The clanking sound of keys in locks is another constant sound. No one is free in Bresson’s world; it is a trap.
Black and White / Colour
Bresson made just thirteen films, mostly black and white. Those are especially gorgeous, crisp yet rich, “precise”, with a dazzling glow particular to those that have been well restored. It’s effective in a convent, in a prison, on a main street. The colour films are distracting and powerfully in-yer-face after a diet of his luxe B&W.
Palette
L’Argent, for instance, Bresson’s 1983 colour film about a man wrongfully imprisoned on a forgery beef. The colour seems at first like an intrusion, a joke. It seems wrong, aggressive, un-Bresson and takes adjustment. Once the brain accepts the colour, we start to admire his gorgeous matte, pale palettes. Bresson may have chosen light absorbing warm whites which bring the element of false hope, of the mirage of beauty just beyond and out of reach, of comfort that rarely comes.
Minimalism
Bresson said “One does not create by adding but by taking away”. This brings us to his minimalism. The plots are simple yet profound, gut wrenching. Such spare storytelling doesn’t leave room for our imagination, though; Bresson has a dictatorial aesthetic that permeates his work. We are being taken down the road on his terms, flowing with the traffic he creates, get in or miss it. His work is precise, indeed. It’s a narrow road we walk. The word rigour comes to mind.
Diary of a Country Priest, Les Anges du peche, Lancelot du Lac, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Au hazard Balthazar, The Trial of Joan of Arc, Affaires publiques, Le Diable probablement, Un femme douce, Four Nights of a Dreamer and L’Argent. www.tiff.net
Anne Brodie - I review films each week on Corus and Rogers TV and for Metro News Canada, AskMen.com and Monsters and Critics. I profile celebrities for ...
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