XXII:5) Robert Bresson, AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (1966, 95 Min)
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February 15, 2011 (XXII:5) Robert Bresson, AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (1966, 95 min) Directed by Robert Bresson Written by Robert Bresson Produced by Mag Bodard Original Music by Jean Wiener Non-Original Music by Franz Schubert (from "Piano Sonata No.20") Cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet Film Editing by Raymond Lamy Animal trainer: Guy Renault Anne Wiazemsky....Marie François Lafarge....Gérard Philippe Asselin....Marie's father Nathalie Joyaut....Marie's mother Walter Green....Jacques Jean-Claude Guilbert....Arnold Pierre Klossowski....Merchant François Sullerot ....Baker Marie-Claire Fremont....Baker's wife Jean Rémignard....Notary étrangère (1988). She married French director Jean Luc Godard and appeared in his Sympathy for the Devil (1968), Week End ROBERT BRESSON (25 September 1901, Bromont-Lamothe, (1967), and La Chinoise (1967). With only a few minor Puy-de-Dôme, Auvergne, France—18 December 1999, Paris, exceptions, all other members of the cast of Au hasard Balthazar natural causes) directed 14 films and wrote 17 screenplays. The appeared in no other films. films he directed were L'Argent/Money (1983), Le Diable probablement/The Devil Probably (1977), Lancelot du lac “Robert Bresson” from World Film Directors V. I. Ed John (1974), Quatre nuits d'un rêveur/Four Nights of a Dreamer Wildman. The H. H. Wilson Company. NY 1987. Entry by (1971), Une femme douce/A Gentle Woman (1969), Mouchette Brian Baxter (1967), Au hasard Balthazar/Balthazar (1966), Procès de Jeanne The French director and scenarist, was born in the d'Arc/Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), Pickpocket (1959), A Man mountainous Auvergne region. [September 25, 1907] He spent Escaped (1956), Journal d'un curé de campagne/Diary of a his formative years in the countryside until his family moved to Country Priest (1951), Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne/Ladies of Paris, when he was eight. Between thirteen and seventeen he the Park (1945), Les Anges du péché/Angels of the Street (1943) studied classics and philosophy at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, and Les Affaires publiques/Public Affairs (1934). intending later to become a painter. Although Bresson abandoned painting around 1930 because it made him “too agitated,” he Ghislain Cloquet (18 April 1924, Antwerp, Belgium--November remains a “painter” to this day. 1981) shot 55 films, among them Four Friends (1981), The He rejects the term “director: and uses Secret Life of Plants (1979), Tess (1979, won Oscar), Love and “cinematographer.” He believes that cinema is a fusion of music Death (1975), Mouchette (1967), Loin du Vietnam/Far from and painting, not the theatre and photography, and defines Vietnam (1967), Mickey One (1965), Le Trou (1960), Nuit et “cinematography” as “a new way of writing, therefore of feeling. brouillard/Night and Fog (1955). His theories are precisely given in his book Notes on the Cinematographer. His films have resolutely followed these Anne Wiazemsky (14 May 1947) has acted in 42 tv and beliefs, and are dominated by his Catholicism. theatrical films. The first was Au hasard Balthazar; the last Ville Bresson—AU HASARD BALTHAZAR—2 When Bresson decided to abandon painting he moved Les Dames du Bois do Boulogne, he sought more literary towards cinema. During the following decade he was on the inspiration, a novel by Diderot, Jacques le fataliste. Actually he fringes of cinema and “saw everything.” Of this period nothing used only one chapter and for the second and last time he sought of importance exists. His work was mainly as a “script help with the dialogue—from his friend Jacques Cocteau, who consultant,” first on C’était un musicien (1933), directed by nonetheless stuck closely to the original. It was Cocteau who Frédéric Zelnick and Maurice later said of Bresson, “He is one Gleize, then on Claude Heymann’s apart from this terrible world.” comedy Jumeaux de Brighton (1936) Bresson’s films are unique. and Pierre Billon’s Courrier Sud Most of them deal with the religious (1937), and fleetingly with René themes of predestination and Clair. His only significant work was redemption, but in terms of tightly a short film, financed by the art constructed dramatic narratives. historian Roland Penrose, made in However, Bresson scorns the easy 1934. Called Les Affaires publiques, pleasures and illusions of the this comedy has long been lost and storyteller’s art, and is quite likely to little is known of it....Bresson admits leave out what others would regard to liking the work of Charles as a dramatic high point. We may Chaplin—especially The Circus and simply be told that the event has City Lights—and he was earlier taken place, or shown only a part of linked with the surrealist movement it, while being treated to all the in Paris. associated activities that mere In 1939 Bresson joined the French army and was a storytellers take for granted—people coming in and out, opening prisoner of war between June 1940 and April 1941. His and closing doors, going up and down stairs. Recognizing the imprisonment profoundly affected him, even though he was not great persuasive power of the film image, its ability to make us confined like many of his protagonists (notably Fontaine, in A believe what we see and feel what the image suggests, Bresson Man Escaped). “I was set to work in a forest, for local peasants deliberately subverts this power by directing our attention to a who—luckily—fed us. After a year or so I simulated a fever and world beyond that of his narrative. What is left is not the illusion with other prisoners who were sick I was released. I returned to of “realism,” but what he calls the “crude real” of the cinematic Paris.” image itself, which for Bresson carries us “far away from the In occupied France, at the height of the war, Bresson intelligence that complicates everything”; that is why he calls the began preparing his first feature, Les Anges du péché / The camera “divine.” Angels of sin (1943), based on an idea by a friend, the Reverence Bresson prefers to work on location and if possible in Raymond Brückberger, and inspired by a novel. Bresson wanted the actual settings prescribed by the script. to call the film “Bethanie”—the name of the convent where the His third film, and the one that established his action is centered. He wrote the screenplay and then asked the international reputation, came six years later and can be seen playwright Jean Giraudoux to supply the dialogue. now as a transitional work. Based on the famous novel by the Although Bresson regards his debut film and the two Catholic writer Georges Bernanos, Le Journal d’un curé de works that followed as incomplete and spoiled by the intrusion of champagne/Diary of a Country Priest, 1951, this is a first-person conventional music and actors, rather than the “models” (in the account by a young priest (Claude Laydu) who is given a rural sense of artists’ models) he subsequently used, Les Anges du parish in the village of Ambricourt, in northern France....In a péché remains one of the most astonishing first features in world contemporary review, Gavin Lambert commented on the “inner cinema. It not only displays complete mastery of the medium, but exaltation” of the film, and in a famous essay André Bazin, puts into practice many of the theories Bresson later refined and describing it as a masterpiece, adds that it impresses “because of distilled. He says: “I knew at this stage what I wanted, but had to its power to stir the emotions, rather than the intelligence,” which accept the actresses. I warned them immediately to stop what is exactly Bresson’s avowed aim in all his films.... they were doing in front of the camera, or they—or I—would Several years elapsed before the emergence of the first leave. Luckily they were in nun’s habits so they could not uncompromised and definitive Bresson masterpiece, a work that gesticulate.” remains among his most highly regarded and best-known films. Les Anges du péché proved a great commercial success Un condamné à mort s’est échappé (A Man Escaped, 1956) was and won the Grand Prix du Cinéma Française. It tells a basically inspired by an article in Figaro Littéraire. It was written by a melodramatic story set in a convent devoted to the rehabilitation former prisoner of war, Commandant André Devigny, and of young women....In Raymond Durgnat’s words, Bresson’s describes his astonishing escape from Montluc Prison in Lyons vision “is almost mature in his first feature.” It already shows his while awaiting execution by the Germans. Bresson wrote the preference for a narrative composed of many short scenes, as screenplay, the sparse dialogue, and the commentary that well as his fascination with human skills and processes, counterpoints and illuminates the action. He eschewed a observing in detail the nuns’ work and rituals. On the other hand, conventional score and used—sparingly—excerpts from we also see his characteristic user of ellipsis, as when Thérèse, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor (K427). With this film Bresson buying a gun, is simply shown receiving it over the counter. achieved the complete control he sought by the use of Bresson resolutely proclaims himself a painter, not a “models”—nonprofessionals with no dramatic training who are writer, the task he finds most difficult of all. For his second film, taught to speak their lines and move their bodies without Bresson—AU HASARD BALTHAZAR—3 conscious interpretation or motivation, precisely as Bresson qualities, comes from the work of the seventeenth-century instructs them—in effect, as one critic wrote, Bresson plays all composer Jean-Baptiste Lully.