297 Au hasard Balthazar

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Doug Cummings
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#51 Post by Doug Cummings » Sat Jun 18, 2005 10:21 pm

Bresson sees humans as we see animals, provided we don't see animals as Disney documentarians do...
Bresson was definitely obsessed with the notion of automatism and the fact that so many of our actions are automatic and done without thinking. (I love that he insisted on an "untrained" donkey, just as he did with his nonprofessional models.) But I also think he saw humans as extraordinarily complex, which is why he hated simplifying them into psychological types. But he definitely saw humans and animals in similar ways and was always interested in their relationship. Every time I see the end of L'Argent, (this is not a spoiler) with the dog running up and down the stairs, I think of Balthazar.

I don't know if I personally find Balthazar to be his most "spiritual" film, but I do consider it deeply so, in large part because of the film's intense gaze upon suffering and tenderness expressed with ellipses and mystery. The viewer wants to know why these things happen and is encouraged to speculate and imagine and look within. "Hide the ideas, but so that people find them. The most important will be the most hidden." (Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer)

And I would separate Bresson's materialist style from a materialist worldview. I think there is much in L'Argent that would suggest otherwise, and even in interviews Bresson gave during that period, he spoke seriously about his belief in "another world." But Bresson felt that world through the precise physical sounds and textures surrounding him; it's quite a paradox, but I think his films beautifully convey it.

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tartarlamb
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#52 Post by tartarlamb » Sat Jun 18, 2005 10:58 pm

I see the need for spirituality and redemption in Bresson's films, but increasingly in his later work, so little of it actually is found. In the earlier films, one could find mystery, or something extraordinary, in tangible things, rituals and processes (as in A Man Escapes). But in the later work, especially in Lancelot du Lac for instance, it seems like there's almost a complete divorce of mystery from the material world.

Maybe my reading is a little too Stoic -- but if Balthazar does attain sainthood, isn't it in a sort of resignation to a world that is ultimately too corrupt for the sacred? I keep thinking of the old women in L'argent, who shelters Yvon and who seems to attain a similar saintliness. When Yvon asks her if she's waiting for a miracle, she responds tersely "Je n'attends rien."

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#53 Post by Doug Cummings » Sun Jun 19, 2005 2:42 am

It seems to me that Bresson was always trying to express his deepest concerns through negation, and this is what we are seeing to a greater degree in his color period. In the Pour le Plaisir doc, he says, "Art lies in suggestion. The great difficulty for filmmakers is precisely not to show things. Ideally, nothing should be shown, but that's impossible."

So I think expressing "the need for spirituality and redemption" for Bresson was in many ways an expression of spirituality and redemption. I don't mean to be reductive, but I do think his increasing economy and materialism that you identify is part of a rigorous formal experiment to address his concerns. I mean, doesn't it seem to follow according to this line of thinking?

****

Stéphane: "Balthazar" gives me the impression of a world without God, a world uninterested in God.

Bresson: Firstly, I don't think that just speaking of God or saying the word "God" indicates his presence. If I use a filmmaker's tools to represent a human being, by which I mean someone with a soul, not just a jiggling puppet, if the human is present so is the divine. Pronouncing the name of God isn't what makes him present.

Stéphane: No,but to my knowledge this is your first film where a character--Marie's father--rejects God.

Bresson: If he rejects God, then God exists, and therefore God is present.

****

Is that isn't affirmation by negation, I don't know what is. :) From Les Anges du peche to Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc, his films explicitly included "God talk," but I think as an artist, he felt the need to refine his approach, not remain predictable, and address the subject more obliquely and rooted in teh material world. (Incidentally, that exchange above could also perfectly apply to Lancelot.)

(Spoilers follow)

Could he end Balthazar with his sober death of the donkey? Could he end Mouchette in his previous exultant fashion but in an unorthodox manner, eg. suicide? Could he end The Devil Probably with a suicide that is part murder, sans the choral music? Cuold he end L'Argent with a mass murder? To me, each step seems like a greater formal challenge applied to his consistent theme, not a disinterest in the question.

Interestingly enough, L'Argent does end with confession and surrender, but it's so underplayed that it doesn't come anywhere near counteracting the horrors witnessed moments before. However, it's there and Bresson told Ciment that he was wished he could have focused more on YVon's redemption, but the "rhythm of the film wouldn't allow it." (Again, a formal conundrum.)

Decribing these endings in this manner may sound a little trite, and I don't mean to reduce them in that way--or imply that my reading is necessarily superior; there is no doubt that his later films are severe and shocking. Bresson certainly trusted ambiguity and mystery and I see no reason to put him in a box. But personally, I don't see his late work as lacking in spiritual concerns. One of his films has a theological statement for a title, after all. :)

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tartarlamb
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#54 Post by tartarlamb » Sun Jun 19, 2005 4:28 am

Thanks for a great post Doug. That clarifies a lot for me. I read somewhere that Bresson had called himself a “Christian Atheist,â€

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#55 Post by Doug Cummings » Sun Jun 19, 2005 1:55 pm

Those are great questions, and I wouldn't presume to speculate on answers here. :) I think Bresson was most interested in inspiring his viewers to ask such questions more than anything else.

From his 1983 interview with Ciment:

"The most fascinating thing in life is curiosity. I want people to want to know, I want them to want to explore the mystery that is life, a mystery not to be imitated, only imagined."

As far as I know (someone correct me if I'm wrong), Bresson himself never used the phrase "Christian Atheist." Like "Jansenist," it's a label that's really only applicable in a very specific sense. (Bresson had strong affinities with Pascal, a Jansenist, but he never presented himself as a devotee of Jansenism or anything. This is why, as James Quandt points out in his CC essay, Bresson both rejected and embraced the term at various times.) Given Bresson's statements to Schrader (who seems almost comically unable to connect with the filmmaker in his interview for Film Comment in the '70s) and Ciment, I don't think the term "atheist" is very appropriate for Bresson even though "God" is conspicuously hidden or obscured in his later work.

I mean, here is Bresson in 1973:

Q: It's been said that your films "place the world in the light of eternity."

A: I wish I could. I don't know what to say about that. Perhaps they mean I want to make films from a child's eye view. Of course there is a conception of another life because I believe in it. At least one day I believe, the next day I don't, but I believe anyway that there's something more than just living on the earth.

Q: And you believe in some sort of fatality?

A: Yes, that would be a sort of Jansenist conception. To say that God is looking at us and saying "This one is good; this one isn't." But there is the feeling that God is everywhere, and the longer I live, the more I see that in nature, in the country. When I see a tree I see that God exists. I try to catch and to convey the idea that we have a soul and that the soul is in contact with God. That's the first thing I want to get in my films—that we are living souls.

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tartarlamb
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#56 Post by tartarlamb » Sun Jun 19, 2005 4:39 pm

Bresson himself never used the phrase "Christian Atheist."
I've read this a few place -- a quick Google search will show a number of places attributing the quote to him, although curiously none have said where it came from. I think I've also read it in a book edited by Quandt, which makes me think there's something genuine about it. In any case, its just a label, and probably meaningless when discussing Bresson (who doesn't seem like the type of guy who can be easily labelled, to say the least). It is a curious statement, though. Throw Jansenism in and that's quite a theological knot to untie!

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#57 Post by Doug Cummings » Sun Jun 19, 2005 5:15 pm

I've got the Quandt book, tartarlamb, so I'll look for it. I know it has been attributed to him a lot, but I don't recall ever reading or hearing him say it.

But as you say, labels and Bresson are uneasy bedfellows.

cbernard

#58 Post by cbernard » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:58 pm

What is our opinion of the Sontag essay, "Spiritual Style" etc?

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#59 Post by Doug Cummings » Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:34 pm

Without rereading it, I recall liking it a lot--especially for its time in the mid-'60s, when virtually no one was writing about Bresson in English. I like Sontag's distinction between manipulative art and "reflective art," and think it applies to many filmmakers today in contrast to Hollywood's roller coaster mentality. (Remember Kiarostami's ode to movies that put him to sleep on the CC Taste of Cherry?)

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#60 Post by ellipsis7 » Mon Jun 20, 2005 1:02 pm

She also talks of the impact of Brechtian distanciation as utilised by Bresson, to delay and increase eventual emotional effect...

AK uses distanciation also, but points to its Persian origins in the Ta'ziyeh as his particular influence...

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#61 Post by Doug Cummings » Mon Jun 20, 2005 2:49 pm

ellipsis7 wrote:AK uses distanciation also, but points to its Persian origins in the Ta'ziyeh as his particular influence...
Oh that's really interesting. I was certainly struck by AK's persistent references to neorealism and Bresson in 10 on Ten, too.

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#62 Post by ellipsis7 » Mon Jun 20, 2005 3:17 pm

I see Mylene Bresson is listed as the first of two Telecine Supervisors on the BALTHAZAR disc... Now that's hands on!

cbernard

#63 Post by cbernard » Mon Jun 20, 2005 4:09 pm

Well, Spiritual Style was written in '64. Didn't she start to distance herself from Bresson when he turned to color? Wish I could find the piece or pieces to back this up so it's not second-hand...but PROCES was the last film Bresson made before Spiritual Style, and she seemed to have a hard time with it.

I find bothersome her presumption to set up a criteria for Bresson based against PROCES and as a means for finding shortcomings in same - in part because I think PROCES is really great, also it's something of an idiot cliche for commentators to draw a line of demarcation between when an artist "had it" and when they "lost it."

But as I said, this is second-hand, she may have been orgasmic w/UNE FEMME DOUCE and the subsequent films.

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#64 Post by duane hall » Mon Jun 20, 2005 5:13 pm

From Jonathan Rosenbaum's (lovely) remembrance of Sontag, posted to Synoptique:

Most of my other encounters with Susan over the years were film-related. A characteristic one: watching Louis Feuillade's seven-hour silent serial Tih Minh at the Museum of Modern Art in the late 60s, then joining her and Annette Michelson at a nearby coffee shop, where I invited her to update her Bresson essay to include discussions of Au hazard Balthazar and Mouchette for an anthology I was editing (never published). She explained that she was more interested in what Bresson's earlier films did, which is what she'd already written about, adding that she wasn't too keen to write more about film anyway. And if she were, I asked, who would she want to write about? Vertov, she said, without a moment's hesitation.
Still vague as to what she actually thinks of Bresson's later work. As for myself, I've only seen Pickpocket and Balthazar, but they both expertly work in the "reflective mode" Sontag elucidates.

For those of you better versed, did pre and post Proces films work in different ways, employ different methods?

Sontag's seeming distinction between the pre and post Proces films is given as reason for her waning interest, but if Bresson continues with fine permutations of the reflective mode throughout the rest of his career, one would have to chalk up Sontag's drifting interest to personal viccisitude. (Though in her 1968 essay on Godard, she still called Bresson the finest artist of film, in so many words.)

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#65 Post by Doug Cummings » Mon Jun 20, 2005 6:03 pm

Thanks for posting that. I would say that Bresson's aesthetic evolved in a very fluid manner and would certainly typify his later work as equally "reflective" as Le Procès.

I'd have to reread her essay to speculate on why she may have lost interest; it does suggest personal vicissitude.

cbernard

#66 Post by cbernard » Wed Jun 22, 2005 7:56 pm

I'll have to track down the essay or essays I think I'm referring to. No point talking about Sontag and late Bresson before doing so.

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#67 Post by Doug Cummings » Thu Jun 23, 2005 10:59 am

FWIW, our review at robert-bresson.com.

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Richard
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#68 Post by Richard » Tue Jul 26, 2005 5:31 pm

Why does the Criterion-website mention this movie's country of origin as 'France/The Netherlands'? As a Dutchman I would *love* to add this movie to my nation's bleak cinematic history, but I really cannot find a clear link. :roll:

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#69 Post by leo goldsmith » Tue Jul 26, 2005 10:51 pm

I think this is an error -- it should say "France/Sweden". The film was partly financed by Svensk Filmindustri.

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#70 Post by Mental Mike » Fri Dec 02, 2005 2:14 am

All you Criterion hounds praised Au Hasard Balthazar so much, I bought it blind with Ran the other day... This movie leveled me. Before seeing this film I thought the Fire Within was the most bleak movie I had ever seen... It's a warm bath compared with the emotionality of this work by Bresson... The article in the jacket was weak though...the religiosity of the film was there, but it takes away from what the movie really was about... it's a movie about Marie and Balthazar and their struggles. After the 2 hours of watching them get 'crushed', I ordered a zombie movie just to ease my emotional drainage.

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#71 Post by jorencain » Mon May 15, 2006 4:19 pm

I just came across this interview with Bergman. It seems he's not really a fan of this film. :)

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#72 Post by jcelwin » Mon May 15, 2006 7:47 pm

Ha! That is hilarious.

'Do you like animals in general?

No, not very much. I have a completely natural aversion for them. '

Intentional or not, it is hilarious. :)

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Gordon
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#73 Post by Gordon » Tue May 16, 2006 1:53 am

Ingmar Bergman wrote:A donkey, to me, is completely uninteresting, but a human being is always interesting.
It's a parable, you cunt! Like Aesop's fables and shit.
Ingmar Bergman wrote:Oh.
Yes. Do you like animals in general?
Ingmar Bergman wrote:No, not very much. I have a completely natural aversion for them.
Wha... eh? What the hell does that mean? That doesn't mean you can't empathise with their - with our - suffering.
Ingmar Bergman wrote:Hmm.
Haven't you read Schopenhauer?
Ingmar Bergman wrote:Yes. The World as Will and Representation and On the Will in Nature. A most magnificent mind.
Then you should damn well know what I'm talking about!
Ingmar Bergman wrote:I just think that animals smell. They shit everywhere.
Oh, for fuck's sake.

:wink:
Last edited by Gordon on Tue May 16, 2006 2:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

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#74 Post by whaleallright » Tue May 16, 2006 1:55 am

I wrote a piece elsewhere about the way Bresson uses the slow movement of the Schubert A major Sonata
David, has this been published anywhere?

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#75 Post by Narshty » Wed May 17, 2006 3:49 pm

Sigh... I've tried really hard, and apologies in advance, but I still don't get this film, or Mouchette either. I find his "modelled" performances absolutely deadening - I find the blankness on everyone's expressions flatly monotonous. I suppose I just enjoy people doing things with their faces too much.

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