MOUCHETTE (1967, FRANCE), L'ARGENT (1983, FRANCE)

A poacher confronts the title character

in Mouchette

(On Mouchette) "Robert Bresson has made several films of such sobriety that while some people find them awesomely beautiful, other people find sitting through the like taking a whipping and watching every stroke coming."-Pauline Kael,  5001 Nights at the Movies

And I understand both points of view stated above. When I first saw a Bresson film (Pickpocket) I kept thinking that I missed something. It took me awhile to adapt to Bresson's subtle form of cinema. He just will not tell a story in a conventional way! He also seems to skip important plot points, which have made me go back and see if there was a scene I missed (I did it for Mouchette and L'Argnet) more than once. I didn't miss a scene, it's just M. Bresson's way.

Mouchette is sort of a coming of age story of a teenage girl...if you can consider a coming of age story that will certainly end in tragedy a coming of age story. It is a pretty rich character study of this young girl and we see Mouchette awaken to adult experiences in subtle ways and in other ways not so subtle. I like this film, but it really helps to watch Bresson films more than once. (Which I did).

The title character gets passed around
in L'Argent

"Bresson films, which look and sound like no other filmmaker, alive or dead, are austere, limpid morality tales, photographed with almost scientific clarity...Bresson creates a kind of cinema in which characters are not seen but represented, as dramatically and effectively as they would be by actors wearing masks." -Vincent Canby, New York Times, October 2, 1983.

I honestly thought that L'Argent was going to be a heist film. Silly me, I forgot this was a Robert Bresson movie! What we see is how a counterfeit bill effects several people's lives in negative ways. At least several people initially. The ensemble nature of the film eventually breaks down into the study of a driver named Tyvon, who passes one of the bills off innocently enough and begins to lose everything. He loses his job, his wife, his daughter and eventually any sense of morality, leading to a horrific conclusion for everyone.

Is money the root of all evil? It certainly does make people do some pretty awful things. Bresson's last film and might be a good one to start with for those uninitiated with the director.

ORPHEE (1950), DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (1951, FRANCE), HILL 24 WILL NOT ANSWER (1955, ISRAEL)

THIS WEEK'S MOVIES

An otherworldly journey for Orphee

Only three movies added this week to the 1001 till. The first one is Orphee, from director Jean Cocteau whose most famous film is the 1946 Beauty and the Beast. Orphee has that same otherworldly wistfulness that Beauty and the Beast  also possesses. Orphee is set in modern day (1950) France, but clearly has its roots in a spiritual realm that is timeless.The flow of Orphee leads us into a series of misdirections that include a trip to the underworld and the a tribunal where love itself is on trial. The special effects of the film are by necessity antiquated, yet charming in their own way. Enchantments abounds.

 

Taking notes in The Diary of a Country Priest

More on the morose side is Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, based on the novel by George Bernanos. The subtle filmmaking style of Robert Bresson is really on display here. A young priest  is assigned to a parish where the community he serves doesn't seem to care for him too much. This communal rejection is shown in very covert ways for the most part, but overt just isn't the way Bresson films work. The priest in the film is also in extremely poor health and much of the film is his dealing with the issues of faith, forgiveness, human frailty and grace. Bresson films aren't for everyone as you can look at them as being so understated that at times there seems like nothing is going on. On the other hand, I think that is what gives his films these strength.

Hill 24 Doesn't Answer

Hill 24 Doesn't Answer is an interesting edition to the 1001 list. It's an Israeli film that tells about a group of soldiers that defend a strategic hill in the fight for the independence of Israel in 1948. Much of the story is told in flashbacks detailing the background of the main players. This film had a different feel to it than many films dealing with war, part of that might be because of the combination of  it being a distinctly Israeli story told by Israeli filmmakers. Might make an interesting double feature with the Palestinian film Paradise Now.

Hill 24 wasn't that easy to find. The version I found was in segments on YouTube and it came with Hebrew subtitles (didn't help) and French subtitles (didn't help) and English closed captioned subtitles that got the dialogue on the screen wrong more often than got it right. I don't know what the line was in the screen shot I took above except I'm pretty sure it wasn't "yes or no now pick up pretty."

SHADOWS (1959), PICKPOCKET (1959, FRANCE)

1959 (Part II)

Tonight we're going to party like it's 1959.

Fred Kaplans' book, 1959: The Year That Changed Everything, states that this was the pivotal year that began much of what we now call modern times in the Western world. Important points for the year include:

· Mailer-Ginsburg-Kerouac-Burroughs and the banned Lady Chatterly's Lover
leading to things of a more permissible nature seeing print.
· Sputnik-leading to the space race.
· Herman Kahn's lectures on nuclear war being a lead in to the arms race.
· The introuduction of the solid intergrated circuit.
· Miles Davis, modern jazz & the civil rights movement.
· Castro's Cuban revolution.
· Cold War heating up with Kruschev's visit to the United States.
· SETI searching for life in outher space.
· Modern Art and the opening of the Guggenheim museum.
· Popular music and Motown.
· The final application for the birth control pill.
· The emergence of John F. Kennedy and the new Frontier.

A different kind of American film Shadows

Kaplan's chapter, The Off-Hollywood Movie, discusses the 1959 John Cassavetes film, Shadows. Cassavetes railed against Hollywood movies, where he said that commercial considerations were subtle, but dominate. He was more interested in the neo-realist filmmakers of Italy, who shot many of their films in the streets of Rome. Cassavetes decided to shoot a neo-realist film of his own in the streets of New York City. The result was Shadows, a story of a young black woman who passes for white, though a plot synopsis doesn't really do the movie justice, as it is largely free form and at least partly improvised. You know a 1959 movie that has a line that scoffs at the beat generation is pretty hip (or thinks it's pretty hip). Shadows, as well as other later films by Cassavetes, weren't big money makers, but did influence a generation of moviemakers such as Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanavich and Robert Altman.

I'm just glad that commercial considerations in today's American cinema have now become secondary to artistic considerations. (Hey, stop laughing!)

Not giving away emotional clues in Pickpocket

 In addition to Shadows,  this era also brought us Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless. The British new wave of cinema was fast approaching as well. There was also Robert Bresson's film, Pickpocket, a revered film by a filmmaker whose films at first glance may elicit the reaction of "What was that all about?" Not in that the story is complex, but that the story is told so simply and with none of the tradition movie tropes (His films are edited oddly, scored oddly and the non-professional actors give very little in the way of overt emotions.) Pickpocket has traces of film noir, suspense, crime and drama, but it really doesn't fit into any of these categories. I've seen it more than once and it isn't my favorite Bresson (That would be Balthazar), but there is something about it and will probably revisit it yet again.

I watched the Ben-Hurish epics, the frothy Pillow Talky comedies and the art films above. But can looking at 1959 films be complete without a little of the campy? I think I'll head to the drive-in tomorrow.