Michele Lagny, “The feeling gaze: Jean Renoir’s La Bête humaine (1938)” – The essay traces some of the context of the film’s release, particularly the way it was somewhat ordained to…
Diary of a Country Priest (dir. Robert Bresson, 1951) – As a follow-up to Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, it stands as a rather significant shift in style and…
Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (dir. Robert Bresson, 1945) – So much to say about this, too little space/time. This is early Bresson, his second feature film. In many ways,…
Mouchette (dir. Robert Bresson, 1967) – And that completes half of Bresson’s oeuvre. Still need to see the first two and the last four. Mouchette contains many clear similarities with…
The Passion of Joan of Arc (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) – Paul Schrader calls this a key example of the “transcendental style in film,” from his book by that…
Just some notes at the outset. It’s quite easy to see the influence of Dostoyevsky and Robinson Crusoe in this one. The latter has to do with the film’s narrative…
There are many and eclectic takes on Robert Bresson’s work, and only a little on which there is unanimity. The consensus is essentially that his films are marvelous, beautiful, formally…
Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket is Dostoevsky meets The Bicycle Thief. Vittorio de Sica’s film focuses on the man rather than on the whodunit?, and in the same way, Bresson’s film centers…