Un Condemné à Mort s’est Échapeé /

Le vent   souffle où il veut

Director: Robert Bresson.

Guión: Robert Bresson, basado en la memoria de Andre Devigny.

Intérpretes: François Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock, Roland Monod.

Fotografía: Léonce-Henri Burel

Francia. 1956. 105 minutos.

Belleza

         A mediados de la década de los cincuenta del siglo pasado, Robert Bresson decidió poner en escena cinematográfica un relato corto del comandante Andre Devigny que narraba los avatares y la fuga de un preso de uno de los penales regentados por el ejército nazi en la Francia ocupada durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El resultado, la que aquí nos ocupa Un Condemné à Mort s’est Échapeé se erigió en una de las obras más bellas del Cine –europeo o no- de todos los tiempos. En la mirada quirúrgica el sino del protagonista (en el filme llamado Fontaine) que nos propone Robert Bresson, vemos que el guionista y realizador opta en buena medida por la descontextualización de lugar y tiempo, encauzando así, desde señas de auténtica radicalidad formal, la abstracción, un discurso esencialista.

Filosofía

         La película narra lo que el título nos enuncia en pretérito prefecto. Así, aunque casi todo el filme transcurre en el interior de la prisión, desde el primer momento sabemos que Fontaine va a escaparse. De este modo tan simple como efectivo, Bresson declina todo interés por el suspense –y hasta la sensación de peligro- inherente a la trama, para centrarse en ese estudio de lo particular que abraza lo universal. Asimismo, no hay apenas aspavientos dramáticos en la película (los que hay, se alcanzan desde lo intuitivo, a menudo merced de la clarividencia de los monólogos o diálogos), lo que en buena medida tiene que ver con dos circunstancias cabales: una, el hecho de que no exista una banda sonora musical –sólo una pieza sinfónica de Mozart que acompaña los créditos iniciales y el último instante de la película, ya fuera del penal- y, dos, que el protagonista de la cinta, François Leterrier, tenga esa cualidad más bien inexpresiva en el rostro: otra vez, se trata de que el espectador se desligue de la emotividad para centrar su visión e interpretación de la obra desde los postulados filosóficos que el autor articula.

Virtud

         El filme se inicia con un epigrama gravado en piedra donde leemos que diez mil franceses fueron encerrados en aquel penal y la mayoría de ellos ajusticiados, y de ahí pasamos por corte a un primer plano de las manos de Fontaine, antes de ser esposadas, plano que se abre a la secuencia que nos narra el traslado del preso al centro penitenciario, donde debe esperar el cumplimiento de la condena que le incumbe, la pena capital. Con tan poco, Bresson ya nos pone en situación, o mejor dicho, en los términos de una narración que habla del heroísmo en términos absolutos, de la virtud humana, de la humildad, del temple, del tesón y de la inteligencia para oponerse a las grandes injusticias. La primera noción de heroísmo que la cinta nos muestra no alberga aún tantos epítetos: Fontaine abre la puerta del coche en el que le están trasladando y trata de huir a la desesperada; la cámara ni se molesta en seguir su corta huída, y permanece en el interior del coche, en el asiento vacío hasta que diversos soldados le vuelven a dejar allí, para esta vez esposarlo y golpearlo con la culata de una pistola (vejación que sólo empezamos a ver, porque la cámara, pudorosa, rápidamente funde a negro: Bresson también rehuye mostrar la violencia, le basta con enunciar su concurrencia: las siguientes escenas, la camisa ensangrentada).

Un largo interludio

         A partir del internamiento de Fontaine en una (y después otra) celda de la penitenciaria, el filme se abre, en voz e imágenes, a la descripción escrupulosa y condensa (y, debo insistir, desdramatizada) de, primero, las penosas condiciones en que a Fontaine le toca vivir, y, después, muy pronto, en el modo en el que se va fraguando su meticuloso plan de huida, plan que germinará en el largo desenlace de la función. Será entonces cuando el filme, coherente con su enunciado cinematográfico, narre, con pelos y señales, la peligrosa expedición de Fontaine (y su compañero de celda, Joist) para recuperar su libertad perdida. Y en el largo interludio –así debe entenderse desde la óptica teórica, pues el cautiverio no es el estado natural del hombre- entre la pérdida y el reencuentro de la libertad, las imágenes ilustran las palabras, y a veces algo más: al concienzudo esfuerzo de esas imágenes por mostrarnos cada rincón de la celda, cada secuencia del cotidiano compartido con los otros presos, cada nuevo jalón en el plan pergeñado por el protagonista, se anuda la voz en off del propio Fontaine explicando sus impresiones, pensamientos y procedimientos. El espectador tiene que asumir el reto de tanta circunspección narrativa, porque esos monólogos y esas imágenes –a menudo planos cortos de detalle- van fraguando, moldeando y fortaleciendo, la esencia de la película. Asimismo, interesa reflejar la eminente carga alegórica contenida en la descripción de cada personaje –todos ellos presos como Fontaine, los carceleros no merecen ni una línea de diálogo-: la lírica con trasfondo simbólico se posa en cada acto, por nimio que sea, de comunicación entre el protagonista y sus iguales: señas o golpes en la pared, contrabando a mínima escala, o pequeños cruces de palabras (la presencia de la Fe, por ejemplo, está representada por dos presos, uno de ellos cuya única aspiración (satisfecha) es disponer de una Biblia: si el espectador, al finalizar la película y “pensarla”, trata de integrar esos pequeños pasajes y su significando en el plano figurado que el filme propone, encontrará mucha tela discursiva que cortar…)

Humanismo

         De este modo, en la sugestión que anida en tantas palabras y en la belleza plástica que desprenden tantas imágenes, Un Condemné à Mort s’est Échapeé nos deja una incalculable herencia, pues se erige en uno de los mayores alegatos al humanismo que nos ha dejado el Cine, precisamente porque la excepcional radiografía que propone no tiene otro objeto que el retrato de la lucha y la victoria del hombre contra los elementos, una lucha que no tiene cuartel –contra dos entes tan abominables como poderosos: el miedo y la duda-, y una victoria que sólo puede calificarse de merecida, porque el Hombre, Fontaine, sólo dispone de las más nimias herramientas –sus propias manos, una cuchara, unos alambres, unos jirones de ropa-, y a ellas se entrega con toda su pericia, toda su inteligencia y toda su paciencia, hasta alcanzar su meta.

El viento…

Pero el filme no se conforma con esa tesis, y la enriquece del modo que se estampa en el propio subtítulo de arraigo bíblico del filme: le vent soufflé ou il veut, “el viento sopla donde quiere”: Bresson nos dice que, por merecida que sea, una victoria también depende, y mucho, de la suerte, del poderoso azar. A pesar de empeñar todo su talento –toda su Virtud- en hallar una puerta de huida, Fontaine no lo hubiera logrado si cualquier pequeño imprevisto se hubiera girado en su contra: él mismo lo afirma en diversas sentencias, el personaje de Orsini – otro recluso que también trata de escaparse, pero fracasa- lo enfatiza desde ese sentido alegórico al que antes me refería, y la larga secuencia que nos narra el desenlace de la función, lo ratifica (precisando los recovecos físicos de esa ruta escogida, mostrando el detalle de pisadas más o menos ruidosas, de miradas sigilosas, del desasosiego que causan los tiempos muertos). Aunque desde su propio título, que es una proclama, Bresson opta por el optimismo, ese subtítulo, la referencia al azar, nos recuerda nuestra condición vulnerable. Una vulnerabilidad que, aunque pueda convertir nuestra lucha en desigual, no por ello debe empecer la razón y decisión de y en nuestros actos.

 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049902/

http://kinetonotes.20six.fr/kinetonotes/art/1255163/Un-condamne-mort-les-sons-et-les-espaces

http://criticafterdark.blogspot.com/2006/11/un-condamn-mort-man-escaped-robert.html

http://filmjourney.weblogger.com/2004/05/17/a-man-escaped/#more-449

http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com/2009/01/man-escaped.html

http://www.rbmoviereviews.com/movies/amanescaped.html

Todas las imágenes pertenecen a sus autores

Notas, frases o sentencias de Robert Bresson  (1902-1999) en torno al cinematógrafo.

“Una cosa vieja se vuelve nueva si la separas de lo que habitualmente la rodea”

“Lo que esta destinado al ojo no debe repetir lo que esta destinado al oído”

“Corot: no hay que buscar hay que esperar”

Según Susan Sontag “los defectos de Bresson son más valiosos que los éxitos de la mayoría de los directores.”

Lataa Ohjelma (MP3)

Fuskausjaksot jatkuvat, tällä kertaa sukellamme palautteiden ihmeelliseen maailmaan.

Aparecen ahora en MI SIGLO – encabezando el apartado Enlaces a mi obra – las cuatro entrevistas que Onda Cero ha tenido la amabilidad de proponerme hace pocas semanas preguntándome sobre mi trabajo periodístico y sobre mis tareas de corresponsal. La Radio ha querido titularlas respectivamente  ”Azorín”, “Fellini”, “París”y “Roma” y condensan algunas de las experiencias que he tenido la suerte de vivir como profesional. Escribo expresamente la suerte porque no siempre se encuentra uno en países y en épocas tan vibrantes de noticias. Yo he tenido esa suerte en Italia y en Francia, y cuando la suerte no ha venido hacia mí he ido yo hacia ella buscando aquello que más me interesaba, sin dejar de realizar, naturalmente, mi quehacer cotidiano de corresponsal.

Cuando se me pregunta qué entrevista o qué encuentro me dejó más impresionado siempre veo el rostro de Georges Pompidou a mi lado el 16 de junio de 1969. Un minuto antes era el candidato a la Presidencia de la República Francesa; un minuto después no era un hombre: era una nación. “Je suis la France“, pronunció en tono solemne, con el semblante cambiado. Cuando se me insiste sobre qué momento recuerdo con más intensidad viene hasta mí aquel despachito de Roma, en 1964, cuando el académico francés Jean Guitton me leyó emocionado parte del discurso que al día siguiente, a las 9 de la mañana, pronunciaría ante todo el Concilio y ante el Papa. Pero los recuerdos vuelan: me veo también sentado en un banco, a primeras horas de la noche de un día de junio de 1963, en la inmensa nave desierta de la Basílica de San Pedro, frente por frente a Juan XXlll muerto, escoltado sólo por la guardia suiza . Allí, en aquel banco, ante el cadáver del Papa, con la Basílica vacía de gentes, escribí la crónica periodística. Vuelan de nuevo los recuerdos y me veo igualmente, sentado en Roma, en 1964, ante el dramaturgo Diego Fabbri, en su despacho de Director de ”La Fiera Letteraria“, hablando de Pirandello, de Ugo Betti y de cómo Fabbri escribió “Proceso de familia“.

Esa puerta del despacho de Fabbri se abre a otras muy numerosas puertas, y cuatro años después, ya en París, escucho atentamente tanto a Gabriel Marcel  como a Robert Bresson. La puerta de los Estudios de Boulogne-Billancourt donde ví a Bresson y la puerta del despacho de Marcel en la rue Tournon abren paso también a otros pasillos y  a otros butacones desde donde, ya en Madrid y años más tarde, observo la sortija en las manos de Mujica Láinez, la imponente altura de Cortázar, los ojos tras las gafas de Onetti, el acento de Luis Rosales. Muchos de estos encuentros están ya en los libros, otros en MI SIGLO, otros algún día aparecerán. Haber encontrado a tales rostros no tiene más mérito que el de la curiosidad intelectual. Uno ha ido desde niño detrás de los autores, subrayando sus obras, interesado por las labores del espíritu. Uno se ha colocado entre los bastidores de la creación – en el taller de Pablo Serrano, cruzando descampados con Juan Barjola - y allí ha notado qué bien se está entre esos bastidores, entre dos luces, contemplando de reojo el patio de butacas. Avanza ante las candilejas el pintor, el escritor, el sabio, esperando los aplausos, esperando las críticas, sin apenas darse cuenta de que está haciendo Historia.

(Imágenes.-1.-Roma.-por Richard Estes.-artnet/ 2.-París.-por Félix Hilaire Buhot.-Zygman voss Gallery.-artnet/ 3.-París.-por Jules Aarons.- flickr)

Lancelot du Lac, Bresson’s bizarre dismantling of Arthurian legend, is not an easy film for me to review. Even as accustomed to Bresson’s style as I’ve become, Lancelot du Lac still struck me in a rather strange manner. What Bresson gives us instead of epic battle sequences and grand, operatic gestures is the clanking of cumbersome armor, the sounds of horse’s whinnying, their hooves beating and more than enough camera decapitation and focus on the limbs in action. It’s obvious Bresson chose the story of Lancelot to subvert his and his compatriots’ belief that God was backing their misguided externalizing of their inner torment by way of incessant violence.

What makes the film so strange is the fact that Bresson is so interested in subversion of the genre, delineation of the soul and the utilization of tropes not typically seen in films of this ilk. His actors deliver their lines with nary a twitch in their face or a jump in their intonation. Their armor (fails to) protect(s) them from physical harm, though one could infer that the armor speaks just as well of the knights’ disconnection from corporeal reality. If the camera isn’t an active antagonist against the violence, the angelic Guinevere is. Guinevere is held in high esteem, and her martyrdom is more or less the heart of the film. Sadly, the stoicism of the actors borders on silly at times, and their declarations of love and mission often fail to resonate in any significant way.

Though Bresson’s style seemed to strip the film of its emotional core, it did unpredictably lend itself to wonderful displays of stylized action, with the jousting tournament at the center being probably the best thing I’ve seen Bresson stage. Through the use of medium shot cutting off the face, therefore the identity, of the knights as they joust to the sounds of a thrilled crowd and Gauvain’s delighted affirmations of Lancelot’s presence amongst the fighters, what ends up being shown is rather terrific. The film cuts between fanfare, the hoisting of flags signaling an identity we don’t know and the clashing of lance to shield, showing several knights fall to the ground. Bresson rids the action of its seemingly intrinsic catharsis via heroism and chooses to attempt to separate the violence and wounds from the purported “hero”, which lends itself to a focus on the aftermath of what the crowd so yearns for: the battered, sometimes lethally wounded bodies writhing on the ground in shame and pain.

Almost as effective is the final battle scene, which ends up not really being a battle scene at all. We watch as a riderless horse gallops throughout the forest, passing by the bloodied corpses of dead and dying knights. The opposition hurls arrows that only strike trees, the very substance they were created from. This reflects the knights’ refutation of God’s true teachings in favor of what they had mutated into His word. What I’ve ended up with is a film that sounds a lot better in writing than it ends up being in practice. Bresson took his anti-theatricality to new heights, and left a few of his actors sounding and looking pretty silly, draining their conflicts of a lot of their resonance. Ultimately I think this is a film that I’ll be seeking a lot of further reading on to help me put things into perspective.

French film director Robert Bresson is famous for his use of non-professional actors. Prior to watching Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, I had only seen one Bresson film, Pickpocket (1959), whose protagonist was most certainly not a professional actor. He shambled through the proceedings like a man on a heavy dose of tranquilizers, his movements slow, his eyes haunted. It was an interesting film, and one I may watch again some day, but it didn’t move me.

It wasn’t always this way. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Bresson’s second film, features a cast of professional actors, and is based on a short novel by Denis Diderot with dialogue written by Jean Cocteau. The result is a polished and romantic film that completely engrossed me.

María Casares plays a haughty member of high society named Hélène who has long had a loosely defined relationship with a handsome gentleman named Jean (Paul Bernard). They may have other dalliances, but they are committed to each other, more or less. As the film begins, Hélène is on a date at the opera with a gentleman friend named Jacques (Jean Marchat), who warns her that Jean’s passion for her is cooling. When Jean later shows up at Hélène’s apartment, apologizing for having forgotten her birthday, Hélène tells him she would prefer they end their romance and become simply friends. She says this merely as a ploy, and she is devastated when he tells her he feels the same way, and leaves her apartment unperturbed by the momentous decision to end their affair. Left alone, she vows revenge.

The power of the film comes from Bresson’s ability to depict the emotions that rage behind placid exteriors. He is aided by Casares, whose performance is truly astounding. Without ever raising her voice or engaging in histrionics, she plays the “scorned woman” to the hilt. She is fascinating to watch, and sometimes even frightening. Part of the fascination comes from the fact that Jean and the young woman Hélène befriends, Agnès (Elina Labourdette), are unaware of how they are being manipulated by the cold Hélène. They are preoccupied with each other. More importantly, they are preoccupied with themselves, especially Agnès, who has a sordid past and doesn’t feel worthy of being loved by Jean. She hides her true self from him, but the longer she hides, the more devastating Hélène’s revenge will be.

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is a film about the redemptive power of love and the corrosive allure of vengeance. Many modern viewers may find the social mores on display in the film outdated, but if they look past the surface, they may find that the world hasn’t changed as much as they think it has. The lives of the Parisian leisure class may look and feel very different from the lives of most people who view the film today, but the story Bresson tells is timeless.

A Man Escaped is a film that is enhanced by leaving out the usual embellishments of war-time pieces, such as elevated levels of action and violence, way-too-loud sound effects, character expositions and easy explanations.  In fact, it is my opinion that this is not really a war film at all. At least not to me. To me, A Man Escaped was about letting me experience Fontaine’s life in prison in a unique way. The setting, more than anything, helped to enhance the effect.

Fontaine is determined to escape captivity from the outset, when he dives out of the car that is carrying him to prison. This is an important addition because we are immediately familiar with this small aspect of his personality (one of the only things we are let in on, as François Truffaut notes in this great review). Indeed, Fontaine begins to acquire some escape tools as soon as he develops a tentative plan.  A metal spoon is eventually stolen. We can feel the risk in his actions. The camera closes in his wooden cell door as he carves away at it with the spoon. Without ever showing the source, sounds in the distance play a major part in creating the film’s tension. The footsteps of hallway guards become characters in themselves. They are recurrent and instill a great source of excitement–not the trivial type that an action sequence provides, but a kind that allows the viewer to feel as Fontaine does every time they are heard in the film. By the end, things like the spoon, the cloth rope, the mattress, the shards of glass, the wood panels in the door, the iron bars, taps on the wall, and the signaling cough of fellow prisoners, are all significant enough to, in a sense, become characters in themselves. This is one of my favorite aspects of the film (as well as the overall subtlety, the silences, the bursts of music, the facial expressions of Fontaine and Jost) and all I can really of think to write about for now.

*

1-16 Crossroads (dir. Shen Xiling, cin. Wang Yuru, 1937)

17-22 The Struggle (dir. D.W. Griffith, cin. Joseph Ruttenberg & Nick Rogalli, 1931)

23-29 Thirdworld (dir/cin. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 1998)

30-37 Melancholia (dir/cin. Lav Diaz, 2008)

38-43 Mouchette (dir. Robert Bresson, cin. Ghislain Cloquet, 1967)

44-47 The Trial (dir. Orson Welles, cin. Edmond Richard, 1962)

]]> http://lessallesobscures.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/robert-bresson-et-le-cinematographe/ Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:46:21 +0000 lessallesobscures http://lessallesobscures.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/robert-bresson-et-le-cinematographe/ http://ntbd.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/a-fleeting-encounter/ Sun, 04 Oct 2009 02:07:03 +0000 Edwin http://ntbd.wordpress.com/2009/10/04/a-fleeting-encounter/

field stills of Itinéraire de Jean Bricard

*

‘…makes Bresson look like Bubsy Berkeley’

– Jean-Pierre Gorin on the closing takes of Itinéraire de Jean Bricard.

*

For MA, MF, DM & AR

Katie Jarvis in 'Fish Tank'

There’s a story that when Luchino Visconti was filming La Terra Trema, his 1948 neo-realist study of the lives of Sicilian fishermen, he tied fishing wire to the toes of his actors. This wasn’t, as you might imagine, anything to do with keeping them inside a boat or preventing them from wandering off. No, the wires were there so that the director and his crew could pull on them to give a prompt whenever it was time for an actor to speak.

Since then, hiring non-professional actors has become the trademark of directors searching for a certain kind of authenticity in their work, almost to the point of cliché. Everyone from Gus Van Sant to Shane Meadows is at it, the former casting his 2007 film Paranoid Park through an advert on My Space.  

The latest member of the club is British director Andrea Arnold. Her new film Fish Tank features Katie Jarvis in the role of Mia, a 15-year-old girl whose life is turned upside down when her mother’s new boyfriend moves into the family home. Initially Arnold had difficulty finding an actress for the role. After auditioning dozens of unsuccessful professionals, her casting director came across Jarvis in a railway station, shouting at her boyfriend. The director, sensing what she has called a certain “dynamism” in Jarvis, persuaded the 16-year-old, who had no previous acting experience, to try out for the part. 

Indeed, children and teenagers seem to be particularly good at just being themselves, a quality that has served film-makers well over the years. Larry Clark famously filmed kids doing all the things that kids shouldn’t do in his imaginatively-titled Kids (1995). His non-professional cast brought a rare sense of honesty and authenticity to the film, and made other attempts to portray teenage life seem false by comparison. There’s a similar realism to last year’s The Class (Entre Les Murs), again in large part because director Laurent Cantet cast real inner-city schoolchildren to act out a world that was already familiar to them. 

"I'm ready for my close-up." 'Au Hasard Balthazar'

But is there more to using non-professional actors than simply trying to achieve some kind of ‘objective’, documentary-style realism? Robert Bresson certainly thought so. Watch one of the influential French director’s films from the Fifties or Sixties and you’ll be struck most of all by the performances he drew from his non-professional casts. To put it simply, actors in Bresson films speak their lines, often with very little intonation or feeling. At first, this seems like bad acting or, worse, wilfully bad acting. But then, as you see more of the director’s work, you realise that there’s a very definite kind of method involved.

Bresson had his non-professionals, or ‘actor-models’ as he called them, do take after take until any kind of showy ‘performance’ was gone from their delivery of the lines. What he was trying to show, I think, is that there’s always a difference between what people say and what they think and that none of us, in reality, reacts to events in the way that a classically-trained actor might. So, if I hit my thumb with a hammer and no-one is watching me, I won’t necessarily swear or shout, and neither necessarily should a character in a film. We observe one another, Bresson tells us, but at the same time we’re all mysterious to one another.

In Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), he takes this method to its logical extreme by making the main character a donkey. As the animal is passed from person to person, we see a cross-section of human behaviour from its point of view. We can sometimes guess at people’s motivations, but their inner selves are always hidden from us, ungraspable and incomprehensible.    

Some slack-jawed yokels, yesterday. 'Flandres'

It’s a powerful approach, and one that has been taken up by a number of Bresson’s disciples in today’s cinema, from the Mexican Carlos Reygadas to the Frenchman Bruno Dumont. Dumont’s films in particular are dominated by the kind of gaping yokels you might find standing around as extras in a Bresson film, and are all the better for it.

In Flandres (2006), for example, the director tells the story of two French farmers who go to war in an unnamed Arab country. His non-professional actors spend a lot of their time trudging across farm and desert landscapes, staring at distant objects, having joyless animal-like sex and grunting monosyllabically to one another. It’s not the kind of behaviour that you would find in either a tightly-scripted Hollywood thriller or a ‘realist’, Ken Loach-style drama. On the other hand, it does give you a tangible sense of how much a part of the flat French farmscape the two main characters are, and how alien and dreamlike the desert is for them.

Dumont has said that one day he would like to work with Tom Cruise. Whilst I think that this was a joke, it is nevertheless an interesting proposition. How would a controlled, self-aware performer like Cruise cope with working alongside non-professionals? Could he lose his Hollywood sheen and simply ‘be’ in a small art movie? Or would the director have to tie a length of fishing wire to his big toe? Sadly we may never know.

Just a quick one on this, the final day of our beloved month of August. I’m taking a class on Soviet Cinema this semester, and suffice it to say, I’m very excited about it. I’ve always fallen into the minority camp when it comes to the most famous Soviet director of all-time, Sergei Eisenstein: I love his films, sure, but I love his theoretical writings even more. Of course, what makes this position so peculiar is the fact that many seem to find his writings stylistically opaque if not intellectually incoherent. Personally, I’ve always found Eisenstein’s writings to be kind of awkwardly composed but philosophically potent as all-get-out. Indeed, any critic or scholar who has tried to come to grips with what a film is and what a film does is indebted to Eisenstein’s theoretical work; that his ideas have seamlessly carried over into other fields, like architectural theory, is a testament to the conceptual effectiveness of Eisenstein’s philosophy of montage.

But I’d like to see more attention devoted to the philosophical affinities between Eisenstein’s theory/practice and that of another director who articulated his own vision for what cinema was and what a film ought to be: Robert Bresson. Today’s Quotes of quotes of… will be dedicated to demonstrating just how similar these two thinkers/artists really were, at least when it came to expressing how they conceived of cinema. All of the Bresson quotes are taken from his book Notes sur le Cinématographe (English: Notes on the Cinematographer), while the Eisenstein quotes (you guessed it, in red) can be found in various essays from Film Form: Essays in Film Theory.

The film-frame can never be an inflexible letter of the alphabet, but must always remain a multiple-meaning ideogram. And it can be read only in juxtaposition, just as an ideogram acquires its specific significance, meaning, and even pronunciation (occasionally in diametric opposition to one another) only when combined with a separably indicated reading or tiny meaning–an indicator for the exact reading—placed alongside the basic hieroglyph.

(Eisenstein, “The Filmic Fourth Dimension”)

An image must be transformed by contact with other images as is a color by contact with other colors. A blue is not the same blue beside a green, a yellow, a red. No art without transformation.

Cinematographer’s film where the images, like the words in the dictionary, have no power and value except through their position and relation.

(Bresson)

And yet we cannot reduce aural and visual perceptions to a common denominator. They are values of different dimensions. But the visual overtone and the sound overtone are values of a singly measured substance. Because, if the frame is a visual perception, and the tone is an aural perception, visual as well as aural overtones are a totally physiological sensation. And, consequently, they are of one and the same kind, outside the sound or aural categories that serve as guides, conductors to its achievement.

For the musical overtone (a throb) it is not strictly fitting to say: ‘I hear.’

Nor for the visual overtone: ‘I see.’

For both, a new uniform formula must enter our vocabulary: ‘I feel.’

(Eisenstein, “The Filmic Fourth Dimension”)

If an image, looked at by itself, expresses something sharply, if it involves an interpretation, it will not be transformed on contact with other images. The other images have no power over it, and it will have no power over the other images. Neither action, nor reaction. It is definitive and unusable in the cinematographer’s system. (A system does not regulate everything. It is a bait for something.)

(Bresson)

Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete objects? Language is much closer to film than painting is. For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents-as an element-the greatest difficulty in manipulation. So why not lean towards the system of language, which is forced to use the same mechanics in inventing words and word-complexes?

(Eisenstein, “A Dialectical Approach to Film Form”)

Because you do not have to imitate, like painters, sculptors, novelists, the appearance of persons and objects (machines do that for you), your creation or invention confines itself to the ties you knot between the various bits of reality caught. There is also the choice of the bits. Your flair decides.

(Bresson)

Bresson’s 1967 film Mouchette, focuses on a young girl living a life of abject poverty in a French village, a poverty compounded by the cruelty she endures. Her alcoholic father treats her cruelly, leaving her to care for her dying mother. At school she is an outsider ignored by both her teacher & peers. She rejects the cold charity of the rural religious. The only hint of joy comes through an unexpected dodgem ride at the fair but even this is linked to spiteful emotions & jealousies. Mouchette becomes entangled with an odd man in the woods. Rape is hinted at, further suffering is endured. In the end Mouchette rejects life itself in the cold waters of a river.

Once more Bresson uses black & white cinematography to convey the story. There is very little spoken dialogue & not much development of character. We see the surface rather than the hinted at hidden depths of personality. Bresson seems to have his favourite  photographic devices. There is an impersonal procession of lorries, lots of semi-derelict interiors, a focus on wind-swept, rain-soaked woods, hunted animals & rural life observed at a distance.

I noted parallels with the work of Russian film director, Andrei Tarkovsky, who uses such techniques to similar effect, albeit in a more developed way. There is that same impressionistic feel, that same hint at eternal themes. Mouchette struck me as a kind of macabre dance, a via dolorosa, a mirroring of human suffering.

It does not quite connect at an emotional level. Because of the lack of characterisation it is not easy to enter into the characters’ world or to care deeply about them. Nevertheless what remains are the film’s haunting, disturbing qualities. We may only see the surface of things, but paradoxically there is nothing superficial about Bresson’s work. He has the ability to enter directly into our subconscious & spiritual selves.

Bresson invites us to look, to ponder & reflect, to feel; something that takes time & continues long after the film’s 90 minutes have passed.

- Les anges du péché (1943)
- Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)
- Journal d’un curé de campagne (1951)
*** Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (1956)
**** Pickpocket (1959)
*** Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (1962)
*** Au hazard Balthazar (1966)
**** Mouchette (1967)
- Une femme douce (1969)
- Quatre nuits d’un rêveur (1971)
*** Lancelot du Lac (1974)
*** Le Diable probablement (1977)
**** L’Argent (1983)

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

In his 1950 film, Diary of a Country Priest, French film director Robert Bresson captures the inner life of a young country priest dying of cancer. I’d seen the classic film some years ago but revisiting it I was struck by Bresson’s brilliance as a director & his skillful method.

He is aided by the constraints of the medium of black & white  film. Presumably colour film was still not available to him in a period of post-occupation austerity. One suspects, that as with Tarkovsky, black & white  better suited his purposes.

Each scene is prefaced by shots of words being transferred to the pages of the priest’s cahier, full of ink-blots & crossings out, in which he records his inner spiritual struggles. This is accompanied by the use of narration, the cleric both writing & voicing his thoughts.

Bresson’s skill lies in his choice of location to accompany all this. As bleak, priestly turmoil is exposed, it is done so in the setting of the much decayed presbytery, the priest in his thread bare clothes, shown against a white-washed wall, only relieved by a stark black cross on the wall.

Interiority is also explored in his church, in a railway station waiting room, at the chateau (where we see the countess’s soul bared) & in the garret-room of the ex-priest & intellectual, where the priest eventually dies. Both exterior poverty & shabbiness & stiff & concealing aristocratic formality mirror the inner lives that Bresson reveals.

What we never see is inside the parishioners’ houses. Their doors & hearts remain firmly closed to the new priest. Shots of a now vanished French rural life, carts, horses & mud, suggest the hard way of life they endured. When we do see the priest outdoors, Bresson suggests his isolation by showing him scurrying through the wrought iron gates of the chateau & up the mist obscured gravel drive. Collapsing from pain, on the frozen ground at night, his cloaked form is cloaked by darkness.

Only once is there movement, movement that expresses joyful risk taking, when another outsider, the count’s nephew & foreign legionnaire, Oliver, gives the priest a ride to the station at speed on his motorbike. The elation on the priest’s face suggests other possibilities now denied to him both by his vocation & terminal illness.

It is easy to see why Robert Bresson is revered as a master of cinematography. His work conveys great profundity by means of deceptively simple camera work & use of light. All this to express his belief in the graced nature of human existence.

There is absolutely nothing boring about this film. The technical aspects behind everything are gorgeous. Balthazar is both blunt and full of subtlety. My problems with the film lie in its disjunctiveness and lack of explanation. Now, and if you know me, this latter point might confuse you. I am all about films that look and feel right. Balthazar does both. The ambience is exquisite. The mood is delectible. And, yet, I found myself unmoved by a film that by all means should be moving.

UN HOMBRE ESCAPÓ de la prisión.

El primer post de este blog tiene que ver con este hombre que logró escapar. Quizá si continúan leyendo el mismo llegarán a comprender de qué escribo. Quizá saben de donde vengo, y estén conscientes de la transición, o su intento. No importan estas cosas, en mi opinión. Y no me detendré a explicar. Para algo he decidido ejercitar la paciencia. Y otras cosas.

Sea como sea, estoy seguro que si se han detenido a pensar alguno de ustedes se ha dado cuenta que estamos -todos- encerrados en una cárcel, condenados de por vida a ella. ¿No?

Sí. Pero un hombre escapó. Contra todo pronóstico: Un condenado a muerte escapó de la cárcel. Y el “si mi mamá me viera ahora“. Y los humos.

Robert Bresson ha contado, con lujo de detalles, para todo quien quiera ver y escuchar y comprender, cómo ha escapado este hombre de su prisión.

Y mucho me temo que si acaso alguno de ustedes busca respuestas a preguntas insondables, no tiene más que remitirse a este impresionante cuento de Robert Bresson, acerca de cómo un hombre, un mero ser humano, un condenado a muerte, fue capaz de escapar de la cárcel.

Es: Un condamné à mort s’est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (1956).

O: El viento sopla hacia donde le place (de Juan 3:8)

-
BE
Souffle où il veut

Robert Bresson uses Dominique Sanda as his vessel in this tale of the romance between a meek, intellectual woman and the archetypal modern man. If you’ve any knowledge of Bresson’s style, you know he’s a man strictly opposed to any excess or histrionics. He’s a man of gazes, body language and suffering silence. All are used to full effect here and necessarily so as this is a story built almost entirely on and around the titular couple. Bresson spoke of his distaste for theatrical cinema and the symbiotic relationship between images and sound, and both are reflected vicariously through Elle.  She, like him, seeks to differentiate herself from the norm. Bresson sought to de-dramatize film. She wants to escape the intrinsice patterns of life, which obviously includes her marriage.  In Luc’s world, though, such notions of perfectly unique lives are less and less evident. Luc is a business man. He is largely concerned with the financial, reflecting the changing world. Elle’s calm, studied persona is contrasted with the loud, pervasive cars typical of Luc’s world. After Luc insists she marry him, and marital issues of infidelity are confronted, Elle seems to more or less submit to her fate as the bored, disaffected housewife. The film is told largely through flashbacks detailing the turbulent relationship that lead to Elle’s suicide. A Gentle Woman is my 3rd Bresson so far and definitely my favorite. More often than not, Bresson’s minimalistic style fails to truly communicate to me the tormented soul of his characters, nor the profound ideals of the man himself in an incredibly interesting manner. No doubt Bresson has charmed the likes of critics and the classic film lover with his trademark “bare essentials” approach to film-making, but I’m not quite ready to hop on the love train yet. I’m working my way toward finding the best approach for his films, and I’m certainly a lot closer than I was this time last year.

Although LB didn’t respond to my comment at the dauntingly clever Larval Subjects – was it too inane? too busy? –, fortunately a fellow first time commenter known only as “das” did. And it was a generous response too. I asked for further thoughts on relating aesthetics – in cinema and literature – and materialist / realist ontology, in reference to his provocative commentary on Ben Marcus’ The Age of Wire and String. It’s now becoming an ongoing curiosity of mine.

Why? For a couple of simple reasons. Not only does the aesthetic and ontological tradition obviously share the same name, but also an affinity found in their respective motivations. In that, both attempt to think or aestheticize a parity between representation and its material; or, formalize a flatenning of narration / diegesis with the very objects / relations that constitute them. Furthermore, this can also be understood as an attempt to depose anthropomorphic tendencies, to narrate on behalf of things. Rather, materialism / realism, in both senses used here, attempts to allow things-in-themselves to “speak” for themselves, facilitating a direct representation without mediation.

This is what das had to say:

It would seem to me that an object-oriented realist cinema could take a number of different forms.

One, the film could grant the camera a tangible and acknowledged presence, thereby affirming the camera’s participation in the network of things which interact in order to yield the film in its precise configuration; documentaries in which the cameraman is not treated as absent but rather as a crucial participant within the situation he’s filming, like in Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County USA”, would exemplify this approach. Here the camera is not an invisible, extradimensional eye: it is an active player within the event it bears witness to. (If I can be kind of silly for a second, since Gertrude Stein has already come up in this discussion: Simply by virtue of being there the camera makes there there.)

Clearly what is meant by ‘affirming the camera’s participation in the network of things which interact in order to yield the film’ is simply self-reflexivity. Which can also be understood as a variation of the Brechtian distancing effect. But instead of reaching the things, the material, the objects of the narrative; is this not exaggerating the very difficulty of not being able to do so? Self-reflexivity in cinema is, in any case, the preferred device of the postmodernist. In mainstream cinema, Stranger Than Fiction provides a vivid example.

das then went onto to provide a second and third proposition, both of which point to the use of allegory. In that, the strategic depiction of environments, images, and spectacles are specifically manipulated for metonymic effect. Godard, Bresson and Antonioni certainly do invest both extended temporal durations, and emotional affect upon non-human objects – animate and inanimate:

Two, the objectivity and agency of the camera could be asserted by turning its gaze onto various inhuman objects; in Jean-Luc Godard’s “2 or 3 Things I Know About Her” the camera interacts with an assortment of commodities not only to drain them of their spectacular (in the Debordian sense) power, but also to emphasize the sheer thingness of the camera by dwelling on the thingness of the commodities it takes as its objects (including the body of the film’s prostitute protagonist, Juliette Janson); further, through the use of Brechtian-style direct address of the camera, Godard’s “characters” recognize and affirm the camera’s participation within the events it is observing.

Third, there’s what I guess could be called the Antonioni approach: the human body is situated in an environment where its presence is so dwarfed by the presence of other objects that the body (usually Monica Vitti’s) is overwhelmed by it all. I think Antonioni is more useful here than is Bresson; in his books on cinema I believe Deleuze talks a little bit about Antonioni’s concern with the different types of modern environments (the city of “L’eclisse”, the coastline of “L’avventura”, the industrial wasteland of “Red Desert”, Los Angeles and Death Valley in “Zabriskie Point”) and how these environments are navigated and perpetuated by people who are more or less vacuous subjects (humans rendered as objects). There are certainly object-oriented aspects of Bresson’s cinematic philosophy (his infamous “cinematography”), but he’s probably more of a pure relationalist due to his stated concern with composing images which have no significance or affectiveness in and of themselves, but rather, which achieve their significance and affectiveness by being juxtaposed with other images and sounds.

In Bresson, we see this again and again. In Au Hazard Balthazar the protagonist, of course, was the infamous donkey to which all manner of mortal hardship and suffering was projected, serving as a powerful non-human metonymic object. Also, in L’Argent, Bresson goes a step further, juxtaposing capital itself as the endlessly metamorphosizing amoral “antagonist,” shifting its shape from one material object to another, networking all in its vicinity throughout its near-wordless narrative.

The chief problem with these approaches is, however, that allegory still depends on mediation: reliance on the “voice” of the diegesis to stage these juxtapositions, the subjectivity of the mute narrator. This problematic is also present in Ben Marcus’ narrative (as it is also in the literature of Robbe-Grillet or Negarestani), even though it attempts to give voices, feelings, and thought to its networks of inanimate objects – the human author remains, demanding empathy and the suspension of disbelief.

How can this privileging be deposed? The advantage that cinema should have over literature in this respect is that the mechanical process of the cinematograph or video replaces the human act of writing in recording the appearances of objects. However, as these extremely unformed remarks on das’ propositions already show, they are still inadequate at escaping the privilege of the auteur. I shall post on this topic again, hopefully, with some propositions of my own. But in the meantime, I’d very much welcome any other responses or suggestions on how to approach this.

]]> http://rm144.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/reading-frenzy/ Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:04:26 +0000 rm144 http://rm144.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/reading-frenzy/

I must be starving for words, because there’s a reading frenzy going on in my home. Books were quietly piling up and now I can Not Stop Reading. (Not that this is a bad thing, but it’s kinda hilarious to have four books going at once and a stack waiting, albeit many of the books are the kind of non-fiction that I need to stop and start to digest.)

Here is my reading list, all of which I can Highly Recommend, especially if the topic interest you.

-THE REST IS NOISE, Alex Ross: I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It’s, hands down, one of the best books I’ve ever read on music and simply one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read. Ross makes a somewhat difficult topic, the history of 20th century music, incredibly accessible. I hear and feel the music he is discussing.

-EVERYTHING IS CINEMA, Richard Brody: Again not an easy topic, at least for me…Godard’s life and work. But this extensive look at Godard’s history is very enlightening, especially for me as I found him intellectually stimulating but kinda like homework. This book is helping me see the spectacular level of innovation and thinking behind his films.

[fyi: Both Brody and Ross write for The New Yorker, as does James Wood, whose book HOW FICTION WORKS, I recently finished and was similarly impressed by...those New Yorker dudes know how to write a book! Big thanks to Jen Lam for the recommendation and for the actual book!]

THE ZEN OF CREATIVITY, John Daido Loori: During my meditation research I came across information about the Zen Fire Lotus Temple in Brooklyn which is connected to the Zen Mountain     upstate. These are both headed by Loori who is also a photographer. I was curious to read something by him.

WALKING MEDITATION, Thich Nhat Hanh: Hanh is a master in this form and I wanted to learn more about it.

BACK TO BEGINNINGS, REFLECTIONS ON THE TAO, Huanchu Daoren: A lovely book of short meditations on life from the late 16th century. I found many to be quite practical and useful.

DESIGN AS ART, Bruno Munari: Munari illustrated this childrens book that I still have and probably treasure the most: CIRCUS IN THE MIST. I recently read a bit more on him and ordered a few of his educational books. This one looks great–I can’t wait to delve into it.

NOTES ON THE CINEMATOGRAPHER, Robert Bresson: I’ve been in the thrall of a Bresson love-fest for a while, with DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST at the top of my list. But I just watched both MOUCHETTE and PICKPOCKET and was blow away too. Wanting to learn more about Bresson, I found this book of his working memos.

INDIGNATION, Philip Roth: On the pile, a recommendation from Sandy. He’s one of my fav. living authors, so am looking forward to it…am going in blind, as I haven’t read about the story line.

Poetry I’ve been dipping into/wanting to read more of:

ELIZABETH BISHOP, a book of her complete works.

DECREATION: POETRY, ESSAYS, OPERA, Ann Carson

THE WASTELAND and other poems, T.S. Eliot

I’m also revisiting this classic that I read many many moons ago:

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, Virginia Woolf: I’m flabbergasted by the poetry, philosophy, simple magic of her vision. I have to read each page very slowly–Not Easy for Ms. Skimmer–to savour this one. I got some little post-its and I keep sticking them on pages.

For our coming two week-I can’t believe it’s happening–California trip in August:

MY ANTONIA, Willa Cather: Another reread and our next book group pick

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL, Fredrick Nietzsche: My pal in life and books Drew read this for his new philosophy reading partnership. He just told me that he was surprised how readable it was….which is why I’m choosing to take it along.

And a book I always have around and dip into now and then:

THE BOOK OF DISQUIET, Fernanda Pessoa: I can never read more than a page or two of this journal-like book by one of Portugal’s most important poets. You deeply sense his life experience which is infused with melancholy.