A MAN ESCAPED (1956) for the first time. Bresson constructs a prison escape movie out of his and Andre Devigny's (on whom the protagonist's story is based) personal WWII experiences with as pared-down and minimalist a cinematic approach as we've come to expect from the man. Even the supporting performers are in and out of sight faster than Bresson can dissolve between shots to imply (rather than show) physical violence and/or the slow passage of time. For the first 10 min. I was annoyed at Fontaine (Alan Alda-lookalike François Leterrier) and his constant stating-the-obvious dull monologues. But then I completely got lost in the little details, menusha, routines and you-are-there observations of a man determined against all odds (and willing to die) to escape his Nazi captors. The sound in "A Man Escaped" is incredible considering we spend 90% of the movie indoor with Fontaine in his cell. Without showing us anything (or very little) Bresson constructs out of whistles, train engines, bicycle gears, people laughing/talking in the distance and other sounds a world worth risking one's life for. At the end of this screening (the very last Bresson showing of a two-week retrospective) the entire theater broke out in unprompted, enthusiastic applause. Still not sure if we were applauding the movie's conclusion or the two-week chance to see Bresson movies on the big screen that prompted the applause.
THE DEVIL, PROBABLY (1977) for the first time. After the novelty of seeing a Bresson movie in color wears off (about 5 minutes in) you realize that, by this time in his life, the creator of "Au hasard Balthazar" and "Mouchette" had given up hope for the humanity he still found in some characters/situations in his previous movies. Through the person of Charles (Antoinne Moinner, who looks like a model for a Calvin Klein perfume commercial) and his circle of good-looking but emotionally stunted friends (Tina Irissari's Alberte, Laetitia Carcano's Edwige and Henri de Maublanc's Michel) that see the world in environmental/war/poverty/social crisis, Bresson portrays a cold and going-to-hell attittude that justifies the self-destructing efforts of Charles as well as the passivity of his friends in the face of Charles' inevitable march toward the fate Bresson shows us at the start of the movie (the story is a six-month flashback). Not even a "love triangle" between Charles, Alberte and Edwige carries narrative weight beyond showing us how desillusioned with 'normalcy' these youths are. And, since Bresson makes it clear early in his career that he only saw actors as 'models' to carry out his observations more than living/breathing characters, the typical argument that an old director doesn't understand contemporary youth doesn't apply to "The Devil, Probably." These aren't meant to be real young Frenchmen circa 1977 (like the one's at a political rally that Charles and his friends attend and quickly leave), but French youth as Bresson perceived them (internally) to be soaking up the crummy world around them. The scene between Charles and a psychiatrist (Régis Hanrion) during an intervention is both sad, hilarious and the beginning of the end for the former's self-imposed (but, based on the narrative, totally justified to Bresson given the perceived world Charles lives in) guilt trip for not wanting to contribute to a society he doesn't want to be a part of.
As a former Catholic the ending struck me as a mini-masterpiece of viewer interpretation. Most people just see a youth in revolt taking his self-destructive actions to their only logical extreme. Even though Charles arranges for his friend to shoot him, technically it wasn't Charles who pulls the gun trigger. His drug-addicted friend did, at Charles' behest but in that next-to-last shot you could see some malice and intent in the shooter. So, somewhere in the back of Charles' mind, asking his friend to shoot him was like an afterlife insurance policy that shows that deep within him he still believed in (or was afraid of) God and being denied an afterlife because Charles committed suirice. But, if there's a shred of belief in God in Charles (which he rejected with every fiber of his intellectualizing being), how could he have swindled his drug-addicted friend to commit the even bigger sin of killing another human being? "The Devil, Probably" is a bleak movie, but not a boring one and it has more to tell in any five of its 95 minutes that most Hollywood movies put together in a year say about the complexity of the human experience.
L'ARGENT (1983) for the first time. If "The Devil, Probably" was the world going to hell then "L'argent" is hell on Earth. The old saying 'money is the root of all evil' (which I don't recall actually being used in the movie) starts here with some forged bills in the hands of some well-off kids that start a chain reaction that results, many years and unrelated events later, in the deaths of many innocent people (and, since this is a Bresson movie in which even the life of a wife beater husband has some worth, the guilty too) at the hands of a once-normal person driven mad by life's circumstances. But is the employee that lies in court to convict the wrong man for a crime he didn't commit any more responsible than the wife of the condemned man that abandons him when he goes away to prison for actions beyond their control? Imagine Fontaine from "A Man Escaped" if he hadn't succeeded at escaping his Nazi captors, then he snaps and is released to the post-WWII French world as an amoral monster. That's "L'argent," with Bresson at his most nihilist, pessimist and, ironically, at his most liberated state given this was his last movie. Like when Ozu moved his camera late in his career, the sight and sounds of a car chase in the movie shocked me. The Bressonian cut-away-from-a-violent-action-that-makes-the-unseen-act-feel-more-violent effect gets the added impact of gore, making this relatively-tame French movie every bit as disturbing (in its own way) as "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer." The same way Bresson absolves the sins of his catatonic youths in "The Devil, Probably" by portraying a modern world that doesn't regard people as individuals with humanity, Bresson doesn't seem to relish his cinematic portrayal in "L'argent" of how easy it is for society and life to turn a once-productive citizen into a monster. It's Bresson's final, and ultimately fatalistic, cinematic portrayal of what happens when the presence/absence of God in man's life results in a chain reaction of crap for everyone involved. When the movie ended the entire sold-out theater remained seated in silence for a full minute after the lights were turned on and, gradually, began leaving the theater without saying a word. The closest I've been part of something similar was after a screening of "Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom."
Watching this and "The Devil, Probably" I was fascinated by the minimalist film language at work (people opening/closing doors, the camera holding on to an empty space where a character was standing a few minutes before, all-envolving sound to create mood/place, mannequin-like acting, etc.) which Bresson by this time had perfected into a science. Bluntly put, if you don't know 'Bressonian' film language it's impossible to enjoy many of his movies because to a layman Bresson's movies will seem weird and off (especially his post-60's work). While there was a part of me thrilled at knowing I was part of a small group of lucky cinephiles that can appreciate Bresson's work it also saddened me that, except for places like this forum, I cannot share my passion and love for Bresson with many friends and family members (YMMV). They're normal people that cannot even begin to wrap their heads around the ideas and styles that Bresson brought to his movies. And this makes me a sad panda!
I keed, I keed... but seriously, this feels like Carpenter's work-for-hire "Christine" of the 1990's. It doesn't help that either the screenplay is off or scenes were cut out that make passage of time seem either abrupt or non-existent. The music is really bad in a 'banging the synthesizer' way, courtesy of Carpenter and another not-Alan-Howarth composer. Whatever good elements "Village of the Damned" has (creepy atmosphere, the spare and effective use of Michael Paré, Christopher Reeve & Mark Hamill becoming effective surrogates for Tom Atkins & Charles Cyphers, Kirstie Alley as a 'man in black' type scientist, low-budget but fun special effects, disturbing but not explicit violence, great use of anamorphic frame, etc.) are the minimum you expect Carpenter to bring to his work. The movie's premise (and Carpenter's visual recreation of the '60 version's visual motiffs) do most of the heavy lifting, especially when some SFX shots/action scenes look cheap because a lot of the budget got eaten by the then-fancy CGI eye-glow effects. I'm glad I saw "Village of the Damned" but it reminded me more of the state of horror movies in the 1990's before "Scream" than the glory Carpenter era of '77 to '92.
