Bresson’s films are insistently anti-narrative even though they may appear otherwise. I have already written how he subverts the convention of realism in the images he uses, and directs us to an experience that transcends reality. A Man Escaped, 1956, more than any other film of his, tempts the audience to see it as a neorealist narrative because it is nominally a thriller describing an escape from a prison; and it suspensefully engages the audience from the beginning to the end.
But, as a thriller, A Man Escaped is shoddy. What Bresson shows in 102 minutes is significantly uneventful; it consists of preparations for the escape but lacks large events, like a near exposure, a near escape, and a reverse of fortune. There are no large actions -- no accident, no scuffle, no fracas, no chase. Throughout the film, the camera focus on the face and hands of the prisoner Fontaine as he chips away the wall with a spoon, tears shirts into strips and braids ropes, and makes makeshift hooks; it veers away from him only occasionally, no more than absolutely necessary. His interaction with other inmates is sketchy; dialogues are minimal.
The screenplay, written by the director himself, was adapted from the real event, an account by André Devigny himself of his escape from a Gestapo prison in Lyon; and Bresson was meticulous in shooting on location and recreating the replica of the cell as well as the details of the costume and props, even using the ropes and hooks used by Devigny that had been preserved.
Documentary in visual style, the film nevertheless fails as a documentary film; the geography of the prison complex, even of Fontaine’s cell, is never made very clear. Then, the voice-over narration, instead of establishing a narrative continuity, elaborates only in segments, what the images informs us. In the filmmaker’s own words: “Image and sound must not support each other, but must work each in turn through a sort of relay.”
The suspense we experience comes from the intensity of attention on the small cumulative actions, not from the overarching adventure. We know from the start that Fontaine escapes. The title announces it; it is more explicit in the original French title: Un condamné à mort s’est échappé. Bresson’s interest lies not in the actions shown per se but the obsession of bewildering depth in which we are forcibly made to partake in and experience. It is toward this end that he deploys the realism of the documentary style, strikingly in opposition to what was conventionally developed to bring us close to the empirical reality -- the impression of being there and then ourselves; instead, he shows an experience beyond its surface and insists that what seems ordinary is extraordinary. Something transcendental guides Fontaine to the escape he prepares for, without his being quite aware of it, and the final escape is a liberation as of death itself in Bresson’s other films.
The full title, in fact, reads: Un condamné à mort s’est échappé, ou le vent souffle où il veut. The second title comes from St. John 3:8, which translates as “The wind bloweth where it listeth” in King James, and “The wind blows where it wills,” in a modern version. What completes the verse, well understood in the phrase, is profoundly significant: “. . . and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goes; so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Pastiche "Island"
Last Saturday, I heard on the radio the broadcast of The Enchanted Island from the MET. Having complained about the visual excess of its stage production, I anticipated a better musical integration. It was pleasanter, no doubt, to hear a program of Baroque music, but without the spectacle to distract, the musical pastiche showed seams, apparent even to my inexpert ear. I was hearing Handel and suddenly it was not Handel. True, Baroque composers, including Handel, practiced pastiche but as with Rossini later, he pieced together segments of his own compositions and if he used those of other composers he most likely made them his own. A pastiche by a third party is a different kettle of fish, more like a potluck supper, sumptuous but without a signature. Without a single commanding hand, seams may be smoothed out but they still show.
Bresson's Cinema
Those who are new to Robert Bresson will mostly find his films excruciatingly boring. Those who have known some of his best films, say, A Man Escaped, will find them intensely engaging, despite the seemingly uneventful progress, drawn by a certain obsessive anticipation, rather like waiting for Godot.
For two weeks the Film Forum screened his thirteen films, virtually his total output between 1943 and 1983, some of them for only one showing. I was able to see ten of them one after another, and the experience prompted me to note that the divided reception was a clue to the nature of Bresson’s cinematic art.
Briefly stated, one most conspicuous peculiarity of his films is that, whereas his screen images are uncompromisingly realistic, the film composed of them does not replicate reality credibly. The characters he constructs appear confused or even irrational, and he does not develop them narratively; very little happens in the film though what happens is described with stubborn persistence. So, it bores us, or else intrigues us and keeps us waiting. There is very little story in any of his films, the barest minimum of a plot only as inevitable.
Film for most people is narrative, and historically, with rare exceptions, film has always been narrative. Fiction or non-fiction, a film tells a story with images, dialogues, and narrated words, and actors impersonating characters or real personages acting themselves to develop an event of some interest. A documentary constructs a story as narrated by the documentarist or encapsulated in her or his point of view; a surrealist film, like those of Renais Clair and Buñuel, in its lack of coherence, did not fail to narrate the events in the subconscious world. A film without a story is a failure, and it bores the audience. Bresson fails to narrate and is not even abstract or surrealist.
From the middle of the 20th century, some filmmakers, as in Neorealism and the New Wave, moved away from the earlier theatrical artifice toward naturalism in pursuit of greater immediacy in the narrative. Fictional films began to adopt the documentary style, preferring to use the natural light and location, non-professional actors, loose plot construction, casual dialogues, and even a hand-held camera.
Bresson began to adopt some aspects of this style in his works starting with Le journal d’un curé de campagne (1951), the style ventured earlier by Vittorio De Sica in Ladri di biciclette (1945), in which the filmmaker creates a strong sense of the event as it might have happened in the real world familiar to the audience and makes the story more credible even though it is fictional. Bresson’s Le journal endows the images with a strong sense of reality -- of specific time and place; and yet the film feels removed from reality. In most of his films, there is only one protagonist on which the filmmaker’s interest rests. The narrative is thus biographical but only nominally because the scenes are arranged episodically rather than progressively. That is to say, though Le journal is nominally the story of the country priest’s life which starts with his arrival in the remote village and ends with his death, the events in his life, despite the voice-over reading of the diary, are given in haphazard episodes. The film minimizes the story and constructs something that is better described as a portrait.
The non-sequitur selection of episodic events is even more pronounced in Mouchette (1967), his last black-and-white film, in which the sequence of scenes contribute little to any recognizable passage of time; instead, they construct the living portrait of the girl lost in her world she barely comprehends. In both of these films the protagonist dies, as in most of his films, and the ending is not so much the culmination of her or his biographical life but more like a consummation of a life guided by some mysterious power above and beyond reality, comparable to the end of Joan of Arc on the stake after the trial in Le procès de Jeanne d’Arc (1962), nominally an event occurring in real time of the trial but, austerely reduced in action and setting, is characteristically a portrait in contrast to even Dreyer’s rendition of the saint.
In all his films, we can say, that Bresson, endeavors to minimize whatever contributes to the narrative fulfillment in the film, despite his insistence on the realism of the images, which was developed to enhance the realism of the story in Neorealism and the New Wave. For the length of the film our narrative interest is thus suspended, and we wait and wait, bored or intrigued, and the end is death, which somehow gives the meaning, not quite comprehensible to us no less than to the portrayed personage but somehow physically felt as an unforgettable experience, a meaning mysterious, perhaps transcendental, like Joan’s death on the stake, a salvation, in a deeply Catholic way of thinking ingrained in Bresson’s life.
The beings that Bresson captures in his film-portraits engage themselves almost blindly in what they do, docilely or else obsessively, as though guided by some power beyond their comprehension, transcending their activities. A mystery is a mystery because it is not totally comprehensible in a rational way; it reaches above and beyond our everyday experience, beyond what language can express. Mystic writers don’t describe but evoke their experiences, well aware of the limits of the words, and expect the readers to capture the mystery beyond comprehension. Poetry is, in fact, like that when it succeeds brilliantly. So, Bresson tries through his filmed images beyond what the images naturally communicate. He eschews symbolism, however, because his aspiration is not abstract ideas but some concrete experience of the transcendental; for this reason, realism of the images is essential to him. He does not construct a story; he does not replicate our reality; he uses the images of our everyday world to search for a meaning that somehow elevates us. It is not surprising that Bresson’s films demand to be seen repeatedly to be experienced more deeply fully.
In one of the oft-quoted epigrams, Bresson wrote: “A 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, comes to life again like flowers in water.”
For two weeks the Film Forum screened his thirteen films, virtually his total output between 1943 and 1983, some of them for only one showing. I was able to see ten of them one after another, and the experience prompted me to note that the divided reception was a clue to the nature of Bresson’s cinematic art.
Briefly stated, one most conspicuous peculiarity of his films is that, whereas his screen images are uncompromisingly realistic, the film composed of them does not replicate reality credibly. The characters he constructs appear confused or even irrational, and he does not develop them narratively; very little happens in the film though what happens is described with stubborn persistence. So, it bores us, or else intrigues us and keeps us waiting. There is very little story in any of his films, the barest minimum of a plot only as inevitable.
Film for most people is narrative, and historically, with rare exceptions, film has always been narrative. Fiction or non-fiction, a film tells a story with images, dialogues, and narrated words, and actors impersonating characters or real personages acting themselves to develop an event of some interest. A documentary constructs a story as narrated by the documentarist or encapsulated in her or his point of view; a surrealist film, like those of Renais Clair and Buñuel, in its lack of coherence, did not fail to narrate the events in the subconscious world. A film without a story is a failure, and it bores the audience. Bresson fails to narrate and is not even abstract or surrealist.
From the middle of the 20th century, some filmmakers, as in Neorealism and the New Wave, moved away from the earlier theatrical artifice toward naturalism in pursuit of greater immediacy in the narrative. Fictional films began to adopt the documentary style, preferring to use the natural light and location, non-professional actors, loose plot construction, casual dialogues, and even a hand-held camera.
Bresson began to adopt some aspects of this style in his works starting with Le journal d’un curé de campagne (1951), the style ventured earlier by Vittorio De Sica in Ladri di biciclette (1945), in which the filmmaker creates a strong sense of the event as it might have happened in the real world familiar to the audience and makes the story more credible even though it is fictional. Bresson’s Le journal endows the images with a strong sense of reality -- of specific time and place; and yet the film feels removed from reality. In most of his films, there is only one protagonist on which the filmmaker’s interest rests. The narrative is thus biographical but only nominally because the scenes are arranged episodically rather than progressively. That is to say, though Le journal is nominally the story of the country priest’s life which starts with his arrival in the remote village and ends with his death, the events in his life, despite the voice-over reading of the diary, are given in haphazard episodes. The film minimizes the story and constructs something that is better described as a portrait.
The non-sequitur selection of episodic events is even more pronounced in Mouchette (1967), his last black-and-white film, in which the sequence of scenes contribute little to any recognizable passage of time; instead, they construct the living portrait of the girl lost in her world she barely comprehends. In both of these films the protagonist dies, as in most of his films, and the ending is not so much the culmination of her or his biographical life but more like a consummation of a life guided by some mysterious power above and beyond reality, comparable to the end of Joan of Arc on the stake after the trial in Le procès de Jeanne d’Arc (1962), nominally an event occurring in real time of the trial but, austerely reduced in action and setting, is characteristically a portrait in contrast to even Dreyer’s rendition of the saint.
In all his films, we can say, that Bresson, endeavors to minimize whatever contributes to the narrative fulfillment in the film, despite his insistence on the realism of the images, which was developed to enhance the realism of the story in Neorealism and the New Wave. For the length of the film our narrative interest is thus suspended, and we wait and wait, bored or intrigued, and the end is death, which somehow gives the meaning, not quite comprehensible to us no less than to the portrayed personage but somehow physically felt as an unforgettable experience, a meaning mysterious, perhaps transcendental, like Joan’s death on the stake, a salvation, in a deeply Catholic way of thinking ingrained in Bresson’s life.
The beings that Bresson captures in his film-portraits engage themselves almost blindly in what they do, docilely or else obsessively, as though guided by some power beyond their comprehension, transcending their activities. A mystery is a mystery because it is not totally comprehensible in a rational way; it reaches above and beyond our everyday experience, beyond what language can express. Mystic writers don’t describe but evoke their experiences, well aware of the limits of the words, and expect the readers to capture the mystery beyond comprehension. Poetry is, in fact, like that when it succeeds brilliantly. So, Bresson tries through his filmed images beyond what the images naturally communicate. He eschews symbolism, however, because his aspiration is not abstract ideas but some concrete experience of the transcendental; for this reason, realism of the images is essential to him. He does not construct a story; he does not replicate our reality; he uses the images of our everyday world to search for a meaning that somehow elevates us. It is not surprising that Bresson’s films demand to be seen repeatedly to be experienced more deeply fully.
In one of the oft-quoted epigrams, Bresson wrote: “A 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, comes to life again like flowers in water.”
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Marylin Horne Master Class
Last night I attended Marilyn Horne’s Master Class in public performance at Carnegie’s Weill Recital Hall. Four singers sang for her: mezzosoprano Tynan Davis (Bizet, Adieux de lhôtesse arabe), countertenor Tai Oney (Purcell, Sweeter than roses), soprano Laura Strickling (Mahler, Am Grabe Anselmos), and baritone Jonathan Estabrooks (Mahler, Die zwei blauen Augen). Horne was kind and witty but incisive and illuminating. The singers all had nice voice and sang beautifully enough but not very expressively; and Horne’s coaching consisted, for all of them, of understanding the words of the lyric, conjuring up images they evoked, and varying the rhythm and pacing but, especially, the color of the voice in order to create drama. The performance was very instructive for the audience, too; it made the songs memorable. The lesson also confirmed my long-standing notion that Lieder are miniature operas.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Winter haiku
Days are longer but
ominous is the shadow
of the winter bush
日が延びて
いまだあやしい
木陰かな
A woman wrapped in fur
hurls a fir tree at curbside
a frosty morning
霜の朝
ツリー投げ捨てる
毛皮女史
Wind chlll at zero
waiting is so much longer
standing for the bus.
零下の夜
バス待つ時間の
長いこと
December closes
art in the museums drowns in
the sea of shoulders
肩の波に
絵画溺れる
晦日かな
Furs on Madison
suddenly in December
the first freezing day.
突然の
厳寒に毛皮
マディソン街
ominous is the shadow
of the winter bush
日が延びて
いまだあやしい
木陰かな
A woman wrapped in fur
hurls a fir tree at curbside
a frosty morning
霜の朝
ツリー投げ捨てる
毛皮女史
Wind chlll at zero
waiting is so much longer
standing for the bus.
零下の夜
バス待つ時間の
長いこと
December closes
art in the museums drowns in
the sea of shoulders
肩の波に
絵画溺れる
晦日かな
Furs on Madison
suddenly in December
the first freezing day.
突然の
厳寒に毛皮
マディソン街
Friday, January 6, 2012
Rome's Epiphany
It’s Epiphany today. In Roman dialect it is Befana, and since children in Italy traditionally receive presents on this day, the day when the Magi brought gift to Christ Child, toy markets fill up the Piazza Navona -- the Roman slur of Platea Agonis as the elongated course was originally built for a foot race, called agones, the source of the word agony referring to the rigor of the contest. Bernini’s Four Rivers Fountain marks its center with the obelisk mounted with the papal coat-of-arms and the dove of the Pamphili family, whose church with Borromini’s facade is called Sant’ Agnese in Agone. The piazza also gets filled with the drones of the zampogna, a variety of bag pipe, played by the farmers who come down from Abruzzo for the festivities -- agonizing to the merchants who are there all day and late into night.
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