Just a slip of the tongue, I suppose?zedz wrote:some flaw ... perhaps a merry, quacking duck
-Toilet Dcuk
I find it a very odd moment in Bresson, who rarely allows artifice to intrude upon (or punctuate) an introspective moment. The emotional hallmark of Bresson-- along with others of his stylistic ilk, i e talkie era Dreyer, Melville, Tarkovsky, etc-- is to present a moment in it's fudnamental, uncorrupted purity, and allow it to speak for itself without "all the trimmings". This is the absolute opposite of say, silent Eisenstein, whereby to bring out dynamism or some fundamental idea lurking within the subtext inherent in image/cumulative narrative, the director employs visibly unnatural effects, via editing, camera movement, exaggerated pictorial composition, etc. A self conscious device like looping breaks the "contemplative" state of the viewer, because the film begins therein to call attention to itself As A Film.. we cease contemplating the contents of the world presented to us, and we notice the Ways & Means... once the attention has been diverted, the cumulative effect of these meditative spells become broken.zedz wrote:Also, we should bear in mind that the 'looping' may not have been an effect planned in the shooting, but a 'solution' found in the editing. Maybe Bresson found that the shot he'd made of the splash was not long enough to serve his purposes, or perhaps there was some flaw in the shot that made it unusable in its complete form (perhaps a merry, quacking duck floated by halfway through). I also think that there's a strong possibility that the 'trick' was much less visible to original audiences than it is to modern, effects-conscious viewers.
I agree that this is significant--it's actually the third in a tradition of "disappearing deaths" in Bresson's work, following Diary of a Country Priest and The Trial of Joan of Arc.Steven H wrote:I've always thought it was very interesting that we never see see her actually enter the water, it's instead only inferred.
Funny. I just watched a portion of Olivier's Hamlet on TCM the other day and he loops the film in the same way in the same scene.Doug Cummings wrote:I'm certain the looping was intended simply to lengthen the scene, which puts it in the same company as Kozintsev's beautiful shot of Ophelia beneath the waters in Hamlet; it, too, is a long shot that begins offshore and pans to her submerged body...but the water ripples are moving in reverse!
Balthazar also has a "disappearing death"- as the final shot fades out, Balthazar is still breathing. I think it's a matter of Bresson's dislike of artifice (believing it to be something film inherited from theater, and something that needed to be shed for film to stand on its own as an art form). Since the moment of actual death is something he'd have to get the actor/actress/animal to simulate, Bresson must have been unwilling to show the main characters' deaths in these movies. (Which makes the opening of Lancelot du lac something of a departure, as it opens with several killings. The men do die behind helmets, though, so we don't actually see THEM at the moment of death. There are a lot of practical special effects in the scene, but Bresson used practical FX in Balthazar as well, just less obviously.)Doug Cummings wrote:I agree that this is significant--it's actually the third in a tradition of "disappearing deaths" in Bresson's work, following Diary of a Country Priest and The Trial of Joan of Arc.
Here's all seven pages of it for your enjoyment.Don Lope de Aguirre wrote:It'd be an interesting discussion.
That's true, although I was referring more on his focus on "empty spaces": an iconic cross, a charred stake, a riverbank, etc. Balthazar is still in the final shot of Balthazar.solaris72 wrote:I agree that this is Balthazar also has a "disappearing death"- as the final shot fades out, Balthazar is still breathing.
Actually, I remember reading that thread and vowing not to get involved in the cat fight!Matt wrote:Here's all seven pages of it for your enjoyment.
That's a very valid criticism, and certainly one that applies to a lot of Bresson's later films (the exploitation charge, I mean).Dr. Geek wrote:Bresson reserves his greatest opportunity to shame Mouchette until the end of the film. She attempts suicide . . . and fails. Not once, but twice. Is she such a pathetic figure that she cannot even kill herself? The film felt like mere exploitation, punishing Mouchette simply for the sake of punishment, lacking the insightfulness shared by Diary of a Country Priest and Pickpocket.
It is a bit funny that Mouchette has such an enormous reputation (that is, as being one of Bresson's best). Every Bresson fan I know, myself included, thinks of it at worst as a plain bad film, at best as a troubled one. A Gentle Woman is a far more graceful treatment in a similar territory, definitely. But lately I find myself more interested in Bresson's flawed films (this, Lancelot, Devil, Probably) than his best films, if for no other reason than that a troubled film is sometimes more food for thought than a perfectly executed film, and because they present some kind of exception to an iron-clad rule in Bresson's short, nigh invincible and uniform body of work.HerrSchreck wrote:I firmly believe if Bresson hadn't made this film, it'd be in a virtually impregnable position in a Worst French Films of the 1960's (if not all time) list. Gracious me. Bresson's technique reminds me of that drug Michael Jackson was fooling around with and died from: doctors were aghast to learn the stuff was being goofed with outside of hospital settings since the difference between a perfected heavenly state and instant death is like 1 / 1000th of a speck. Balthazaar Pickpocket Gentle Woman are perfection... a touch overboard in Mouchette and >flump<.
Damn. Last time I rely on vague and arbitrary anecdotal information to build a consensus.domino harvey wrote:I am a Bresson fan and I also love the film. The hypothesis needs reworking