Bresson two

This to notice the second of our two Bresson films, this one 'Au Hasard Balthazar', a rather tragic tale built around the rather rough life of a donkey in post-war small-town France, somewhere near a hilly frontier. Said by the NYRB article which pushed me down the Bresson road to be one of the best 100 films ever made, up there with 'Battleship Potemkin' and 'The Great Dictator'.

And it was indeed a very good film. And although it was all a bit disconnected and incomplete, with plenty of stuff left hanging, there was quite enough story to hang on to - unlike in the Lancelot film where the story was a bit thin. Enough to reduce our dependence on the French subtitles - enough to make the absence of much dialogue at all unimportant. It probably helped being set in the recent past at the time that it was made: very hard to be convincing with ancient history. We have every intention of watching it again and we shall see how long it takes us to get around to it...

Good performances from the two young leads: Anne Wiazemsky as the shy Marie and the François Lafarge as the awful Gérard. Although not so awful really - we have plenty of Gérards over here.

Effective use of a few bars from the slow movement Schubert's D959 piano sonata. As with something similar in an episode of Morse, surprised on checking how few bars it was. That is to say 'Second Time Around', in which, from time to time, we hear a few bars from 'Senza Mamma' from 'Suor Angelica' by Giacomo Puccini.

We wondered whether some of the scenes of cruelty to animals would be permitted now. Would the portrayal of such be immoral or illegal, whether or not a real donkey was involved? Given that I dare say that with time and money one could manage without these days?

This time around, a Polish poster for the film, rather than an Italian one.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/bresson-one.html.