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ambiguity fundamental to the film. As the voice- over recounts the vision, the screen goes dark, to be followed by a close-up of Séraphita wiping the priest’s face. ‘In the novel, the face of God precedes the encounter with Séraphita; in the film, it seems to me that we are invited to identify the two, that the “face before which all must kneel” is quite literally Séraphita’s’ (Reader, 1990 : 144). The question whether the vision
4 The banlieue in French cinema of the 1930s Keith Reader La banlieue est multiple. Le film de banlieue ne constitue pas un genre. Il n’a ni règles, ni codes. Il se définit par un décor, un climat, c’est un cinéma de situations.1 (Narvalo 1981: 3) The above was written, in a magazine published by the Maison Populaire de Montreuil, well before the cinéma de banlieue symptomatised by La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) emerged as a genre in its own right. Films de banlieue, indeed, have a history almost as long as that of cinema itself, as Annie Fourcaut notes in
dismisses all not relevant to its purpose. ‘The director behind the camera, like the analyst behind the couch, can readily be likened to God – superficially absent but everywhere implicit in the world (the film, the discourse) he creates’ (Reader 1998 : 439). Michel’s journal and commentary in this light represent the film’s ‘truth’ metonymically, as part of its workings, rather than standing in a metaphoric or transcendental
, Mikhail ( 1994 ), ‘Carnival Ambivalence: Laughter, Praise and Abuse’ , in Pam Morris (ed.), The Bakhtin Reader , London and New York , Arnold . Ehrenstein , David ( 1996 ), ‘Bresson et Cukor: histoire d’une correspondance’ , Positif , no. 430 . Gracq , Julien ( 1997 ), ‘Lancelot du lac’ , in Robert Bresson: Éloge , Milan and Paris , Mazzotta/Cinémathèque française . Pruitt , John
storm from which she takes refuge as a ‘cyclone’ – a term at once childlike in its repetition of the term used by Arsène and adult in its implicit awareness that in the context in which he has used it has a metaphorical significance, indicating ‘her nascent awareness of the world of psychic disorder’ (Reader 1998 : 441). Second, the use of the Monteverdi Magnificat at the beginning and end – the last occurrence of non
Lacanian discourse has a complex and multiplies determined relationship with Catholicism, and Robert Bresson has the reputation of being the cinema's greatest Catholic director. Few Catholic artists, however, have found the institutional life of 'their' Church a congenial or inspirational topic, and its declining importance in Bresson's later work is not of itself particularly surprising. Pascal's wager on the existence of God has what contemporary linguistics might call a performative effect, for it is only thanks to the wager that God's existence becomes certain and available to the believer. Bresson's first film, Affaires publiques, is in many ways as unBressonian a work as could be imagined. Bresson from Journal onwards works to all intents and purposes outside genre, with the exception of those parts of Pickpocket and the inserts in Le Diable probablement that are close to the documentary. In 1947, Bresson went to Rome to work on a screenplay of the life of St Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, which was never to be filmed. Un Condamné à mort s'est échappé, released in 1956, was and remains Bresson's most commercially successful and critically best-received film, though curiously for a very long time it was unavailable in Britain. Bresson's next two films, his first in colour, are also his first true adaptations from Dostoevsky. Bresson's final film, shot in the summer of 1982 and released in 1983, brought to an end the longest gap in his work since that separating Journal from Les Dames, more than thirty years before.
Robert Bresson's first film, Affaires publiques, is in many ways as unBressonian a work as could be imagined. Jean Sémolué describes Les Anges du péché as 'Bresson avant Bresson. Mais c'est aussi déjà Bresson'. Les Anges du péché contains a number of elements from the world of more conventional cinema that were to become progressively rarer in Bresson's work. Les Anges du péché is set in a convent run by the Sisters of Bethany, a Dominican order founded in 1867 to welcome women newly released from prison. Bresson from Journal onwards works to all intents and purposes outside genre, with the exception of those parts of Pickpocket and the inserts in Le Diable probablement that are close to the documentary. The country priest, Michel in Pickpocket, Jacques in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne all display evident masochistic qualities.
Robert Bresson's refusal, from Journal onwards, of professional actors is of a piece with his rejection of psychology and character. Lacanian discourse has a complex and multiply determined relationship with Catholicism, and Bresson has the reputation of being the cinema's greatest Catholic director. If two of Bresson's first three feature films, Les Anges du péché and Journal, take the religious life as their setting, that life, like the God that is its ostensible inspiration, subsequently dwindles to near-invisibility. Few Catholic artists, however, have found the institutional life of 'their' Church a congenial or inspirational topic, and its declining importance in Bresson's later work is not of itself particularly surprising. Pascal's wager on the existence of God has what contemporary linguistics might call a performative effect, for it is only thanks to the wager that God's existence becomes certain and available to the believer.