Director Bresson is sometimes ecclipsed by Godard and Truffaut (not to mention Balthazar) whereas the author Diderot, whose story Bresson here interprets, was himself often ecclipsed by fellow philosophes terribles Voltaire and Rousseau. Diderot deserves to be better known. He wrote the encyclopedia on, well, encyclopedias, and he deserves more filmic attention as a master of the dialogue form. Bresson meanwhile showed an underappreciated talent for turning those detailed exigences of the everyday so dear to new-wavers to exciting genre use, as for example in the thrill of the minimal in Man Escaped, or Pickpocket.
Blown smoke and spilled ice render the slap in Dames all the more affective. Through a pane in the door the pearls in a dark hood see only what we want to see of the sad scene. These details are of a completely different transcendent order from Dreyer's world of the Word and Ozu's view from the tatami. The sight or Bresson's bride splayed on the floor has something of the strange sea creature to it, but is as heartbreaking in its way as any dame aux camelias.
This film offers a trifecta, a best of France tout-en-un, with script by Jean Cocteau, whose Orpheus has more of the otherworldy than Camus' in Brazil. Truly they don't make 'em like that anymore. Those aren't ladies in the latter day western woods of Paris!
Blown smoke and spilled ice render the slap in Dames all the more affective. Through a pane in the door the pearls in a dark hood see only what we want to see of the sad scene. These details are of a completely different transcendent order from Dreyer's world of the Word and Ozu's view from the tatami. The sight or Bresson's bride splayed on the floor has something of the strange sea creature to it, but is as heartbreaking in its way as any dame aux camelias.
This film offers a trifecta, a best of France tout-en-un, with script by Jean Cocteau, whose Orpheus has more of the otherworldy than Camus' in Brazil. Truly they don't make 'em like that anymore. Those aren't ladies in the latter day western woods of Paris!
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