The Hands of Robert Bresson

 Une Femme Douce

 The Trial of Joan of Arc

Pickpocket

L'Argent

A Man Escaped

In trying to find something new to say about the films of Robert Bresson, I decided to focus on one particular aspect of his films, the constant recurrence of images of hands. Whether in isolated closeups, covering faces, picking pockets, crossed in submission and handcuffed (the final sublime shot of Les Anges du Péché is the first of several such images in Bresson's work), or grasping objects, the hands of Bresson's characters are used to represent powerful emotions that are not conveyed through conventional acting styles of vocal inflection and facial expression, which he basically abandoned after Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (below).

An awareness of Bresson's complex editing of sounds and images is essential in trying to understand and appreciate his films. I'm still trying after nearly 40 years of watching them. One might say the devil is in the details, probablement.

First Look

Almayer's Folly

That Summer

 Life Without Principle

Buenas Noches, España

I have some catching up to do as there is an exhaustingly rich selection of new and repertory films available to see this January in New York. Besides the subject of this post, there is the near-complete Robert Bresson retrospective at Film Forum (which I hope to cover soon), a mini-Raj Kapoor series at MoMA (a filmmaker completely new to me), and some new releases such as Tran Anh Hung's Norwegian Wood and Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin, all in just the first two weeks. This will involve some creative subway shuttling and schedule juggling to try to keep up.

Museum of the Moving Image's great roundup of recent festival films, entitled First Look and curated by the museum's Dennis Lim, Rachael Rakes and David Schwartz, is bookended with personal appearances  by Chantal Akerman with Almayer's Folly and Raya Martin with Buenas Noches, España and two short films. Other films in the series that sound especially worthwhile include Johnnie To's Life Without Principle, Philippe Garrel's That Summer (Un été brûlant), Andrei Zviyagintsev's Elena, Mark Jackson's Without, and a new short by João Rui Guerra da Mata and João Pedro Rodrigues (director of the great To Die Like a Man). If time permits I will try to see even more of the 13 programs crammed into two weekends at MOMI.