Une Femme Douce
The Trial of Joan of Arc
Pickpocket
L'Argent
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.
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