The return of the traveling Robert Bresson retrospective to New York is most welcome. The touring series, which began at Film Forum in January and played several other cities (including Chicago, where my cinephile friend Dan caught
The Devil, Probably at my urging), is now comfortably ensconced at the less crowded BAM Cinematek in Brooklyn. At last night's screening of
Mouchette I was particularly focused on Bresson's extraordinary sound design. The climactic suicide scene gains much of its tragic power from the alternation of the sound of nearby gunshots with an eerie church bell that periodically rings in the distance.
After the film I bought James Quandt's revised, 700-page edition of
Robert Bresson at the concession stand, trying not to get greasy popcorn butter on the cover. The first piece I read in the book is a wonderful photo-essay by Mark Rappaport which discusses the homoeroticism of
Pickpocket and compares it to other films of the period like
The Wrong Man and
The Killing. Will I get sick of reading about Bresson after 700 pages? I think he is one filmmaker whose work remains inexhaustible.
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