This is my first Robert Bresson film and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. The film reminded me more of the films that came after it like Christopher Nolan’s FOLLOWING and the works of Jean Pierre Melville’s films in the 1960s. Bresson loves Russian literature, that’s easy to see, and this feels like it was ripped from a novella by Tolstoy or Dostoevsky. It’s almost as if he took the density of Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries and streamlined it into a quiet, simple film. His camera work feels very inspired by Italian Neorealism, and that realistic quality is what works in this films favor. The Gare de Lyon sequence pickpocket is the best part of the film, is so expertly choreographed, and edited. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work with the film, but it fits it so perfectly and makes the film so much more engaging. Martin LaSalle’s face is so great for this character and his performance, specifically as a non-actor, is pretty great. I also loved Marika Green in this and I really want to explore more of her work. The narration is also fantastic.
