Trial of Joan of Arc (1962)

Trial of Joan of Arc (Robert Bresson, 1962)
French Title: Procès de Jeanne d'Arc

Robert Bresson's Trial of Joan of Arc opens with robed steps scurrying towards a ranking church official. We never get a sense as to who exactly are these people until the central figure speaks; declaring that her daughter has lived a religious past and has been convicted and burned for false crimes. She reads her declaration from a scroll of parchment, and we can guess that the speaker is the mother of Joan of Arc. Drums interrupt the declaration, and as the opening credits are shown on screen, the image of the kneeling robed figure presumably still reading from the parchment persists. We learn from Bresson's introductory statement that the opening sequence is from the rehabilitation which took place 25 years after Joan's burning. More importantly, we also learn that no portrait or image remains of Joan, and that the film is completely reconstructed from the minutes of Joan's trial.

We first see the menacled hands of Joan (Florence Delay), atop the bible. The film is predominantly just a series of exchanges between Joan and her inquisitors, the Bishop Cauchon (Jean-Claude Fourneau) --- with Joan recitingly dictating her answers to her judges' interrogations. Whenever she's not in the trial, we see her in her cell; her hands are free but her foot bounded with metal chains. Moreover, there's a peeping hole in the cell where Joan's English guards consistently make remarks on their prisoner's disposition.

The atmosphere is claustrophobic --- when in trial, Joan is always surrouded by the heads of clergymen while being led by the Anglophile bishop to reveal relationships with witchcraft. Even more so while she's in the cell wherein walls of heavy stone (the film was shot in the exact prison where Joan was detained) surround her, and privacy and even remnants of her feminine dignity are being encroached. She claims that her martyrdom is her imprisonment, definitely unaware that her burning has been pre-destined by her English captors.

France is captured by England. The bishops are being controlled by their English-speaking masters. Joan is physically, mentally and psychologically restrained by both her captors and the voices that dwell inside her head. Bresson explicitly explores the struggle for release, for that philosophical freedom, by tackling the enigma of Joan of Arc. Imperatively, he doesn't allow much creative freedom from his actors, restricting their dialogues as to what has been transcribed from the historical trials. There's a feeling that the actors are merely reading their lines (the same way that the mother is reading from the parchment what she thought of was her daughter's life), restricted from enunciation or emotions. Like the characters they are portraying and Bresson is depicting, the methodology is quite restrictive to what is historically preserved from the life of Joan. It's uncomfortably straightforward, spartan in method, and rarely punctuated with humanity (we do see Joan cry, but it is probably due to Bresson's understanding that the lass is merely nineteen and is burdened with a spiritual duty).

From the narrative sparseness and the thematic intensity, Bresson develops a journey from corporeal imprisonment to freedom. There's a curious preoccupation with steps and footwork. Bresson's camera focuses a number of times on the feet of his characters; as if proclaiming our body's gravitational attraction with the Earth. That theme predominantly surfaces in Joan's trial --- the unsurprising uncomplementary nature of spiritual redemption and human politics (bureaucracy, justice, punishment). Bresson again captures Joan's bare feet finally lightfootedly walking towards the stake --- it's quite an unusual walk; it seems that she's scurrying or floating against the cement road; even an onlookers attempt to make her trip is met with failure as she continues her hurried steps.

We first see the free sky (a refreshing scene) when Joan is tied to the stake. While she burns, she says her last words --- that her voices did not deceive her (she begins to understand that she was meant to escape all corporeal imprisonment, not imprisonment dictated by the terms of human relations). When she breathes her last sigh, Bresson cuts to doves atop the canvas that separates the bishops from the sky, then again cuts to the stake with only ashes as remnants of Joan's body-bound self. It's quite a touching depiction of spiritual release.

Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971)

Four Nights of a Dreamer (Robert Bresson, 1971)
French Title: Quatre nuits d'un rêveur

After tackling Dostoyevsky with A Gentle Woman (1969), Robert Bresson follows it up with another adaptation of the Russian writer's work. Four Nights of a Dreamer has less of A Gentle Woman's mortal themes and dire scenarios, and instead Bresson creates his sarcastic, ironic romantic comedy (well, it's certainly not your typical comedy but the film is indeed funny). The plot is spread throughout four nights, as the title suggests, wherein a man finds and loses love.

The man is Jacques (Guillaume des Forêts), a painter who seems to have trouble finding love. He admits that he is never in love with women, but to an ideal woman. At one scene, he glances on a beautiful girl shopping and as she walks past, decides to stalk her until another beautiful woman passes his fancy, for which he changes targets. Jacques is definitely a dreamer and lives in a fantasy he has created for himself, and hasn't quite perfected. His loft is riddled with unfinished paintings, and whenever a visitor arrives, he hides them. It's as if Jacques is always trapped in a perpetual search for perfection and even in his art, he can't really achieve --- very similar to the way he discards a romantic attraction when another beautiful woman passes by. Being a dreamer, a person in an everlasting search for an unattainable ideal, Jacques ultimately is never in love. He finds the girl she is stalking to an older individual, and upon arriving home, he voice records a perfect scenario wherein that girls decides to just suddenly elope with him. He plays the recorded scenario over and over while he paints, capsulating him inside a dream that he has created himself.

One night, Jacques saves Marthe (Isabelle Weingarten) from suicide. Marthe is the exact opposite of Jacques, a woman who is bored to her wits and forces herself to fall in love with her mother's boarder (Maurice Monnoyer) just to get away. She is a dreamer herself as when the boarder moves to America, promising her that upon his return they'll get married, she wraps her entire existence on that dream that when she hears news that the boarder finally returned and she never got a word from him, she decides to just commit suicide. Yet unlike Jacques who insists on ideals, Marthe is grounded on reality and knows the hierarchy of life and fantasy.

It's an entirely humorous proposition by Bresson that Jacques falls in love with Marthe, who remains in love with her lover. Bresson interrupts possible moments of romance with what is typically suited for such scenes. One night wherein Jacques would finally uncover his love for Marthe, a cruise ship passes by and the sound of Brazilian musicians singing a lovers' tune would interrupt his endeavor. Every night, Bresson plays a cruel joke against the male dreamer and climaxes his clever satire when Jacques finally gets what he wants.

Jacques and Marthe walk as a couple when the boarder shows up, and calls Marthe. Typically, the sacrifices Jacques has already made would ensure Marthe's changed loyalties, but Bresson, in an ingenious attack against romanticism and lovers' dreams, insists on the illogical. Marthe walks towards the boarder and gives him a torrid kiss, returns to Jacques and pecks him a number of times and in a twist of human unpredictability, returns to boarder and walks away with him. Jacques is left a dreamer in search for that perfect ideal that may never arrive.

A Gentle Woman (1969)

A Gentle Woman (Robert Bresson, 1969)
French Title: Une femme douce

Adapted from Dostoyevsky's short story, A Gentle Woman, Robert Bresson's first feature film in color, is as elusive as the title character's intentions. The film opens with the woman's suicide by jumping off her apartment. It's a suicide scene that is uncharacteristically filmed --- a sudden noise from the balcony erupts the serenely lighted apartment room, Bresson then cuts to the exterior, the woman lands violently while her white scarf floats in what may seem like a peaceful release. The rest of the film evokes the total opposite of the suicide: dark, trapped, and suffocating.

Dominique Sanda plays the woman. Her skin is pale and her gentle facial features resemble an delicate marble statue, worthy of admiration and idolatry. A pawnbroker (Guy Frangin) does exactly that. When she was living, the pawnbroker takes an attraction upon first sight. Impoverished, the woman pawns her crucifix. The pawnbroker takes the golden cross and offers back the statue of Christ, and paying the woman more money than what the golden cross is worth. Unaffected by the pawnbroker's expectant generosity, the woman gives back the excess of what the golden cross is worth. Undaunted, the pawnbroker offers something more: a life of happiness where the poverty she has lived through will never happen again. The two marry and try to live off a loveless relationship. Outwardly normal, the two challenge each other in bouts of jealousy and struggles for control.

Even at death, the woman is subject of adoration. The pawnbroker recalling their relationship to his elderly maid Anna (Jeanne Lobre) surrounds the body of the woman in pious reverence. The pawnbroker walks around the still beautiful corpse, trying to objectively determine the cause for the woman's emotional demise. He does point out several instances where an obvious emotional void is present --- the woman purposely puts herself in a position wherein the pawnbroker would catch her and consume himself of an unbated jealousy. Yet there are no outward signs of hatred or marital discord. Everything is shown in quiet touches and gestures that dictate a deeply rooted source of marital dysfunction.

It's a questionable salvation, the woman's suicide. But in Bresson's mind, it perhaps may be a valid release from the earthly pains of a loveless relationship. One may argue that a more rational resolution for the woman's dissatisfaction is a legal divorce or an informal separation. In my opinion, the release or salvation that is sought here should elicit permanence. In Bresson's claustrophobic portrayal of a dead end relationship where the beginning is already met with a misunderstanding of the primaries of a smooth marital relationship, the woman's choice of release seems appropriately (although questionable in terms of morality and social acceptability) realized. The woman's face upon death evokes a quiet peace that cannot be found when she was living. During her lifetime, her eyes contain a fiery and purposeful force that antagonizes her gentle outwardly ways. In her death, she is truly an immobile idol, her soul released from an earthly prison that is also imprisoned in a marriage that is unevenly invoked. The pawnbroker pleads for the woman to open her eyes for at least a second, praying to the idol for a momentary miracle that can never happen. Why succumb to a second of human conflict when the soul has already reached pacification?