The Cinematheque

“A masterpiece. It remains the greatest achievement of its decade in France.”

P. Adams Sitney

Bresson’s second feature is ​“a landmark in cinema history … Its influence on subsequent French cinema is far from exhausted” (David Thomson). Made in collaboration with Jean Cocteau, who wrote the dialogue, and deriving much of its dramatic tension from the counterpoint between Cocteau’s dense, ornate words and Bresson’s natural austerity, Les dames du Bois de Boulogne features Maria Casarès (Cocteau’s Princess of Death in Orphée) in her first starring role. She gives a piercing performance as a jilted woman who takes revenge on her ex-lover by luring him into marriage with a sex worker. The story is freely adapted from an episode in Diderot’s 18th-century classic Jacques the Fatalist and given a lush, contemporary, Cocteau-like setting filled with flowers, furs, jewels, and shiny automobiles. Antonioni, among others, cited the film as a major influence. Although he received stellar performances here, Bresson would never again work with professional actors.

In French with English subtitles

Restored DCP courtesy of TF1

“Sexuality takes precedence over salvation, but there is the same interiority, the same intensity, the same rigorous exclusion of all inessentials.”

Tom Milne, Time Out