Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
d. Robert Bresson, 1945
Robert Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne comes at an interesting point in the director's career. It was only his second film and the style we have now come to know as Bressonian was not yet fully developed. Made in 1945, it comes six years before Diary of a Country Priest, a more "Bressonian" study. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, however, is an interesting film on its own right. It tells of the efforts of a conniving woman, Helene (Maria Casares), to set up her ex-lover, Jean (Paul Bernard), with a prostitute. Even its premise it sounds more radical than Bresson's later efforts, and this film resembles something like David Lean's Brief Encounter more than, say, Au hasard Balthazar. Bresson, the master filmmaker, begins here.
