Activity

In each case Bresson’s protagonists respond to a special call which has no natural place in their environment. It is incredible that Joan the prisoner should act in such a manner before a panel of judges: nothing in the everyday has prepared the viewer for Joan’s spiritual, self-mortifying actions.…

After an unsuccessful catechism class the priest enters in his diary, “But why the hostility of these little ones. What have I done to them?”

When the same thing starts happening two or three times concurrently the viewer knows he is beyond simple day-to-day realism and into the peculiar realism of Robert Bresson. The doubling does not double the viewer’s knowledge or emotional reaction; it only doubles his perception of the event. Conse…

Through the use of repeated action and pleonastic dialogue Bresson “doubles” (or even “triples”) the action, making a single event happen several times in different ways.

In the everyday Bresson uses contrapuntal sound not for editorializing, but to reinforce the cold reality. The soundtrack consists primarily of natural sounds: wheels creaking, birds chirping, wind howling.