Rembrandt was not alone in the Dutch Golden Age in depicting the landscape with fidelity to observed detail while at the same time imbuing it with the pervasive presence of the numinous
A comparison between Dreyer’s and Bresson’s Joan of Arc films is not only convenient but also fruitful, explicitly establishing their different attitudes toward hagiography.
Individual influence was, of course, discernible, but not peremptory; artists came and went, Byzantine iconography stayed.
Intertwined with the abjuration of the body in Bresson’s films is the vexing problem of suicide: If the body enslaves the soul, why not destroy the body and be free?
To some of Bresson’s critics, both admirers and detractors, he is not only the consummate stylist but also the consummate oddball: morbid, hermetic, eccentric, obsessed with theological dilemmas in an age of social action.
