The Devil, Probably

My first experience with Robert Bresson’s work was disastrous. I had recently developed a taste for auteur cinema, and I was open to all kinds of approaches to film, but I found _Diary of a Country Priest_ (1951) to be as appealing as a plate of plain spaghetti. I watched the entire film, but at moments I caught myself staring at the clock below the screen. It took _L’Argent_ (1983), Bresson’s last film, for me to realize that I had been unfair with the filmmaker. I found this film to be so engrossing and rich, there simply had to be more to Bresson than I had thought initially. _Pickpocket_ (1959) and _Au Hasard Balthazar_ (1966) reaffirmed this belief. I now consider myself to be a Bresson fan, and if I had the opportunity to make a film, I would definitely apply many of his techniques in the process.I have seen ten of Bresson’s thirteen films. I’m missing _Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne_ (1945), _The Trial of Joan of Arc_ (1962), and _Lancelot of the Lake_ (1974). I find it useful to speak of two phases in his oeuvre: the black and white phase and the color phase. This may be a facile categorization, but it works for me. Bresson’s color films are in many ways just as austere as his black and white films, but the mere addition of color represents a big change. Another element of the color phase has to do with the sources of the material. Three of his five color films are based on stories from Russian literature, and _The Devil, Probably_ might be read as an exploration of Dostoevskian themes. (That leaves the eccentric _Lancelot of the Lake_ in the middle.) Considering the sources, it is hardly surprising that these films deal primarily with existential despair. When viewing these films, a familiarity with Søren Kierkegaard’s ideas is a plus._A Gentle Creature_ (1969) and _Four Nights of a Dreamer_ (1971) relocate Dostoevsky characters to contemporary urban France. (This is not a problem; Dostoevsky’s characters inhabit their own world, a world that transcends geography.) _The Devil, Probably_ takes place in the same location and in the same state of mind/soul. We follow Charles (Antoine Monnier) and his friends, who look for a purpose in life as they witness the deterioration of the environment. Religion, activism, sex, psychoanalysis, drugs: nothing seems to fill the void. The film begins with two newspaper reports on Charles’ death (talk about a spoiler, but Bresson fans understand): the first one saying that he committed suicide, and the second one stating that the death was in fact a murder. Charles contemplates suicide throughout the film. Albert Camus, we should remember, considered suicide to be “the only serious philosophical problem,” as “deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy.” _The Devil, Probably_ is a perfect illustration of that existential concept.Charles and his friends feel powerless in the face of environmental decay. They watch films depicting the effects of pollution, the spraying of pesticides, deforestation, the dumping of chemicals in the ocean, the beating of white seals with clubs. I was reminded of Philip Ettinger’s character in _First Reformed_ (2017), which is not surprising, as director Paul Schrader admires Bresson and wrote about him in his classic study _Transcendental Style in Film_ (1972). Kierkegaard spoke of despair as “the sickness unto death,” and Bresson depicts the (il)logical results of this state of mind without prescribing cures. The filmmaker is concerned with portraying a state that characterizes a large portion of contemporary youth. Charles speaks of “the pleasure of despair” during his talk with the therapist. He does not want to be useful, he says. He is, in other words, rebelling against the pragmatism that considers everything a means to an end, a resource that must be exploited until nothing more can be gotten out of it. It is pragmatism, the idea of progress, and growth mentality that lead to the ecological disasters we are shown during the first minutes of the film.“When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything’s a nail:” this is pragmatist philosophy in a nutshell. Human beings themselves have become tools. Look out for shots that mutilate the human body, something that Bresson is famous for. Shots that show only hands, for instance, as people have been reduced to the activities they carry out. Many shots in this film also “decapitate” the characters, because they are living in “a world without a head.” After _The Devil, Probably_, _L’Argent_ was the next logical step for Bresson: a film in which the true protagonist is money itself. This is what the world becomes after one does away with ideals.There is, as you probably know, no acting in Bresson’s films. (_Angels of Sin_ is an exception.) To say of a Bresson film that “the acting is great” is almost an insult to this filmmaker. He always worked with unknown performers. (_Au Hasard Balthazar_ and _A Gentle Creature_ marked the film debuts of Anne Wiazemski and Dominique Sanda, respectively.) His approach to performance will infuriate many; I guess this is the test when it comes to deciding whether you’re a Bresson fan or not. When asked about mise en scène during an interview, Bresson simply replied, “There is no mise en scène,” and moved on to the next question. I find the result refreshing. Should all films be like this? Probably not. It takes all sorts to make cinema.New to Bresson? Start with _Au Hasard Balthazar_ and continue with _L’Argent_. After these, you should be ready for any of the others. An excellent film, _The Devil, Probably_ is not one of Bresson's masterpieces; hence the four stars.The Olive Films DVD edition of _The Devil, Probably_ does not include any extras. The English subtitles, furthermore, are not optional. These issues notwithstanding, I was happy to find a copy of this film.Next on my list, by Bresson: _Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne_, or anything else I can find.Thanks for reading, and enjoy the film!

Though I hesitate to use the archaic language of religion, on some level I saw Charles (this film's protagonist) as the spirit sputtering and fading in inhospitable times. Through him we see a spirit which is loosened from its moorings and exploring. He looks into the possibility of finding a way to live which includes retaining his integrity, but the world will not let him do both and deep down Charles seems to know what the outcome of his search will be before it reaches its conclusion. He is keeping half an eye out for something that is worth his attention and his time - for something that he can invest himself in, for something that will make his life worth living. He encounters and half heartedly engages with, political activism, spirituality and love. The dialogue that revolves around all of these is somewhat insipid and hollow and I felt as distant and as bored as he seemed to while watching much of the film. It's as though the world in which he attempts to live is a lake polluted by waste burbling out of the pipes of industry, and he simply can't stomach diving into it. So he skirts around the edges of his life vainly seeking fresh water.Though 'The Devil, Probably' deals with ecological themes, I felt that the real pollution here was to be found in what people were saying. Language swirls through this film like mustard gas. Whether it came from the mouths of the members of a Marxist political group, who Charlie dismisses as idiots. Or the pages of a 'lifestyle' magazine which seems to map out a future for him that he detests. Or from his mathematics college lecturers who are smart enough to understand nuclear physics but allow there efforts to fall into the hands of people who will use them to build ever more spectacular ways of blowing people up. Or members of the clergy who listlessly go through the motions of promoting a God who even they don't seem to believe in anymore. Or from Charles himself, who talks about his own supposed superiority and steals from grocery stores as well as stealing his friends girl without remorse. My favourite example of this semantic pollution came from a psychoanalyst who offers words of wisdom such as: "Do you know that the feeling of being crushed by the society that you live in might well be the result of that spanking you got a a child? That, together with the painful dream of being murdered for a good cause, would point to the development of psychomotor symptoms and explain the root of your disgust and your wish to die." This kind of Orwellian language conceals more than it than reveals and has an aura of authority while at the same time managing to be misleading or meaningless. Perhaps Robert Bresson would agree with the notion that: 'those who don't know say and those who don't say know.'Given this films themes, you would expect it to be full of anguish but it isn't. All of Bresson's characters seem to react and interact primarily with their intellects rather than with any kind of passion and they seem to be half in the land of the living and half in the land of the dead. I'm reminded of Descartes words: 'Without the passions, the soul would have no grounds whatever to remain joined to the body.' I suppose that the impassivity could be seen as a Buddha-like lack of attachment, or as a comment on the film maker or artist as watchful bystander, or as an antidote to the way in which most contemporary culture bypasses our intellect and appeals directly to our baser emotions, but its an approach that makes Bresson's films difficult to engage with. Charlie does sometimes show an acute sensitivity at least - while he waits in a car and trees are being cut down with chainsaws around him, he can't bear to listen or watch and he puts his hands over his ears. But without passions or even interests to anchor him to the material world he begins to float away like a paper cup in a freezing winter breeze.The camera is static throughout much of the film and many of the scenes would make excellent photographs. The sense of stasis is also highlighted (by way of contrast) in a sequence in which Charles catches a fish and he and his friends are delighted by its spirited struggle for survival. The police arrive to enforce a no bathing rule and Charles and company hide in the long grass by the riverbank. In a rare playful moment they play hide and seek with a policeman but the fun can't last in '...a world where egos are measured with tabloids, where automobiles double for morals, where beliefs are like naps - you leave them behind when somebody touches you and in a place where oil always takes precedence over life...' as Anis Mojgani put it in a poem.Like most people, Charlie's friends are more pragmatic than he is and manage to make compromises but he simply can't adjust to such a flawed world. As he ducks out of commitments and enumerates the bitter virtues of doing nothing, the trajectory of his life slowly and inexorably begins to resemble more the Indian proverb: 'It is better to sit down than to stand, it is better to lie down than to sit, but death is the best of all.' Relenting to his friends suggestion he goes to see a psychoanalyst who inadvertently gives him, by example, yet more evidence of the irredeemably vain, superficial and money grabbing nature of contemporary society. Charles tells him that his problem is that he sees too clearly and the analyst offers some clumsy analytic babble in return but he does at least give him a useful tip about how to kill himself. In a way he takes the analysts rather predictable counsel that instead of being concerned with or trying to fix the reality that we share he should struggle to fix himself - he does indeed fix himself, once and for all. When his end and the end of the film comes, I didn't see the martyrdom of a saint because Charles already seems to be somewhat corrupted. He is arrogant for example, and because he can't beat them his future would seem to be one of joining them or else of despair. To live in despair is to live with a feeling of emptiness and as Bresson said: "...there is something which makes suicide possible - not even possible but absolutely necessary: it is the vision of the void, the feeling of void which is impossible to bear." It's as though he had been set the thankless task of attempting to light a candle underwater.Perhaps his assessment of his prospects was correct and perhaps he was better off hitting the ejector seat and bailing out of this world before he became something that he hated. But I can't help thinking that the world needs more people like Charles in it, now more than then (in the late 1970's when this film was made) and that perhaps we should consider not sacrificing them to our hollow Gods.As something of a connoisseur of fine corduroy I appreciated the fact that so many of this films cast were clad in that noble material. material.

The main character in this movie, who is 'more intelligent than the other ones' is confronted with political, psychoanalytical and religious gibberish, the misuse of scientific discoveries for the fabrication of deadly weapons (atomic bombs), economic (unrestrained growth, drugs) and environmental (pesticides) catastrophes, ridiculous police interventions and relational difficulties (real love is impossible).Faced with a devastating human habitat, the 'hero' of the film can only choose the ultimate solution, in the ancient way.This movie (a formidable uppercut) should not only be characterized as a masterpiece, but above all, as a very serious wake-up call for all human beings, and, in the first place, for its fundamentally diabolic masters.For Robert Bresson, man himself is the devil, and not probably. His destructive actions are nothing less than a global planetary suicide.A must see.

In The Devil Probably (1977) we follow Charles, young and alienated and probably searching for a meaning of life, or maybe he has given up on that. Like other Bresson movies like L'Argent, the actions and intentions of the protagonist is not always totally clear, at least not to me. Bresson does not give us an easy or mainstream story played by mainstream actors. Instead he gives us his vision of the world and society. Here he also uses what he calls "models" insetad of "actors", that is the actors are just to deliver the lines and not really act by displaying emotions and so on.As I see it, Charles problem is not just as he says: that he sees things too clearly. That is, he sees all the bad stuff in the world and therefore can't find any meaning in anything: environmental pollution, the list of things you "have to do" like raising a family, education, work and so on makes him sick and bored near death. Charles is a slacker in the 1970s, and he refuses to contribute to the society he finds so rotten (but he clearly has no problem using others money). But clearly Charles also has got problems relating to other people. He finds himself "superior" and more intelligent than others (and feelings of "superiority" is a theme in Bressons earlier Pick Pocket). And therefore he don't really care for others, despite his idealism with books about "saving the planet". The other characters are more caring about each other - and for Charles. (Maybe Charles is even a sort of fascist?) I won't go into the ending here as it may spoil the experience. This dark movie demands some reflection afterwards.The DVD from AE has very clear and stable picture. There are no extras, but at a price of 8GBP it is very good value for money.

Classic Robert Bresson yet another inspired low-key masterpiece from the French auteur directeur with his au naturel style. Here the student versus world routine excels in a sinister fashion. Check it out.

Excellent item, prompt shipment. Thanks.

Though I hesitate to use the archaic language of religion, on some level I saw Charles (this film's protagonist) as the spirit sputtering and fading in inhospitable times. Through him we see a spirit which is loosened from its moorings and exploring. He looks into the possibility of finding a way to live which includes retaining his integrity, but the world will not let him do both and deep down Charles seems to know what the outcome of his search will be before it reaches its conclusion. He is keeping half an eye out for something that is worth his attention and his time - for something that he can invest himself in, for something that will make his life worth living. He encounters, and half heartedly engages with, political activism, spirituality and love. The dialogue that revolves around all of these is somewhat insipid and hollow and I felt as distant and as bored as he seemed to while watching much of the film. It's as though the world in which he attempts to live is a lake polluted by waste burbling out of the pipes of industry, and he simply can't stomach diving into it. So he skirts around the edges of his life vainly seeking fresh water.Though 'The Devil, Probably' deals with ecological themes, I felt that the real pollution here was to be found in what people were saying. Language swirls through this film like mustard gas. What these people were saying often sounded intelligent enough but on closer examination was in fact rather empty, and morally bankrupt in particular. Whether it came from the mouths of the members of a Marxist political group, who Charlie dismisses as idiots. Or the pages of a crass 'lifestyle' magazine which seems to map out a future for him that he detests. Or from his mathematics lecturers who are smart enough to understand nuclear physics but allow their efforts to fall into the hands of people who will use them to build ever more spectacular ways of blowing people up. Or members of the clergy who listlessly go through the motions of promoting a God who even they don't seem to believe in anymore. Or from Charles himself, who talks about his own supposed superiority and steals from grocery stores as well as stealing his friends girl without remorse. My favorite example of this semantic pollution came from a psychoanalyst who offers words of wisdom such as: "Do you know that the feeling of being crushed by the society that you live in might well be the result of that spanking you got a a child? That, together with the painful dream of being murdered for a good cause, would point to the development of psychomotor symptoms and explain the root of your disgust and your wish to die." This kind of Orwellian language conceals more than it than reveals and has an aura of authority while at the same time managing to be misleading or meaningless. Perhaps Robert Bresson would agree with the Taoist notion that: those who don't know say and those who don't say know.Given this films themes, you would expect it to be full of anguish but it isn't and this is problematic. All of Bresson's characters seem to react and interact primarily with their intellects rather than with any kind of passion and they seem to be half in the land of the living and half in the land of the dead. I'm reminded of Descartes words: 'Without the passions, the soul would have no grounds whatever to remain joined to the body.' I suppose that the impassivity could be seen as a Buddha-like lack of attachment, or as a comment on the film maker or artist as watchful bystander, or as an antidote to the way in which much of contemporary culture bypasses our intellect and appeals directly to our baser emotions, but its an approach that makes Bresson's films difficult to engage with. Charlie does sometimes show an acute sensitivity at least - while he waits in a car and trees are being cut down with chainsaws around him, he can't bear to listen or watch and he puts his hands over his ears. But without passions or even interests to anchor him to the material world he begins to float away like a paper cup in a freezing winter breeze.The camera is static throughout much of the film and many of the scenes would make excellent photographs. The sense of stasis is also highlighted (by way of contrast) in a sequence in which Charles catches a fish and he and his friends are delighted by its spirited struggle for survival. The police arrive to enforce a no bathing rule and Charles and company hide in the long grass by the riverbank. In a rare playful moment they play hide and seek with a policeman but the fun can't last in '...a world where egos are measured with tabloids, where automobiles double for morals, where beliefs are like naps - you leave them behind when somebody touches you and in a place where oil always takes precedence over life...' as Anis Mojgani put it in a poem.Like most people, Charlie's friends are more pragmatic than he is and manage to make compromises but he simply can't adjust to such a flawed world. As he ducks out of commitments and enumerates the bitter virtues of doing nothing, the trajectory of his life slowly and inexorably begins to resemble more the Indian proverb: 'It is better to sit down than to stand, it is better to lie down than to sit, but death is the best of all.' Relenting to his friends suggestion he goes to see a psychoanalyst who inadvertently gives him, by example, yet more evidence of the irredeemably vain, superficial and money grabbing nature of contemporary society. Charles tells him that his problem is that he sees too clearly and the analyst offers some clumsy analytic babble in return but he does at least give him a useful tip about how to kill himself. In a way he takes the analysts rather predictable counsel that instead of being concerned with or trying to fix the culture that we share, he should try to fix himself - he does indeed fix himself, once and for all. When his end and the end of the film comes I didn't see the martyrdom of a saint because Charles already seems to be somewhat corrupted, and because he can't beat them his future would seem to be one of joining them or else of despair. To live in despair is to live with a feeling of emptiness and as Bresson said: "...there is something which makes suicide possible - not even possible but absolutely necessary: it is the vision of the void, the feeling of void which is impossible to bear." It's as though he had been set the thankless task of attempting to light a candle underwater.Perhaps his assessment of his prospects was correct and perhaps he was better off hitting the ejector seat and bailing out of this world before he became something that he hated. But I can't help thinking that the world needs more people like Charles in it, now more than then (in the late 1970's when this film was made) and that perhaps we should consider not sacrificing them to our hollow Gods.As something of a connoisseur of fine corduroy, I appreciated the fact that so many of this films cast were clad in that noble material.

Robert Bresson is probably upset with the world of the late 70s. During the introduction of the group of activistic Parisian youth, which becomes Bresson's ensemble of the film, problems of the present are scattered at us with direct hits. Environmental issues such as Oil-dumping, seal-extermination, pollution, overpopulation, industrial interest in rain forest as well as the need for modernity in Christianity surrounds our band of outsiders. What frightens me is that these problems and statistics have increased muliple times since then, and left us now, with even more troubled minds. When a teenage girl inserts nude photos inside Church programs and Bible booklets in the Cathedral to provoke disgust, a teenager named Charles with mid-long dark hair, steps up to his group and tells them that this is not respectable. After the opening credits, a newspaper displays Charles' face on the cover, with the headline: "Parisian teenage committed suicide." Only to be replaced by a new coverage: "Parisian teenage murdered". I find Charles, the most interesting figure in the film, and his search for answers for his existence in a decadent world, gets more and more intense. The love of his girlfriend is not enough, stealing money is too accessible and the psychiatrist is avoiding to go deeper into his troubles, because he is above all interested in money. What are the reasons why Charles is giving up on the world? The world through his eyes seems to be both senseless and unbearable. I like how material concern, the focus on success and fame are depicted as enslavement of people, manipulating our way of living and alienating our inner selves. Bresson is very clever at following the same stream of consciousness all the way to the inevitable death of the teenager. The film feels confident as Robert Bresson's next film 'L'Argent' which follows the usage of fake money from unaware teenagers, to the hands of an axe murderer. Both film are searching for something of a soul in society. I think Bresson is less preoccupied with external threats to our existence, which is mere backdrop, than the need for spirituality in the world, which many find in religion. This seemingly hopeless search is what drives the film forward, even if we learn that all misery today can probably be blamed on the devil.