UCCA Art Cinema in collaboration with the French Embassy Beijing presents five essential films from this great filmmaker of our times: Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), a fable detailing the parallel lives of a donkey and young farm girl; Bresson's second feature, Les Dames du Bois-de-Boulogne (1945), starring Marie Casarès as a woman seeking revenge on her former lover; the sympathetic and brutally unsentimental portrait of teenage life Mouchette (1967); Pickpocket (1959), the chronicle of a young man's rise and fall as a master petty thief; and Bresson’s final film, L'Argent (1983), a terse and chilling indictment of capitalism and modernity.

Note: Screenings are on 35mm film print.

Film Schedule
2.4 4pm Pickpocket
2.5 7pm Au Hasard Balthazar
2.11 4:30pm Les Dames du Bois-de-Boulogne (The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne)
7pm Mouchette
2.12 7pm L'Argent (Money)

Pickpocket
1959.France.75 mins
Selected in Competition at Berlin Film Festival (1960)
Robert Bresson’s incomparable tale of crime and redemption follows Michel (played by non-pro Martin Lasalle), a young pickpocket who spends his days working the streets, subway cars, and train stations of Paris. As his compulsion grows, however, so too does his fear that his luck is about to run out. Tautly choreographed and crafted in Bresson’s inimitable style, Pickpocket reveals a master director at the height of his powers.

Au Hasard Balthazar
1966.France/Sweden.96 mins
OCIC Award at Venice Film Festival (1966)
Au hasard Balthazar follows the donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie (Anne Wiazemsky, later Godard’s wife and star), is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of man. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly. Through Bresson’s unconventional approach to composition, sound, and narrative, this seemingly simple story becomes a moving parable of purity and transcendence.

Les Dames du Bois-de-Boulogne (The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne)
1945. France.90 mins
This unique love story, based on a novelette by Denis Diderot and with dialogue written by Jean Cocteau, follows the maneuverings of a society lady as she connives to initiate a scandalous affair between her aristocratic ex-lover and a prostitute. With his second feature film, director Robert Bresson was already forging his singularly brilliant filmmaking technique as he created a moving study of the power of revenge and the strength of true love.

Mouchette
1967. France.82 mins
Best Film at Venice Film Festival (1967)
OCIC Award at Cannes Film Festival (1967)
Robert Bresson plumbs great reservoirs of feeling with Mouchette, one of the most searing portraits of human desperation ever put on film. Faced with a dying mother, an absent, alcoholic father, and a baby brother in need of care, the teenage Mouchette seeks solace in nature and daily routine, a respite from her economic and pubescent turmoil. An essential work of French filmmaking, Bresson’s hugely empathetic drama elevates its trapped protagonist into one of the cinema’s great tragic figures. Adapted from a novel by Georges Bernanos (Diary of a Country Priest), both a sympathetic and a brutally unsentimental portrait.

L'Argent (Money)
1983. France.85 minute
Best Director Award at Cannes Film Festival (1983)
National Society of Film Critics Awards, USA(1985)
“If I was God, I would pardon the whole world.” The progress of a forged 500 franc note, at first casually passed off, but ultimately leading to the arrest of an innocent, bribery, firing, imprisonment, marriage breakup, and multiple murders. Loosely adapted from a Tolstoy story, this was octogenarian Bresson’s final work.

Partner: French Embassy, Beijing