Stars: Anne Wiazemsky, François Lafarge, Philippe Asselin, Walter Green | Written and Directed by Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson’s mid-career misery-fest is often cited as a masterpiece (it’s sitting pretty on a perfect Metacritic score), although having now endured Au Hasard Balthazar twice in my life I must simply be blind to its supposed power. Using the seven deadly sins as its backdrop and its equine star as a stand-in for faith, it’s an absurdly grim allegory, and one which feels like a chore even at ninety minutes.
The wisp of a plot follows the travails of the titular donkey, once a beloved pet of rural girl Marie (Anne Wiazemsky). Balthazar is effectively sold into slavery, and the film charts the parallel lives led by the pair: Balthazar into old age and Marie into her teenage years. It seems that, without the love of each other, both are bound...
Robert Bresson’s mid-career misery-fest is often cited as a masterpiece (it’s sitting pretty on a perfect Metacritic score), although having now endured Au Hasard Balthazar twice in my life I must simply be blind to its supposed power. Using the seven deadly sins as its backdrop and its equine star as a stand-in for faith, it’s an absurdly grim allegory, and one which feels like a chore even at ninety minutes.
The wisp of a plot follows the travails of the titular donkey, once a beloved pet of rural girl Marie (Anne Wiazemsky). Balthazar is effectively sold into slavery, and the film charts the parallel lives led by the pair: Balthazar into old age and Marie into her teenage years. It seems that, without the love of each other, both are bound...
- 4/29/2019
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
Au Hasard Balthazar
Blu ray
Criterion
1966 / 1:66 / Street Date May 29, 2018
Starring Anne Wiazemsky, François Lafarge
Cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet
Directed by Robert Bresson
At moments in his career Robert Bresson, the filmmaker behind The Trial of Joan of Arc and The Diary of a Country Priest, seemed to be directing from the pulpit. Likewise, Au Hasard Balthazar, his 1966 film about a messianic donkey, just begs to be canonized – unlike most grabs for cinematic sanctitude, Balthazar deserves its pedestal.
A movie out of time, Balthazar‘s somber black and white landscape rebuffs its own era – a pop art wonderland that produced Blow Up, Modesty Blaise and Our Man Flint. Jean-Luc Godard, rule-breaking bomb-thrower of brightly colored social satires, heaped on the praise – “… this film is really the world in an hour and a half.” On the other hand, Ingmar Bergman, not exactly a popcorn munching thrill-seeker, thought it was a “bore...
Blu ray
Criterion
1966 / 1:66 / Street Date May 29, 2018
Starring Anne Wiazemsky, François Lafarge
Cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet
Directed by Robert Bresson
At moments in his career Robert Bresson, the filmmaker behind The Trial of Joan of Arc and The Diary of a Country Priest, seemed to be directing from the pulpit. Likewise, Au Hasard Balthazar, his 1966 film about a messianic donkey, just begs to be canonized – unlike most grabs for cinematic sanctitude, Balthazar deserves its pedestal.
A movie out of time, Balthazar‘s somber black and white landscape rebuffs its own era – a pop art wonderland that produced Blow Up, Modesty Blaise and Our Man Flint. Jean-Luc Godard, rule-breaking bomb-thrower of brightly colored social satires, heaped on the praise – “… this film is really the world in an hour and a half.” On the other hand, Ingmar Bergman, not exactly a popcorn munching thrill-seeker, thought it was a “bore...
- 6/12/2018
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
On viewing Au hasard Balthazar (1966) at the Robert Bresson retrospective here in New York I noticed this interesting edit:
What's going on here? François Lafarge's miscreant teen Gérard, after insolently facing one of the only characters in the film sympathetic to him, his landlady and boss (or wife of his boss), seems almost to pass through her between the space of one shot (her wiping her tears away) and the next (him walking directly away from her).
What's actually going on here is that in the shot of the woman wiping away her tear, Gérard walks across the frame from left to right, but is so close to the camera he simply seems nearly to fill the frame rather than just move across it. Thus the next shot seems like a 180-degree reverse cut, as if the camera's view point is that of the woman. Actually it's more like a 90-degree cut,...
What's going on here? François Lafarge's miscreant teen Gérard, after insolently facing one of the only characters in the film sympathetic to him, his landlady and boss (or wife of his boss), seems almost to pass through her between the space of one shot (her wiping her tears away) and the next (him walking directly away from her).
What's actually going on here is that in the shot of the woman wiping away her tear, Gérard walks across the frame from left to right, but is so close to the camera he simply seems nearly to fill the frame rather than just move across it. Thus the next shot seems like a 180-degree reverse cut, as if the camera's view point is that of the woman. Actually it's more like a 90-degree cut,...
- 1/25/2012
- MUBI
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