Bresson's influence is clear in this small and surprising film that already announces the nouvelle vague. But it is so quiet and modest that it seems to have gone unnoticed.
If Isidore Isou proposed a few years earlier the total dissociation of image and sound, here it is the opposite, the text and the image complement each other, they are two testimonies of the same reality, the voice-over a first-person vision, and the image generally the third person point of view (not always, sometimes we see through the woman's eyes). Both visions often overlap, repeating phrases of dialogue, describing exactly the same thing we are watching, while other times they provide complementary information, or present a clear gap.
There is a very brilliant moment that shows this ambiguity in the function of the image: the camera shows a waitress making a strange gesture while the woman is opening a door, which we do not identify, and then the voice-over clarifies the interpretation that the protagonist has given of that gesture with the image of what she sees reflected in the glass.
Sometimes it seems that the image is an illustration of what the voice-over says, and the montage of images reproduces what the voice comments, but manipulated here precisely in that montage, thus the repeated shot of her entering and leaving a place were she ask for a job.
The image is very Bressonian, with that characteristic purity, although there are frames and movements that give greater volatility and a less deliberate character, which brings it closer to the first babblings of the nouvelle vague. But everything has that marked transcendental accent (the usual baroque music helps), like a via crucis, so characteristic of Bresson.
The music, as in so many French films of the time (the first Bresson, Les enfants terribles, then Godard etc...), is the usual baroque classics in those very romanticized versions of the time, in this case especially Bach and his violin concerto.
The plot is minimalist, in fact it is a long flashback that does not reach the moment of the first scene of the film.
A simple and beautiful film, but dithyrambic comments like Noel Burch's are ludicrous.
If Isidore Isou proposed a few years earlier the total dissociation of image and sound, here it is the opposite, the text and the image complement each other, they are two testimonies of the same reality, the voice-over a first-person vision, and the image generally the third person point of view (not always, sometimes we see through the woman's eyes). Both visions often overlap, repeating phrases of dialogue, describing exactly the same thing we are watching, while other times they provide complementary information, or present a clear gap.
There is a very brilliant moment that shows this ambiguity in the function of the image: the camera shows a waitress making a strange gesture while the woman is opening a door, which we do not identify, and then the voice-over clarifies the interpretation that the protagonist has given of that gesture with the image of what she sees reflected in the glass.
Sometimes it seems that the image is an illustration of what the voice-over says, and the montage of images reproduces what the voice comments, but manipulated here precisely in that montage, thus the repeated shot of her entering and leaving a place were she ask for a job.
The image is very Bressonian, with that characteristic purity, although there are frames and movements that give greater volatility and a less deliberate character, which brings it closer to the first babblings of the nouvelle vague. But everything has that marked transcendental accent (the usual baroque music helps), like a via crucis, so characteristic of Bresson.
The music, as in so many French films of the time (the first Bresson, Les enfants terribles, then Godard etc...), is the usual baroque classics in those very romanticized versions of the time, in this case especially Bach and his violin concerto.
The plot is minimalist, in fact it is a long flashback that does not reach the moment of the first scene of the film.
A simple and beautiful film, but dithyrambic comments like Noel Burch's are ludicrous.