Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne

Like Les Anges du Péché, Bresson's second feature, based on a self-contained anecdote in Diderot's novel Jacques le Fataliste, is in many ways atypical of his oeuvre. He uses, quite brilliantly, professional actors. The visual texture is not muted grey, but sharp and contrasty. The camera is constantly prowling and tracking. The dialogue (by Cocteau) is brilliantly jewelled, literary to the point of preciousness, the very antithesis of the later monosyllabics. Yet as one watches the elegant socialite (played by Casarès with superbly steely venom) spin a cold-blooded plot to destroy her rival after being humiliatingly spurned in a liaison in the interests of true love, one could hardly be anywhere but in Bresson's world. Sexuality takes precedence over salvation, but there is the same interiority, the same intensity, the same rigorous exclusion of all inessentials.