Ladies of the Bois de Bologne (1944)
Runtime: 85 mins
Synopsis: LES DAMES is the sole collaboration of two French cinema giants: Robert Bresson and Jean Cocteau. Cocteau wrote the wonderfully poetic dialogue for the film, while Bresson scripted and directed. The film bears strong connections to other classic works by both men. Like other Bresson heroes... LES DAMES is the sole collaboration of two French cinema giants: Robert Bresson and Jean Cocteau. Cocteau wrote the wonderfully poetic dialogue for the film, while Bresson scripted and directed. The film bears strong connections to other classic works by both men. Like other Bresson heroes and heroines, Helen is obsessed by a single idea. She intends to make the man who broke up with her suffer by introducing him to a pretty "tramp"--a girl who actually hopes to bury her past--and have him fall deeply in love with her. Once the couple unites, Helene will alert her ex to the girl's former activities, and ruin his status-conscious life. Helene's sense of having a "mission" is reflected in the prison break planned by the hero of A MAN ESCAPED, and the quiet crimes committed by the hero of PICKPOCKET. The obsessive and potentially dangerous way that Helen's ex rushes headlong into his passion for the one-time "tramp" prefigures the classically-themed romances in Cocteau's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and ORPHEUS. One element in the sumptuously photographed LES DAMES became common in both artists' repertoire: the presentation of characters who behave as if they're in a dream, sleepwalking their way to potential disaster or salvation. [More]
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Maria Casares, Paul Bernard
DVD Info
Release:
Mar 11, 2003
DVD Features:
- Region 1
- Keep Case
- Full Frame - 1.33
- Single Side - Dual Layer
Audio:
- Mono 1.0 - French
Text/Galleries:
- Essays - 1. Francois Truffaut - Film Critic
- 2. David Thomson - Film Critic
- Stills/Photos
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Reviews
The performances by both Casares and Labourdette were strikingly captivating and were enough in themselves to carry the film.
It is slow, solemn, rigidly conventional and as stilted as a silent film, but it shows Bresson's early ability to catch sober and smoldering moods with his camera.
The fact of Bresson's as yet undeveloped style, coupled with Cocteau’s fearless lyricism, produces a one-of-a-kind film. It’s irreproducible, a jewel.
Bresson's treatment of the material has the marks of his later style, but it's also more overtly stylized than anything else he did later.
Elina Labourdette is wonderful as Agnès, conveying her character’s ethical strength with real beauty within and without.
Les Dames has moments of subtle power that suggest the direction Bresson’s filmmaking aesthetic would eventually take; in fact, it was the last film he made in the traditional style before striking out completely on his own.
Praised by such filmmakers as Jean-Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni, the film is rarely screened.
It is not, by any means, the best film made during the Occupation, but it is a key work in Bresson’s oeuvre and one that is surprisingly absorbing even today.
Like much (if not all) of Bresson's best work, it can't be assimilated to realist criteria, but it's unforgettable for its fire-and-ice evocations of tragedy in an unlikely setting.


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