I just saw this for the first time last week and have watched it again since then.
I really liked this film a lot, and it's the first film where Bresson finally "clicked" with me. I finally got his style, and once that happens everything becomes quite fluid and amazing. It's incredibly admirable and subtle the way he presents actions and characters in incredibly direct, unadorned ways. His style is so simple that it becomes complex, the smallest movement or sound opens up a world of our imagination. The constant use of the train whistle, for instance, or the confusing creaking heard in a later scene- we don't know what it is, nor do the characters.
SPOILERS BELOW************************
The real crux of the film comes when Jost is introduced in a very late scene. Everything Fontaine has been obsessively driving at comes down to a choice- is the young man really looking to escape or is he a stool pidgeon for the Germans? Does he let the kid in on his plan or does he kill him in cold blood? Can he? Does he risk sacrificing his life and everything he worked for for months? Later on, there is a voice over where Fontaine realizes "Alone I would have never made it" and the camera pans up to a shot of Jost, holding out his hand for Fontaine to climb over the wall.
From a technical level, this film is already a huge accomplishment. But these very subtle spiritual themes and reflections (ones that do not come until very late in the film- very typical of Bresson) are what elevate it to high art, keeping it from just being a slick made thriller into something that rattles our soul.
END SPOILERS********************************************
Bresson is a master class in filmmaking. He seems to be the only director who takes the term "cinematography" literally, as it should be. He strove for simplicity and directness, and saw cinema as a completely separate artform, not as a combination of all the other artforms or some sort of spectacle, but as the combination of recorded visuals and sounds, edited together in a specific way for a specific effect. He doesn't explain, doesn't force- he merely shows. In the same way we read a novel or look at a painting and come to our own emotional conclusions, his films present the same possibility. Bresson is the filmic equivalent to Mozart, pure genius.
I really liked this film a lot, and it's the first film where Bresson finally "clicked" with me. I finally got his style, and once that happens everything becomes quite fluid and amazing. It's incredibly admirable and subtle the way he presents actions and characters in incredibly direct, unadorned ways. His style is so simple that it becomes complex, the smallest movement or sound opens up a world of our imagination. The constant use of the train whistle, for instance, or the confusing creaking heard in a later scene- we don't know what it is, nor do the characters.
SPOILERS BELOW************************
The real crux of the film comes when Jost is introduced in a very late scene. Everything Fontaine has been obsessively driving at comes down to a choice- is the young man really looking to escape or is he a stool pidgeon for the Germans? Does he let the kid in on his plan or does he kill him in cold blood? Can he? Does he risk sacrificing his life and everything he worked for for months? Later on, there is a voice over where Fontaine realizes "Alone I would have never made it" and the camera pans up to a shot of Jost, holding out his hand for Fontaine to climb over the wall.
From a technical level, this film is already a huge accomplishment. But these very subtle spiritual themes and reflections (ones that do not come until very late in the film- very typical of Bresson) are what elevate it to high art, keeping it from just being a slick made thriller into something that rattles our soul.
END SPOILERS********************************************
Bresson is a master class in filmmaking. He seems to be the only director who takes the term "cinematography" literally, as it should be. He strove for simplicity and directness, and saw cinema as a completely separate artform, not as a combination of all the other artforms or some sort of spectacle, but as the combination of recorded visuals and sounds, edited together in a specific way for a specific effect. He doesn't explain, doesn't force- he merely shows. In the same way we read a novel or look at a painting and come to our own emotional conclusions, his films present the same possibility. Bresson is the filmic equivalent to Mozart, pure genius.