when the guy lays down and uses his hat as a steering wheel gets me everytime. was bresson in good mood doing this one . the music and bumper cars for example. of course this is a bresson movie . were still staring down the barrel of a gun.
Yeah, those are great moments. They are also rather astute touches on Bresson’s part. We get to see that Mouchette’s father is a drunk without having to confront all at once the implications this has for her life. Likewise, with the bumper cars, we have a brief moment where Mouchette is happy, and the music is upbeat. But the interaction with the boy is still a hunt and includes a stylized violence.
you ever seen “the mother and the whore” i don’t know why i bring it up and i have nothing but a vague intimation of why i think you might like it if you haven’t seen it but if so i think you might like it
No, I’ve not yet watched much French film from the 70s. I plan on it, and MatW will certainly be part of it.
What do people make of the looping in the closing scene? I have it on authority that this is not an artefact of the DVD but there in the print. I’ve also read elsewhere that the same effect is used for Ophelia’s drowning in both Kozintsev’s and Olivier’s Hamlets. (The Kozinstev I haven’t seen, in the Olivier I didn’t notice it).
I think we can dispense with the theory that Bresson looped out of practical necessity. We don’t see Mouchette enter the water, nor can we make out her submerged form, so the shot could have been sustained for as long as Bresson wished.
Bresson may have originally intended the shot to be short, then decided after the fact that he wanted it longer. But I thought directors usually shot more than they need precisely to give themselves that kind of latitude in editing. Moreover, if he was dissatisfied, wouldn’t re-shooting have been inexpensive, even long after the original shooting was wrapped up?
I have a notion Bresson noticed during editing that at a certain point the ripples synchronized with the Monteverdi, and he liked the effect so much he decided to loop it for a few seconds.
If the looping is essentially an error of judgment by Bresson (i.e. a poor solution that he though viewers wouldn’t notice), then it isn’t relevant to the interpretation of the film. But if it is deliberately noticeable artifice, then it indicates something about the intended tone of the ending.
Yes, that effect caught my attention to. And, no I didn’t notice it in Olivier (or I don’t think I did—that was long ago).
I do think it is a productive question to ask if Bresson wanted us to see the ending as something different from suicide. That oscillation at the end gives an artificiality or impermanence that is at odds with a real death. That’s why I think there is a sharp contrast with the death of the rabbit.
Bresson never had careless patches, right? I think this must be purposeful.
That ending loop is the most fascinating thing in the film for me. It mimics Mouchette’s movements only moments before. Her repeated attempts to roll down the hill.
Hmm. That’s interesting to compare it to the repetitions of rolling down the hill. What do you make of the dress that she gets from the old woman? She only starts rolling down the hill after she discovers that she has indifferently torn it. Is it a burial shroud? And is she defiling it on purpose? Is it an emblem of the social expectations of her community—dressing up for a funeral—expectations that cannot contain her?
I’m not intimately familiar with the film, so i don’t know it beat by beat. It seems to me, from what I remember, that Mouchette had already decided to kill herself. Tearing the shawl didn’t do it for her. In fact, as I remember it, she sort of ripped purposefully. I might be completely off though.
Unfortunately, yes, it turns into a burial shroud. And I do think she defiles it on purpose. It certainly has symbolic associations. It probably stands for the injust society she refuses to adjust herself to.
Yeah, I know that feeling of not being able to recollect all the detail you would like to be able to talk about. That’s why I’m trying to get discussions started where several people watch the same film so it is fresh in everyone’s mind.
So if you can you remember, why do you think she had committed to killing herself before she gets to the river? Would it have been before she saw the hunter shoot the rabbit? Or was that when she decided?
It wasn’t one moment. It was a succession of moments that built up throughout the entire film. Like I mentioned, I think she felt like she didn’t want to adjust to this faulty society. Maybe the killing was a snap decision at that moment, but certainly the kind of thing that lurks in your head for some time. I don’t think people make snap decisions to kill themselves anyway. Not even lunatics. The human instinct of self-preservation is too strong.
But this brings up something else about the killing sequence. You guys were discussing artifice earlier. I always thought it implausible that she could kill herself in the way she did. The hill wasn’t that steep, and surely the pond wasn’t that deep. She wasn’t building up enough speed by rolling. This coupled with the loop sequence makes the ending highly artificial to me. Not as if I’m complaining about the aesthetic merit of the sequence, just commenting on Bresson’s aesthetic choice and what consequences it has for a reading of the film. It’s a fascinating ending.
Damn, I left my copy of Mouchette at home. This discussion is making me want to rewatch it because I don’t remember much of what you are all talking about, but I really really enjoyed that movie.
My main memory of the movie is the bumper cars. It’s the loudest the movie (and that director, really) gets, and yet it truly is the calm eye in the midst of the store.
—PolarisDiB
Yes the ending of Mouchette isn’t particularly plausible as a practicality- a strange way to finish yourself off, but adds to a sense of intrigue and mystery, even uncertainty. It lacks the emotional depth of the central scene in Sansho the Bailiff i think, though it has a certain serenity, and restraint in what it shows/leaves out- there’s spirituality in common, but formal differences of course between the 2 directors.
Sansho the Bailiff
Mouchette
You can see the influence of Mouchette clearly in Rosetta.
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There isn’t a person or institution anywhere that can lift her out of the misery. But I feel a bit arch believing that her existential funk is partially of her own making.
Worse than that, there isn’t a person or institution that doesn’t help put her into that misery in the first place.
This discussion is reinforcing my idea to take the ending as more abstract than a suicide. I’m not sure what English text would be most appropriate, but consider the translations of the “Magnificat” on that Wikipedia link. Casting down the mighty and raising up the meek? Filling the starving and sending the rich away empty?
You can take the Magnificat as a sign of Mouchette’s transcendence. Or you can take it as a somewhat bitter and biting commentary on the vacuity of these grand religious concepts and their supernatural conceits. Perhaps for Bresson, this is an open question.
That’s interesting, Kenji. I wouldn’t have thought to compare to Sansho. Perhaps because I so love Ugetsu, I have neglected Sansho and don’t remember it all that clearly. That scene in Sansho is also serene and doesn’t show the struggle that drowning would probably inevitably entail. But the bubbles in the water at least acknowledge the nature of a drowning death. With Mouchette, we basically get a splash and then a disappearance. Kenji, do you know anything about the music that plays during the Sansho scene? Was it written just for the film?
But if Mouchette is the meek, she isn’t raised up. She is sent spiraling downward, multiple times even – repeated even more by the looping of the final image.
I don’t think Mouchette is transcendent. Remember the scene where she is offered food, then the lady notices the marks on her bare skin and calls her a dirty name? Mouchette then throws the food on the floor and walks away. The starving are not filled, and are sent away empty instead. It seems like “Mouchette” is a very cynical film, given these possible readings.
Worse than that, there isn’t a person or institution that doesn’t help put her into that misery in the first place.
Perhaps we are going to end up working our way backwards through the film, but Mouchette’s final morning is remarkable in many ways. Earlier in the film, when we discover that her mother is bedridden, we realize that Mouchette must do all the housework. In fact, when we see her make coffee before church, she is in one of her brief cheerful moods. You expect that she also tends the baby. But on the night of her mother’s death, Mouchette fails. She cannot light the stove for the baby’s milk, she does a poor job changing the diaper, and she cannot get the baby to stop crying. I think she not so much lacks the physical aptitude to care for the baby as the psychological fortitude to raise the kid without her mother’s support given that her father is a abusive drunk.
Later that morning, after her mother has died, Mouchette escapes the house with empty milk pail in hand and ends up making a tour of her town. She has several confrontations that all end badly, but, notably, she does not interact with a priest.
Not having any religious sensibilities myself, I’m inclined to take the film as cynical about religion. But it seems that Bresson had rather complicated, conflicted, and changing views on religion, so I’m willing to look for more than just a denunciation of the church.
Yes, I don’t think she can be called transcendent.
Bresson presents to states, resigned to your fate or an active agent. Generally those who are active are agents of oppression (Balthazar, L’Argent). One of the few examples of the will triumphant, maybe the only one, is “A Man Escaped”.
To come back to a previous point I believe the torn dress is symbolic of Mouchette’s feelings on her own place within the world, metaphorically, ‘the thorn within the fabric of society’. Ostracized from all corners of society, from classmates and elderly women to her father negating social relationships (dodgems scene). I believed Mouchette to be a character in a constant search for human interaction and connection and therefore we see the yielding to Arsene in the lodge. For me the most potent expression of this point is when in the final scene on hearing the tractor she gazes longingly hoping desperately that some connection can be made with the farmer, once he turns away her realisation that she is incapable of connecting with humanity she concludes her only salvation to be in commiting suicide.
To come back to a previous point I believe the torn dress is symbolic of Mouchette’s feelings on her own place within the world, metaphorically, ‘the thorn within the fabric of society’. Ostracized from all corners of society, from classmates and elderly women to her father negating social relationships (dodgems scene). I believed Mouchette to be a character in a constant search for human interaction and connection and therefore we see the yielding to Arsene in the lodge. For me the most potent expression of this point is when in the final scene on hearing the tractor she gazes longingly hoping desperately that some connection can be made with the farmer, once he turns away her realisation that she is incapable of connecting with humanity she concludes her only salvation to be in commiting suicide.
Daniel-
I take it very much the way you do. Going back to Bobby’s comment that he thought she ripped it purposefully, I don’t quite think so. She was looking at the delicate dress while sitting in the middle of a patch of brambles. This in itself is careless. When the dress snagged, she didn’t back up to free it but willfully kept pulling while hearing it tear. So, yes, that final gesture to connect with the farmer is a potent moment, but has all the rejection been on the side of the community? The cards are massively stacked against Mouchette, but what efforts does she herself make to connect? At some point we should consider the strange scenes where she throws dirt on her classmates.
…may be i have to look this film again…refresh ..thx
Downbylaw: original music in Sansho by Fumio Hayasaka, Tamekichi Mochizuki & Kanahichi Odera. Mizoguchi and Bresson often covered suicide.
Doinel: as a believer in predestination not free will- though in a very different way from Jansenists and ideas of spiritual salvation- it’s strange A Man Escaped is my favourite Bresson. The passivity you mention goes with the understated “modelling” rather than acting, which tends to grate with me at times
I don’t know that Mouchette fails as much as you see it. The stove is broken, so she has to heat the milk against her own breasts. She succeeds in this instance as a mother figure. There is no diaper to change because they don’t have the money for any, and probably have to use rags, or sometimes nothing at all. Mouchette as a victim of her environment is how I’m reading it.
I do agree that Mouchette searching for human connection is a main current in the film. Best symbolized by the bumper car sequence.
Mouchette makes plenty of efforts to connect. She nurses the hunter back to health when he has an episode, just as she nurses the baby. Her aforementioned bumper car ride.
The scenes where she throws dirt are her lashing out at the system. But also, a way to connect and be noticed. She’s usually excluded, or ridiculed. Sometimes she tries to force the connection.
downbylaw -
One the question of whether Mouchette herself tries to connect I believe that by the time we join the narrative our foregrounding in her family situation illuminates somewhat the idea that she has already suffered enough to feel almost completely disconnected from the people around her. So heavily burdened by her family role, she tries none the lest to connect at both the fun fair and with Arsene, particularly the way she almost cares for him in the act of rape, gently caressing his shoulder I think shows that she at this point is unaware of how to connect. With reference to the throwing of dirt, I found that seeing the other students in their pristine clothing jumping onto the bikes of the young males shows their youthfulness and emnity which is something Mouchette can’t share having already taken up the paternal role within her own family, this loss of youth is the means for her retaliation and the smearing and dirtying of her fellow students is the only way she can retaliate. I would argue also the uncivilised nature of her response further dislocates her from this society and shows how alienated and ‘alien’ she is to those around her.
Bobby-
I didn’t mean that so much as she literally fails. Like most of the movie, that scene is highly symbolic. The stove isn’t broken, the problem is she doesn’t have a match. This scene follows shortly after the one with Arsene where Mouchette is in front of a roaring fire. Mouchette is unable to take over for her mother; for whatever reason, she doesn’t have the warmth in this domestic setting.
I do hope to talk about fire and water in this film since I think both make it much richer.
For me Bresson was speaking very directly to the issue of how people cannot live on their own strength. Mouchette cared for her mother well, and had a few opportunities to smile throughout the film (I’m equating her smiling with reasons to continue living). With the death of her mother there was no one left for her, and she retreated into herself. That is typically the most dangerous place to be. External influences can give you perspective you might not be able to see otherwise. This is a very common theme in Christianity, the idea of community being very important and the individual always failing when relying on their own strength. To look at Mouchette as a denunciation of the church would, I think, be myopic.
I am intrigued why he tackles these tough issues through the eyes of children, but I am glad he does because it provides the viewer with a perspective rarely seen.
DownByLaw
As you may have noticed on other threads, Jazzaloha and I are trying to get some people to coordinate viewing of a film so that we can talk about something we have recently seen and hopefully get a more detailed discussion as a result. First up in this project is Bresson’s Mouchette.
I hope we can have an interesting discussion both at a large scale and also of some details particularly details that get repeated. One large scale question that I think is important is religion and spirituality. The film opens with Mouchette’s mother worried about her family’s future after her impending death. Both here and at the end of the film we hear Monteverdi’s Magnificat a Marian prayer for Vespers. Mouchette seems to have rejected the Church along with all the other institutions and authority figures of her community. She also expresses disgust at the old woman who promotes a pagan idea of worshiping the dead. Considering that just before the end of the movie we see Mouchette watch a rabbit die a spastic death from shotgun wounds, the actual ending of the film is serene. So should we consider Mouchette an actual suicide, or should we take her easy disappearance more abstractly and as something other than death?
Another major theme that runs through the movie is sex. Mouchette’s sexual awakening is embedded in a setting of hunters, and her first experience of intercourse is preceded by a “hunt” where she is the prey. But is this actually partly an act? The hunt as foreplay? How willing of a participant is she either at the time or in her mental reconstructions later? And what role does the bar girl Luisa play in shaping Mouchette’s sexual understanding?
In considering such issues, I hope we also take a look at details in the film. There are a series of objects dropped or tossed. There are ongoing roles for water and fire, and even earth plays a part. So have at it.