CW-
I think that is very interesting and I would like to hear more.
How about the opening sequence in the film? It’s every bit as strange and abstract as the closing sequence. A total stylistic break, having the mother speak in a documentary-style direct address.
On the subject of its religious reading I think we can’t stress enough Bresson’s Jansenist upbringing and his belief in predestination and the necessity of divine grace. In this instance i’d argue that Mouchette’s fall into a suicidal mentality was less to do with personal intreversion than a realisation as shown with the longing gaze at the farmer in the final shot that after the death of her mother she wasn’t going to find salvation within humanity and that suicide was her predetermined end and the one that would lead to her ultimate redemption.
I’m amazed how much I did not love this movie. There were aspects I enjoyed, yes. However, overall I was not too keen on the film, mainly due to the ending.
Bobby and Daniel-
That would bring the beginning and the end together with the repetition of the religious music.
Last night I watched Pickpocket and was really thinking about just how many ways you can read the movie. There were certainly religious ones, but you can also read it existentially. That seemed obvious with Pickpocket. I wonder if we can do the same with Mouchette. And should we really take Bresson as being settled in this view on predestination?
I don’t like to mystify Besson too much, I prefer to take what he gives us in the films. People usually get caught up talking about religion, sexuality, different philosophical viewpoints, and other nebulous concepts when talking about Bresson. Not that those things shouldn’t inflect a reading of his films. I just feel that Bresson suffers from a lack of concrete formal analysis.
I think Pickpocket is the most potent example of Bresson’s examination of predestination, from the opening sequence suggesting the ending initialing and Michel saying at end once he finds his predestined salvation with Jeane ‘Oh Jeanne, what a strange path I had to take to find you!’. I think this theme is prevelant through almost all of Bresson’s work with exceptions particularly to his later films such as L’argent which was suprisingly Bresson as social commentary and not human exploration and the search for the truth of the human condition. I feel with Mouchette being a side piece to Au Hasard that their themes are very closely linked and Balthazar is an example of a character that charters a life through human trangression and persecution and ultimately is destined to die at hands of humanity as he is incapable of connecting. Where as in A Man Escaped and Pickpocket where thanks to divine intervention they find redemption and salvation. I personally believe it hard to examine alot of his work without taking a Jansenist reading from it no matter how confused and even contradictory some of his ideas of religion later appeared.
DBL – What I mean is that there was a time when Christian and intelligence were not mutually exclusive (this was, of course, before such stalwarts as Joel Osteen, etc. who have succeeded in simplifying the Bible’s teachings to a 5th grade level). In the interview on the Mouchette disk Bresson said he was ‘a believer’. A catholic would rarely say this, as their focus is more on the relationship with God (the father), as opposed to in Christ (the son). To say you are a ‘believer’ implies that you believe in the teachings of the Christ, and that might seem like a minor difference, but it’s one way to tell someone who’s been brought up an evangelical Christian as opposed to Catholic.
Please excuse the history lesson, but I say this because if Bresson was an evangelical Christian (protestant) than this novel would be intriguing to him because it shows, very powerfully, a microcosm of what the world would be like without Christ. This young girl feels no hope, sees no redemption for her life, and sees her only way out as ending it. She retreats into herself every time something bad happens, which is the most common mistake humans make. There is no one strong enough go through what this girl went through in her life without a community supporting her and encouraging her that it will get better in time. That community was her mom, and when that was gone she retreated into herself even further, to the point where she convinced herself that ending her life was her only option.
This is one of the reasons I think it’s interesting that Bresson chose this story that dealt with a child. My instinct is to say that God would protect this child, or at least present a way out for her other than suicide. To witness a young girl with that burden makes this story that much more powerful and sadder, but that could be why he chose to do it.
Anyways, I made quite a few assumptions about Bresson with these conclusions, but it struck me when he was asked if he was religious and he answered very specifically, ‘Yes, I am a believer’.
There are some repeated elements and actions in the film. A distinctive one is the use of water. When her father shoves her as they enter the church, Mouchette staggers forward against the font and converts that in one motion into a lackadaisical sign of the cross. That scene cuts directly to a close-up of Mouchette wearing a soaked apron. We quickly learn that she works washing up glasses at the bar after church. Mouchette cries profusely in this film, and, of course, before her encounter with Arsene, she is drenched by the storm—we get details of her wringing water from her stockings and pouring it out of her shoes.
Do you take these repeats as a structural element like a rhythm in music, or is it important to view them symbolically? And if symbolically, in terms of the use of water in the church?
All the water imagery is interesting. I wonder if it’s supposed to be all of the wrong kinds of baptism? The moment of Baptism is supposed to be a very proud, public moment where a believer is declaring their new life following God/Christ. If water is used throughout the story to her detriment that’s pretty strong symbolism for the raw deal she got.
You’ve mentioned before you wondered about fire in this film. There is a fire she almost falls into right before she is assaulted by Arsene, and the fire she warms herself by when he’s being nice to her right before that. She lights the fire in her house early in the film, but then cannot get it lit near the end (maybe after the rape, not sure how that’s supposed to fit into the story). That’s all I can remember, it doesn’t seem like there’s a consistency with that theme. I might be missing it though.
Except baptism doesn’t seem to fit very well how water is used. Baptism is a social ceremony of entering a religious community. Mouchette’s increasing encounters with water are in less and less social environments. At the end, she is fully immersed, but the only potential witness, the farmer, has driven off without interest. You could take it as an inversion of baptism, either as a failure of religion, or as a failure of her community. Or both.
Perhaps it would better to look at water more simply as a marker of her misery, and sometimes as a direct cause. In the bar, we see her removing a wet apron, not getting wet. She has to wash glasses, but her father gets the money, so she is bound to feel resentment at that. But after being freed from the wet apron, she has her brief happy moment on the bumper cars.
Fire, in contrast, shows connection and passion.
So, “Mouchette” was the first Bresson film I ever saw (actually, the first Criterion too) and I really loved it. It kind of surprised me with how much I liked it.
Question is, what other Robert Bresson film should I check out next? Are there any others he’s done that are better? I keep hearing about “Diary of a Country Priest” but it doesn’t look too interesting…is it really that great of a movie?
I couldn’t keep myself awake during a screening of “Diary.” It was the most painful experience I’ve ever had of trying to stave off boredom in a theater. But it was my introduction to Bresson, so I think I reacted very strongly to his aesthetic, like nasty tasting medicine.
“L’argent” seemed to me as great a film as he ever made when I saw it. It has a formal brilliance that is almost experimental. I have it right up there with “Mouchette.”
Those that are acquinted with Monteverdi’s Magnificat might have recognized that in the original score ‘Depusuit Potentes’ comes prior to ‘Et Excultavit’ which is lighter and fresher in tone and by no means darker than ‘Et Excultavit’. Bresson reverses the order placing the former at the end of the film. This is perhaps a totally arbitrary choice or has some other grounds, yes, but nevertheless I think this suggests that after all the turmoils in the film we see the light at the end of the tunnel. I wouldn’t accept any desperate reading, at least for the suicide scene. Yet ofcourse, obviously there is much bitterness left in my tongue, my stomach aches and my diaphragm squizzes my lungs… There is something very real here rather than true.
Oh, that is interesting. I’ve heard “Magnificat” a few times, but certainly wouldn’t be able to pick up a detail like that.
Can you flesh out what you mean by “very real” rather than “true”? Because I was struck by how visceral the death of the rabbit was compared to Mouchette seeming disappearing with nothing more than a modest splash. So it would seem that Bresson is pulling back from the reality—or at least detail—of death.
I think there’s something very abstract about her death, both in the impossible practicality of it and in the fragmented manner in which it is rendered on film. I wouldn’t call her death either “real” or “true”. Bresson is certainly pulling back from reality in aestheticizing her death, which of course mirrors Mouchette pulling back from the reality of the flawed world she lives in (Further symbolized by her pulling the shawl away from the tree branches and ripping it. By pulling herself away from society in this manner, the torn shawl both symbolizes and prefigures her death.).
Yeah, that much what I though about the tearing dress. As the tear starts, she doesn’t seem aware that it is snagged. But then she looks and keeps pulling—tearing it with out a care. Her demise seems careless in much the same way—aware, but indifferent to consequence, detatched.
I always lumped the water in with earth. Nature. Mouchette was drenched in the storm and lost her clog in the mud. Compare Mouchette with the other girls. Their perfume and motorcycles. She’s crouching in the grass on the side of the road. Mouchette is of nature, of the earth, and her oppressors are inseparable from the modern world. Her father and brother are introduced with the horrible machine noise of their truck, the girls on the motorcycles. Arsene and Mathieu with their even deadlier machines. Arsene has a friggin’ trap. I know that traps are not exactly modern but that fact does not betray the metaphor. But the woman with the coffee? I don’t know. And the old woman scene gives me the most trouble.
Mouchette tries to connect with this world and fails as has already been said. She comes close with the bumper cars. She gets thrashed around pretty badly but comes out alright until the slap. Even the farmer who you’d figure would deign to wave to a young girl, to acknowledge her existence, is on a machine, and of course does not wave. The loud cracks of the shotguns. Mouchette’s meek and earthy existence is threatened by horrible machines.
And institutions. All groups of people. By the way, Bresson was critical of the church. The film may not ‘denounce’ the church. Bresson said once, when he was making The Devil Probably, in his Paul Schrader interview, that he had a hard time feeling anything at church when other people were there. Understandable. The church (or all institutions) can be anathema to spirituality. Obviously.
I can’t come to any real conclusions about this film. It’s my favorite and I seem to only try to be moved by it again and again rather than think about it. I’m afraid to pin it down because it’d be ruined for me. Much of what has been said here is new to me because of that.
Funny that it’s my favorite of Bresson’s when it has the most technical flaws (I’m guessing). I assume the looping was necessary to lengthen the shot at the end. Also, no one’s mentioned the shot of the teacher pushing Mouchette. It was clearly sped up. And Mouchette’s tears are way too big and strange. Marie’s in Au Hasard Balthazar or Michel’s in Pickpocket are much more realistic. Though, Bresson said that Nadine Nortier really cried when she fed the baby. Maybe he’s mistaken because those tears are a waterfall.
Are these really technical flaws? Bresson isn’t known to be a sloppy filmmaker. Everything is there on the screen for a reason.
Well maybe they could have done better and in a different way, technically, but they do work for meaning and do not detract from the experience, so yes and no. Bresson was a filmmaker who liked keeping things simple as far as the technical aspect shows—A Man Escaped is practically experimental in how it informs a prison around white space. I had once read a series of quotes and interviews from him, this was unfortunately something like four, five years ago, where he explained basically that what is on frame is all he wants in frame, and nothing more. Perhaps I’m being too forgiving or ignorant of potential faults by doing so, but I have always watched his movies in such a way so where there is a loop of water or a sped-up fall, makes for me a Bressonian decision of, “What’s the simplest way to represent this, without too much else that can be read into it?”
Going back to the umpteenth time to the looped ending, in Au Hasard Balthazar the ending sort of jumps and trips too, in a different way. If we read the endings as transcendental, which I and some people here do, and others do not, it is significant because transcendentalism is typically signified with soft lighting, slow motion, and fade-to-whites. Bresson is an earthly, existential form of “transcendentalism”… sheep-bells and flickering water. It’s still transcendentalism, it’s just not pious, and better for it.
—PolarisDiB
I’ve seen other technical flaws. In A Man Escaped Fontaine peeks over a ledge. As he leans back Bresson has what appears to be a tiny jumpcut where Fontaine’s fingers, which we can still see over the ledge, disappear. Maybe it was a small hiccup with those frames or Bresson wanted the shot to be longer and added a second shot onto the first but put the splice right before Fontaine could pull his fingers back.
Don’t specifically remember others, but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen more.
DownByLaw
Daniel-
I think you are right that it is important that we see Mouchette only at the end. When the women in the town tell Mouchette that her mother’s death was quick and she didn’t suffer, that sounds false and they were just trying to reassure themselves. The mother’s declined actually looked like it was probably long and painful and Mouchette had nobody to turn to for help.
What struck me as odd about the dirt throwing is that the other girls barely react. Your realistic expectations is that a girl like Mouchette would be bullied and you would have a scene of her getting beat up and taunted. The girls do laugh when she cannot sing the song, but they barely react when she throws dirt on them. She is of no consequence for them. So, yes, reading those scenes as Mouchette’s resentment at seeing her classmates develop sexual interests and prospects that she is excluded from by being saddled with her baby brother and an angry father is good.