It's hard to believe that Robert Bresson could muster a strong cast and create a powerful drama with a few dollars, when James Cameron could not do it with $200 million. Bresson simply uses the powerful imagery of a gutsy writer, Georges Bernanos, and makes his film in a rural context of unchanging basic values and prejudices.
I have no idea what happened to his lead, Nadine Nortier, but she seems never to have appeared in another film --- that has to be most unusual for an actress showing such talent. Her ravisher, Jean-Claude Guilbert, also seems never to have acted again. So here we have two excellent performances from amateurs who never acted again (as far as we can tell), working for a brainy French film-maker who made 16 feature-films in his 98 year-long life.
The directorial method consists of as little dialogue as possible, and plenty of symbolic actions, often balancing out in different scenes. Bresson is working in the Euro-world of other heavies such as Ingmar Bergman, and money has nothing to do with it. It's a world of ideas and movements.
In Mouchette, a pubescent girl in a disadvantaged situation is misused by a drunken fellow villager. Her very difficult and complicated night trying both to live up to her idea of womanhood and to fend off her rapist creates great conflict within her that after a couple of days trying to cope she deals with by self-destruction.
An unhappy ending usually spells death for all but very particular films, and this one is cited by Criterion as a world classic, but can only muster 15 comments on IMDb. So we see that few are interested in the work of big minds.
I have no idea what happened to his lead, Nadine Nortier, but she seems never to have appeared in another film --- that has to be most unusual for an actress showing such talent. Her ravisher, Jean-Claude Guilbert, also seems never to have acted again. So here we have two excellent performances from amateurs who never acted again (as far as we can tell), working for a brainy French film-maker who made 16 feature-films in his 98 year-long life.
The directorial method consists of as little dialogue as possible, and plenty of symbolic actions, often balancing out in different scenes. Bresson is working in the Euro-world of other heavies such as Ingmar Bergman, and money has nothing to do with it. It's a world of ideas and movements.
In Mouchette, a pubescent girl in a disadvantaged situation is misused by a drunken fellow villager. Her very difficult and complicated night trying both to live up to her idea of womanhood and to fend off her rapist creates great conflict within her that after a couple of days trying to cope she deals with by self-destruction.
An unhappy ending usually spells death for all but very particular films, and this one is cited by Criterion as a world classic, but can only muster 15 comments on IMDb. So we see that few are interested in the work of big minds.