The reason the film does succeed, and rises to greatness, rests primarily on the shoulders of the lead actress, Nadine Nortier, who, despite little dialogue, conveys great depths within her character, despite being a non-professional actress at the time. On the other hand, Jean-Claude Guilbert (a professional actor who also appeared in Au Hasard Balthazar, as another drunkard, Arnold) is also very good. The rest of the cast is solid. Yet, critical missteps abound, especially when some claim Mouchette is filled with anger. Yes, there may be acts of seeming anger (tossing dirt at her female rivals), bur clearly the character of Mouchette is a walking mass of desensitization. This would explain why she reacts the way she does to sex with Arsene, rather than seeing it as her 'striking back' at the world. The cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet is not spectacular, but then it need not be. It does, however, have the simple look and feel of a film shot decades earlier, and one need only compare this film with a film like Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai, a color film made the same year, to get a sense of just how unique Bresson's vision was. The same is true for the scoring of the film, with little music that is not diegetic. Since the film rises and falls on its tale and performance, the technical aspects merely have to be solid, and they are.
The DVD, put out by The Criterion Collection, is a very good package. The transfer of the film is first rate, as the 81 minute black and white film (Bresson's last film sans color) is shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The special features are also quite good. They include an insert essay by Robert Polito that is short on critical masturbation, and quite pointed; the film's original theatrical trailer by Jean-Luc Godard which, when seen against the film, is utterly at odds with it; a documentary called Travelling, which is a segment from a TV series called Cinema, and has interviews with Bresson, Nortier and Guilbert; another documentary, called Au Hasard Bresson, about the director; and also an audio film commentary by film critic Tony Rayns which flows very well, is not too scripted, is scene specific in its comments, and conveys both passion and erudition; traits too often missing in most commentaries. His lone weak spot comes when trying to explain (rather justify) the rather weak ending. Rayns claims that death, for the girl, was preferable to life, and that Mouchette had fulfilled her life, with sex and death, in the last day of her life, with the death of the rabbit being the final straw; but there is just no evidence for this, and Rayns, himself, is dubious over Mouchette's reaction, since she is a girl of the rural life, where hunting is a normal activity. And, while that may be what Bresson intended, and what the character may have thought, a critic needs to go beyond merely aping explanations put forth by an artist, especially in matters that so clearly demonstrate an artistic failure, and one which seems to accept, in toto, that failure, merely due to the reputation of the artist as 'spiritual,' therefore beyond needing to make his art cohere.
However, despite that failure, Mouchette is a great film, one whose concision heightens its power, and one whose deftness of portrayal burrows more deeply into matters than its good, but skeletal, screenplay does. One of the best techniques Bresson uses to get more out of each brief scene is through the use of repetitions of actions in unrelated scenes, which then connect those scenes to others. For example, when Mouchette's teacher punishes her and forces her to sing a song, it is under duress. Mouchette sings that same song while trying to tend to a seizing Arsene. Mouchette is pushed by her father whenever she wants pleasure, and she then pushes Arsene before she has sex with him. There is also a scene where Mouchette is wet, working in the bar, and then gets some coins as payment. Later, in his hut, she is wet, and Arsene pays her some coins to go along with his story regarding Mathieu's presumed death. What this does is not only link divergent scenes in a strictly visual and cinematic way, but it emphasizes the elliptical and cyclical nature of the film, where recurring images and motivs abound. Yet, all of them are slightly askew, and the camera always seems to look at its lead character's life slightly askance, as if it was somehow recapitulating the clearly warped view of life Mouchette owns. In essence, the film called Mouchette recapitulates the point of view of its character Mouchette, which allows the viewer to both 'feel' a bit of the character's warp, while also being able to step back and intellectually distance oneself and 'understand' the character's warp.
Whether or not Bresson intended this doubled perspective on life, it, and many of the film's other strengths more than make up for its weak ending, and lift it to a greatness that, while it falls short of the utmost in the canon of great cinema, nonetheless makes Mouchette a film for which the term great is applied a surety. There are, certainly, worse ways to misfire, slightly or otherwise.
The DVD, put out by The Criterion Collection, is a very good package. The transfer of the film is first rate, as the 81 minute black and white film (Bresson's last film sans color) is shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. The special features are also quite good. They include an insert essay by Robert Polito that is short on critical masturbation, and quite pointed; the film's original theatrical trailer by Jean-Luc Godard which, when seen against the film, is utterly at odds with it; a documentary called Travelling, which is a segment from a TV series called Cinema, and has interviews with Bresson, Nortier and Guilbert; another documentary, called Au Hasard Bresson, about the director; and also an audio film commentary by film critic Tony Rayns which flows very well, is not too scripted, is scene specific in its comments, and conveys both passion and erudition; traits too often missing in most commentaries. His lone weak spot comes when trying to explain (rather justify) the rather weak ending. Rayns claims that death, for the girl, was preferable to life, and that Mouchette had fulfilled her life, with sex and death, in the last day of her life, with the death of the rabbit being the final straw; but there is just no evidence for this, and Rayns, himself, is dubious over Mouchette's reaction, since she is a girl of the rural life, where hunting is a normal activity. And, while that may be what Bresson intended, and what the character may have thought, a critic needs to go beyond merely aping explanations put forth by an artist, especially in matters that so clearly demonstrate an artistic failure, and one which seems to accept, in toto, that failure, merely due to the reputation of the artist as 'spiritual,' therefore beyond needing to make his art cohere.
However, despite that failure, Mouchette is a great film, one whose concision heightens its power, and one whose deftness of portrayal burrows more deeply into matters than its good, but skeletal, screenplay does. One of the best techniques Bresson uses to get more out of each brief scene is through the use of repetitions of actions in unrelated scenes, which then connect those scenes to others. For example, when Mouchette's teacher punishes her and forces her to sing a song, it is under duress. Mouchette sings that same song while trying to tend to a seizing Arsene. Mouchette is pushed by her father whenever she wants pleasure, and she then pushes Arsene before she has sex with him. There is also a scene where Mouchette is wet, working in the bar, and then gets some coins as payment. Later, in his hut, she is wet, and Arsene pays her some coins to go along with his story regarding Mathieu's presumed death. What this does is not only link divergent scenes in a strictly visual and cinematic way, but it emphasizes the elliptical and cyclical nature of the film, where recurring images and motivs abound. Yet, all of them are slightly askew, and the camera always seems to look at its lead character's life slightly askance, as if it was somehow recapitulating the clearly warped view of life Mouchette owns. In essence, the film called Mouchette recapitulates the point of view of its character Mouchette, which allows the viewer to both 'feel' a bit of the character's warp, while also being able to step back and intellectually distance oneself and 'understand' the character's warp.
Whether or not Bresson intended this doubled perspective on life, it, and many of the film's other strengths more than make up for its weak ending, and lift it to a greatness that, while it falls short of the utmost in the canon of great cinema, nonetheless makes Mouchette a film for which the term great is applied a surety. There are, certainly, worse ways to misfire, slightly or otherwise.