Product Description

Regarded by many as a masterpiece, Bresson's film tells the story of a young man living in Paris who desires more from life than the glib, superficial truths and material things that are on offer to him. He reaches out to his friends and psychiatrist to provide him with the great answers in life. But his spiritual deliverance remains beyond his grasp until he reaches a bizarre arrangement with a fellow drifter. Shot in his signature spare style, Bresson's penultimate work is as visionary, hyptonic and enduring as any of the films in his truly remarkable career.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5490 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-04-28
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 93 minutes

Synopsis
A young man, disillusioned at the state of the world, retreats into nihilism. French dialogue with subtitles.

Customer Reviews

Late Bresson movie
In The Devil Probably (1977) we follow Charles, young and alienated and probably searching for a meaning of life, or maybe he has given up on that. Like other Bresson movies like L'Argent, the actions and intentions of the protagonist is not always totally clear, at least not to me. Bresson does not give us an easy or mainstream story played by mainstream actors. Instead he gives us his vision of the world and society. Here he also uses what he calls "models" insetad of "actors", that is the actors are just to deliver the lines and not really act by displaying emotions and so on.

As I see it, Charles problem is not just as he says: that he sees things too clearly. That is, he sees all the bad stuff in the world and therefore can't find any meaning in anything: environmental pollution, the list of things you "have to do" like raising a family, education, work and so on makes him sick and bored near death. Charles is a slacker in the 1970s, and he refuses to contribute to the society he finds so rotten (but he clearly has no problem using others money). But clearly Charles also has got problems relating to other people. He finds himself "superior" and more intelligent than others (and feelings of "superiority" is a theme in Bressons earlier Pick Pocket). And therefore he don't really care for others, despite his idealism with books about "saving the planet". The other characters are more caring about each other - and for Charles. (Maybe Charles is even a sort of fascist?) I won't go into the ending here as it may spoil the experience. This dark movie demands some reflection afterwards.

The DVD from AE has very clear and stable picture. There are no extras, but at a price of 8GBP it is very good value for money.

Late Bresson
Sometimes, the outward manner of a work of art (the "style" or "form") may be incredibly rigorous and intensely stylized, yet the thematic concerns (the "story" or "content") may be wildly disorganized, almost anarchic. It may seem a heresy to say this of Robert Bresson, but after UNE FEMME DOUCE (1969), his concentration on youth and his determined pessimism led him into a series of increasingly fragmented works, perhaps mirroring his fractured sense of the world.

THE DEVIL, PROBABLY is surely one of the most schizoid film in Bresson's career: there are (literally) unleavened chunks of didactic discourse, droning lectures over immaculately edited stock footage showing atrocities done to animals (baby seals, etc.) and the planet. The "message" isn't even subtle: Bresson wants to clobber his viewer with his vision of a planet gone beyond redemption, now in the throes of degradation and destruction. Yet Bresson lingers over his youthful protagonists, in their (deliberately) blank ambiguity (innocence? inexperience?), and he allows the camera to catch them in moments which come perilously close to emotion.

The fracture in the movie's structure is symptomatic of what seems to be an almost hysterical need to make a statement on Bresson's part (and he was never known for didacticism before). Yet, as photographed by Pasqualino De Santis, this is one of Bresson's most seductively tacticle works, with the lighting seeming to irradiate most of the scenes.

The late 1960s and early 1970s seemed to be a time when many in the French cinema were driven to make apocalyptic fantasies: Godard with ALPHAVILLE and WEEKEND, Truffaut with FAHRENHEIT 451, Louis Malle with BLACK MOON, Alain Resnais with JE T'AIME JE T'AIME, even Jacques Demy with THE PIED PIPER. But Bresson didn't turn towards science fiction for his apocalypse: he turned to science fact, and let the facts speak for themselves to come up with this vision of hell on earth.

Descent into Hell
Robert Bresson is probably upset with the world of the late 70s. During the introduction of the group of activistic Parisian youth, which becomes Bresson's ensemble of the film, problems of the present are scattered at us with direct hits. Environmental issues such as Oil-dumping, seal-extermination, pollution, overpopulation, industrial interest in rain forest as well as the need for modernity in Christianity surrounds our band of outsiders. What frightens me is that these problems and statistics have increased muliple times since then, and left us now, with even more troubled minds. When a teenage girl inserts nude photos inside Church programs and Bible booklets in the Cathedral to provoke disgust, a teenager named Charles with mid-long dark hair, steps up to his group and tells them that this is not respectable. After the opening credits, a newspaper displays Charles' face on the cover, with the headline: "Parisian teenage committed suicide." Only to be replaced by a new coverage: "Parisian teenage murdered". I find Charles, the most interesting figure in the film, and his search for answers for his existence in a decadent world, gets more and more intense. The love of his girlfriend is not enough, stealing money is too accessible and the psychiatrist is avoiding to go deeper into his troubles, because he is above all interested in money. What are the reasons why Charles is giving up on the world? The world through his eyes seems to be both senseless and unbearable. I like how material concern, the focus on success and fame are depicted as enslavement of people, manipulating our way of living and alienating our inner selves. Bresson is very clever at following the same stream of consciousness all the way to the inevitable death of the teenager. The film feels confident as Robert Bresson's next film 'L'Argent' which follows the usage of fake money from unaware teenagers, to the hands of an axe murderer. Both film are searching for something of a soul in society. I think Bresson is less preoccupied with external threats to our existence, which is mere backdrop, than the need for spirituality in the world, which many find in religion. This seemingly hopeless search is what drives the film forward, even if we learn that all misery today can probably be blamed on the devil.