Two-Lane Blacktop

 

 

January sees the release of Monte Hellman’s extraordinary Two-Lane Blacktop for the first time anywhere on Blu Ray as part of Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series. Not only the best film that followed in the wake of the success of Easy Rider, it’s also one of the very best American films of the 1970s. Earlier this year I had the chance to talk to the legendary director about his career, and what follows is a new interview conducted this week specifically about Two-Lane’s production, with a piece to follow on the outstanding new disc early next week.

What was Will Corry’s original script like? How did it differ from Rudy Wurlitzer’s re-write?

Well there was nothing similar at all, Rudy never actually read the first script. The only thing we actually kept was the title and the idea of a cross-country race. In the original, there was no GTO character, just four college kids in a convertible. The Mechanic falls in love with a girl, but not the same girl at all; she’s driving a VW Bug and he keeps dropping his mechanic’s rags out the window so she can follow his trail. It was kind of a Disney movie.

How much of a hand in Rudy’s shooting script did you have yourself?

I basically let him run free, but the script he wrote turned out to be very long in terms of shooting time and we wound up with a three and a half hour first cut which we cut down to an hour and three quarters. We really had to throw half of his movie away.

How did the finished screenplay come to be published in Esquire magazine?

Beverley Walker, our publicist, pitched it to them. They published it, then regretted it when they saw the movie.

This was your first (and only) studio movie. What was the experience like, making a film that’s so committedly anti-establishment within the studio system?

The deal we had was terrific, in the sense that we had final cut provided we delivered a picture that was under two hours, so they completely left us alone. But Lew Wasserman, who was head of the studio, didn’t see the movie until it was finished, had never read the script and he was offended by it. He felt it was too anti-establishment, so he withdrew any support for the picture.

Do you think it was a personal or commercially minded decision?

I think it was personal.

So you think the film’s lack of initial success was down to the studio not getting behind it?

It was a unique situation. It was before the days of Seagram and whoever else ultimately owned Universal, it was a one-man show; Lew Wasserman was the head of the studio and he controlled everything.

How did you come to cast James Taylor and Dennis Wilson?

I literally met with every actor under the age of thirty in Hollywood and didn’t really find what I was looking for. Then I saw James’ picture on a billboard and I was intrigued by his face, so I talked to Fred Roos, our casting director, about the possibility of meeting him and Fred brought him in. Dennis was about the last one we cast. I went through a lot of non-traditional roads on that role, I think Randy Newman was the last one I met before I found Dennis.

Has James Taylor seen the film now?

He still hasn’t seen it. He’s said that he feels that he could see it now, that he’d like to see it, but he still hasn’t (laughs).

Can you talk a little about how you found Laurie Bird?

I met her in New York when I went to have my first meeting with Rudy to discuss the screenplay. We had an idea about who the characters would be, and when I met Laurie I felt that she was a terrific prototype for the character, not thinking that she would ever play the role because she had no acting experience or particular interest. We taped a three hour audio interview with Laurie that we used kind of as a guide to the creation of the character, and when I struck out with trying to find someone to play the part in Hollywood, I forget who it was but someone had the bright idea “what about using the girl you used as your prototype?”. So we brought her out and did a screen test.

She was a photographer as well, right? Wasn’t she responsible for the publicity stills on Cockfighter?

She was an amateur photographer. I think that was the first professional work she did, she doubled as an actress and set photographer on Cockfighter.

You worked with the brilliant Warren Oates numerous times. What were the qualities that made him such a great fit with the types of stories you tell?

He was a very unusual personality in that he was apparently outgoing, extroverted, gregarious, but that was only one side of him. The other side was very mysterious and secretive, nothing that was overt but you felt that there was always something that you didn’t know about him. That’s what he projected, and that mystery made him such an interesting actor.

Did you find you had to adapt your working methods much when dealing with three newcomers and an experienced actor such as Warren?

There are always minor things that you adjust to. For example, you learn that some actors are generally better on the first take and don’t necessarily improve, whilst others will get better as they go along. So you have to learn, when doing opposing close shots, to shoot the actor who’s better on the first take before you do the other actor. As far as any particular differences between the so-called ‘non-professionals’ and the ‘professionals’, I didn’t find there was any difference between them, and I didn’t treat them any differently.

What was Jack Deerson’s involvement on the film?

Jack Deerson didn’t shoot a frame of the film. He would stay in the hotel in every place we went, he was never on the set. He was imposed by the union because they refused to take (cinematographer) Gregory Sandor into the union.

What was your working relationship like with Gregory Sandor? You’d worked with him on The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind, and I’m curious as to how much you influenced each other in creating Two-Lane’s particular visual style, the depth of focus, the composition…

The deep focus came from Gregory because he was a master of knowing where that line was between one actor and another to ensure that both would be in focus. I’ve never seen any other car movie where you have so many scenes with two actors in the front seat of a car, both being in focus. I can’t think of any other movie where that’s the case. Either it's a lost art, or it was possible because Techniscope used flat (as opposed to anamorphic) lenses, where the equivalent to a 40mm Panavision lens was 18mm in Techniscope.  It still required knowing the exact distance at each diaphragm setting where both would be in focus, and it definitely wasn't half-way between them. Gregory was a master of that. As far as everything else went; he wasn’t excitable, he just did his work. After every take I’d always ask, “How was it?”, and his constant retort was “It was OK”. Then we did one shot on The Shooting, the one where Warren takes the saddle and the bridle off of Coley’s horse and gets on his own, then Coley’s horse follows them as they go off into the sunset; we literally had one chance to get it because it was the last shot at the end of the day, and I said “How was it, Greg?”, to which he replied “It’s probably the best shot I’ve ever taken!” (laughs).

Was there a long pre-production period on Two-Lane? Did you spend a long time seeking out the locations?

We did one rehearsal trip, where we travelled the same ground we would cover when we came to actually making the film, in which we picked the locations and the people who would participate. The main time in pre-production, as it always is, was spent on casting.

To what degree was the film art directed? Did you change many of the locations to suit the film’s requirements or were you shooting what you found as they were?

I don’t think we changed anything. We shot what we found. There aren’t many interiors anyway, but we just kept them as they were. I don’t even remember if we had a credited art director.

What did you find were the benefits and the challenges of shooting the film sequentially?

Well, you don’t normally get to do that. It was certainly helpful for the newcomers, to those who were less experienced. I didn’t give them the script, just their pages every day, so they were living it as they went along, their experience from previous days and previous scenes would determine who they were on any later day of the shoot.

I understand that was something that James Taylor wasn’t too happy about?

He said he wouldn’t work any longer if I didn’t give him the script, but then of course he didn’t read it when I did (laughs).

Can you talk about the cars? The ’55 Chevy and the GTO have since become icons of the American road movie. What made you settle on them specifically?

The ’55 Chevy was the prototype street-racing car that was admired probably more than any other, so that was easy. The GTO was dependent on which deal we made with who was going to provide us with the cars. I knew nothing about the whole sub-culture, so part of the excitement for me was meeting those people and seeing what that was all about. Our first scenes were with the LA street racers, which was pretty amazing.

The film has a very specific rhythm to it, can you talk about how you went about assembling the film? Did it go through many versions? Does any of the extra footage still exist?

All the footage is long gone, Universal destroyed it many years ago. The process of whittling it down had to do with the first rule of editing, of cinematurgy, which is to get to the major question as soon as possible. Of course, that’s the point in Two-Lane Blacktop where they decide to race, so there were a lot of scenes in the early parts of the script that were thrown out, not because they weren’t good, but because they delayed the real start of the movie. I really regretted losing some of those wonderful scenes; there was one where they are chased by the cops, they pull off the road into a driveway and look through the windows of a house to see a normal family, it was kind of poignant, but for the good of the movie we had to lose it.

Were there any specific influences for you when making the film?

The inspiration for my take on the movie came from Truffaut’s Shoot the Pianist. I see a real similarity; the tragic flaw in each of the heroes is very similar. That was my reference when making the movie.

The Driver and The Mechanic are polar opposites to GTO, they’re entirely insulated by their own hermetic world of engines and carburettors, whilst GTO’s identity is seemingly a shifting construct of his own devising, as though he’s hiding out in a persona that he’s not entirely comfortable with. You just mentioned a cut scene about a ‘normal family’ they come across, so I’m curious about what you think the film says about notions of identity and society, about the ways we try to fit in or rebel against them?

One of the things I remember saying after we made the film was that for me it could have just as easily have been about a filmmaker, that car racing was just really the background, it’s really about the artist, I guess. In a sense, Road to Nowhere is a really a continuation of those themes.

It’s a theme that seems to run through all of your pictures to some degree, the personas we create for ourselves, twinned images and characters are found throughout your films. Warren Oates in Cockfighter refusing to speak, the twinned characters of Millie Perkins and Jack Nicholson in The Shooting, GTO in Two-Lane. It seems to reach an apex in the meta levels of performance versus reality in Road To Nowhere…

I don’t know at which point I saw it in relation to any of my movies, but I was very taken by Bergman’s Persona. The idea of Persona fascinated me and I began reading psychological, philosophical books on the subject. It is something that kind of goes with the territory, something that actors have to deal with. I love actors and when I make a movie I try to make them accept this point of view which I have, that they should not try to become the character, that the character has to become the actor. I’m always looking to find what’s interesting in these people who are playing these roles, they’re always much more interesting than any character on a page.

It's a film that seems to reject the self-mythologising tendencies of many westerns, those of the likes of Easy Rider too, it's not a nihilistic film the way that film ultimately is, but the ending does suggest the fragility of the sense of freedom the film evokes; the film burning up, combusting, as though the American Dream and these self-constructed mythologies are purely cinematic constructs. What does the ending say to you?

Even after we shot it I was uncertain, but the reason I ultimately decided to use it was because I’d had an emotional response to it, and that was what convinced me that I should leave it in. The initial idea was purely intellectual, it was the idea of speed, the speed of film going through the gate of a projector relating to the speed of a car. That wasn’t enough though, I felt that if all I could do was draw attention to that, that wasn’t a good enough reason to use the shot. Once I’d had an emotional response though, I went with it, hoping that if it worked for me, it would work for everyone else.

Do you think it says anything about the way cinema tends to romanticise the idea of say, the freedom of the road, that in drawing attention to the fact that it’s a film by stopping it as you do, rather than ending it in a more traditional sense, it rejects that kind of romanticism?

Yeah, it’s the idea that movies usually end with a kiss, or a marriage or something. But that’s not the end of anything; life ends with death, that’s the only true ending. Everything else goes on. So a film shouldn’t end, it should just stop. That’s what we do, we force it to stop, but just because the film ends, these people still go on, doing what they’re doing.

 

L'originale è qui:

http://www.cinephile-uk.com/2011/12/monte-hellman-on-two-lane-blacktop.html

'55 Chevy vs Pontiac G.T.O.

OGGI

AL CINEFORUM PEPPUCCIO TORNATORE



La retrospettiva dedicata a Robert Bresson termina al Cineforum con l'opera maggiore di un autore americano che riprende lo stile del maestro francese, provare per credere.

La cinepresa attrezzata di lente anamorfica indugia sulla strada e sui personaggi carpendovi gli stati d'animo ed il paesaggio in una storia tipicamente on the road, colorata dalle canzoni westcostiane dell'epoca.

James (Caroline on my mind) Taylor e Warren Oates non escono mai da quell'apparente recitazione che caratterizza il cinema bressoniano.

Mi viene un ulteriore suggerimento:in questo film Monte Hellman coniuga Robert Bresson con l'ausilio di Sam Peckimpah.

L'art et les films de Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson : La même image amenée par dix chemins différents sera dix fois une image différente

"Pouvoir qu'ont tes images (aplaties) d'être autres que ce qu'elles sont. La même image amenée par dix chemins différents sera dix fois une image différente."
Robert Bresson, Notes sur le cinématographe

Image... (dernier plan de Mouchette, de Robert Bresson)

...et chemin de l'image (vidéo : dernière scène de Mouchette, de Robert Bresson)

Tutti e nessuno

IL FILM DI NATALE

Tre cose insopportaili

Tre cose mi risultano insopportabili: il caffè freddo, lo champagne tiepido e una donna bollente. Orson Welles

Assunta sono

OGGI

Assunta si reca oltre Manica con un mandato di uccidere per difendere l'onore, difeso, l'onore, diventa , da bruna, rossa, e  trova l'amore.

The sad story of a disadsvanteged and friendless teenage girl in rural France

 

Robert Bresson’s Mouchette (1967) tells the sad story of a disadvantaged and friendless teenage girl in rural France. Usually there was a hiatus of several years between Bresson’s productions, but Mouchette was filmed immediately after his Au Hasard Balthazar and features some common elements and themes with that film. Both depict ill-fated girls living a tormented life in rural French society, which itself is portrayed as violent, mean spirited, and alcohol besotted. Because of these thematic commonalities, the two films are often paired by critics and held in mutually high esteem by Bresson’s admirers. There is one striking difference between the two, however. While Au Hasard Balthazar was, unusually for Bresson’, based on his own script, Mouchette was adapted from an existing text – in this case a novella by Georges Bernanos, another of whose works had served as the basis for Bresson’s masterful Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d'un Curé de Campagne, 1950). But apart from the nature of authorship, there are other distinctions and points of comparison between Mouchette and Au Hasard Balthazar, as I will elaborate further.

Bresson’s films have been considered to be spiritual, or even religious, and certainly his films reveal the influence of his Jansenist Roman Catholic upbringing. But I would argue that they are not so explicitly religious, although they do evoke the fundamental Existentialist issues that are invariably addressed by religions and theological schools. After all, Bresson characterised himself as an agnostic, so we should not really expect him to be completely obsessed by religious schema. Perhaps it is best to fall back to the term, ‘transcendental”, which Paul Schrader used to characterize Bresson’s work. In any case Mouchette represents a further progression in Bresson’s movement towards a pessimistic view of human nature and the prospects of redemption. Whereas redemption was at least held as possible in Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped (1956), and Pickpocket (1959), when we proceed further and get to The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), and Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), the possibilities of redemption seem, at best, only subjective. Finally with Mouchette, the picture moves even further away from contemplative melancholy and closer to complete despair. In spite of its gloomy outlook, however, Mouchette was named in a 1972 poll conducted by Sight and Sound magazine to be among the top twenty greatest movies ever made.

By the time of the making of this film, Bresson’s cinematic aesthetics were famously austere, even severe. He restricted himself to nonprofessional actors, who were instructed to read their lines in a flat, automatic fashion, without the slightest trace of theatrical interpretation. This was done in order to present the cinematic viewing experience as something original, rather than as a photographed version of some narrative that had been situated in another form of expression, such as a novel or a play. As I remarked in my review of Balthazar,

. . . Bresson always forces the viewer to construct his own, individual diegesis. Bresson argued that when we experience immediate events in our everyday lives, there is no causality. A causal understanding of experience is only produced later, upon reflection. Bresson wanted the audience to have this direct causal-construction experience with his film narratives, and for this reason he didn’t want his actors (which he preferred to call “models”) to inject their own interpretive causal renderings in their roles. He didn’t want them to “perform”, because this would inevitably lead them to introduce their personal causal interpretations that would disadvantage the constructive experience for the viewer. It is for this reason that he insisted on those flat performances of his models, with downcast eyes that disconnected the players from each other. As a consequence, each viewer of a Bresson film will have to construct his or her diegetic interpretation purely within the framework of his or her own experiences.

It follows then that the viewer often sees events in Bresson’s films in something of a reverse order: first the events depicting an effect are shown, and then the events that provide a causal explanation of that effect are shown moments later. Events presented this way can place the viewer into a mode of existential experience aligned with the film’s protagonist. In the case of Mouchette, Bresson’s concern with aspects of causality is a key issue, since the causal motivations of Mouchette’s final actions are open to our interpretation and somewhat problematic.

The story of the film, which proceeds through four main sections, is covered in some detail, because a number of elements accumulate to create the overall theme.

I. Setting the Scene (11 minutes). This comprises four disconnected scenes that separately introduce the principal characters, whose identities and relationships will be revealed gradually.

1. A lone woman laments her declining condition, saying, “what will become of them without me”. After she leaves, the camera remains fixed on her empty chair, thereby establishing the visual motif of absence and isolation that will dominate the film.
2. A game warden in the forest eyes a poacher snaring birds. Filmed almost exclusively in closeups, the scene compels the viewer to patch together the images and to try and make the connections.
3. The game warden walks back into town and passes some girls on their way to school. One of the girls in the foreground hears her name called, “Mouchette”.
4. The game warden, Mathieu, goes to a tavern and earnestly propositions the barmaid, Louisa, but she seems indifferent. Then two bootleggers unload a truck full of whiskey crates and deliver them to the tavern. After downing shots of whiskey, they drive home, where Mouchette is attending her sick mother (the woman seen initially).

II. Romantic Frustrations (16 minutes). The next day in school, Mouchette, with shabby old clothes and clunky wooden clogs, is harshly scolded by her teacher for not conforming with the class group singing activity. After school, Mouchette hides near the road and flings mud at her better-dressed classmates. Then on her way home, a village boy attempts to humiliate the friendless girl by brazenly exposing himself to her. Later, on Sunday after attending church, the villagers go to the tavern, where Mouchette works helping the bar made, Louisa. Afterwards, Mouchette wanders over to the town fair and wistfully stares at the bumper-car ride concession. A passing lady gives Mouchette coins needed to go for a ride, and she quickly joins in the fun, soon engaging in a flirtatious bumping rivalry with a well-dressed village boy in another bumper car. But after the conclusion of the ride when she timidly approaches the boy, her father comes over and rudely slaps her in the face for being a hussy, reducing the poor girl to tears. Louisa then comes to the fair with the poacher, Arsene, and they get on another concession ride together, much to the jealous consternation of the onlooking Mathieu.

III. Mouchette’s Night Out (26 minutes). The next day, Mouchette is back to flinging mud at her classmates again after school. But the other schoolgirls just ignore the abuse and ride away with their boyfriends on their motor scooters, while Mouchette looks on enviously. She runs off into the nearby forest, but she gets caught in a sudden rainstorm and hides under a tree to wait it out. When the rain finally stops, it is already dark, but as she starts to walk home, she hides when she sees the gun-wielding Mathieu in search of the poacher Arsene. We then follow Mathieu, who finds and confronts Arsene. But after an initial fistfight, they fall to the ground and are soon laughing and drinking whiskey together like old comrades. Somwhat later, Arsene finds Mouchette hiding and takes her to his hut in the woods so that they can take shelter from what he calls the “cyclone”. There he confides to her that he thinks he may have killed Mathieu and demands that she testify to a false alibi that would cover him should the police question her. Wanting to remove evidence that he was in the forest that night, Arsene then takes her to the village tavern and breaks into the back room. But shortly after entering the room Arsene falls into a frightening epileptic seizure and starts thrashing on the floor. Mouchette, moved by his suffering, holds him still and then tenderly sings her school song to him as he gradually comes to. But when Arsene completely regains consciousness, he has forgotten about his confession and Mouchette’s assurances of loyalty, and so he tries to prevent her from leaving the hut to go home. Eventually he overpowers her and rapes her, and she ultimately submits.

IV. No Way Out (27 minutes). Mouchette eventually escapes from the tavern and returns home early in the morning. In a short space of time she then has a series of dispiriting experiences:

1. In a daze and crying from her harrowing experience, she tries to look after the baby for her helplessly ill mother. But her mother soon succumbs to her illness and dies.
2. The next morning Mouchette goes out to get milk for the baby. A grocery store lady expresses her sympathies to Mouchette concerning her mother and offers the girl chocolate. But when she sees some scratches on Mouchett’e neck, the woman rudely calls her a slut.
3. On the way back to her home, Mouchette passes by the gamekeeper’s house and sees that he is perfectly OK – Arsene’s story of having killed the gamekeeper was illusory. The gamekeeper and his wife accuse Mouchette of carousing with Arsene and harshly question her, but Mouchette defiantly tells them that in fact she loves Arsene.
4. As Mouchette walks home, a wealthy old lady invites her inside and gives her a shroud and some dresses. But the woman’s age and incessant talk about death only put off Mouchette, and she rebelliously whispers under her breath, “you disgusting old thing”.
5. Continuing home Mouchette walks past the forest again, where men are shooting rabbits. Seeing a rabbit shot by the “sportsmen”, she rushes over to watch it in its death throes.
6. After these experiences, Mouchette walks over to a pond and sits near the bank. She holds up one of the dresses that the old lady had given to her, but it tears on a branch. Apparently distraught over the spoiling of her one nice possession, she puts the torn dress over her and rolls down the hill towards the pond, perhaps merely to complete the ruination of the dress. When she sits up, she sees a tractor in the distance and calls out to it, but although the driver stares back, he does not respond. She goes back to rolling down the bank again, but now with the intent of rolling all the way into the pond. On her second attempt her suicidal act is successful, and the camera remains focused on the pond.

When we compare Mouchette to Au Hasard Balthazar, it can be seen that despite some common elements, there are also very marked differences. In fact one might speculate that Mouchette was conceived to overcome a deficiency that was present in that immediately preceding film of Bresson’s. In Au Hasard Balthazar, there was no observable, or even possible, justification or motivation for Marie’s slavish love for the thug, Gerard. There was no hint of a comprehensible human relationship. This prevented the viewer from engaging in any existential empathy with Marie (and of course, such empathy was equally impossible for the innocent, but opaque, donkey, Balthazar). Both Marie and Balthazar may have engaged our sympathies, but not our empathy. But in Mouchette the situation is somewhat different. Even though the hopes for meaningful personal relationships are ultimately frustrated, at least the quest for genuine human engagement is observable and once or twice seems possible. This is highlighted by the brief moment of tenderness that Mouchette feels for Arsene after his epileptic fit – one of the most intimate and touching moments in the entire Bressonian canon.

In fact the quest for a meaningful relationship that would establish her identity (to herself) is what underlies the film. As Bernanos and Bresson knew well, we understand ourselves in terms of our meaningful relationships with others. Mouchette is seen throughout as an “unperson” who is completely isolated from the village and not recognized as a normal human being. Her father brutalizes her; her classmates ignore her; and the village boys mock her. Throughout the film she tries the little acts of rebellion common to all children that represent minimal assertions of selfhood. She mischievously spills milk when serving her family coffee. She intentionally sings off key in her classroom. She stomps her Sunday shoes in the mud. And she scrapes her muddy shoes on the old lady’s nice carpet. These minor misdemeanors are indicative of her limited opportunities for free expression and action. Apart from her mother, there is only one person who treats her like a human being, and that is Arsene. That is why she swears that she would die for him and why she defends him to the gamekeeper even after he raped her.

But the adult world, dominated as it is by artefacts, machines, and mechanical manipulation, seems to offer her no opportunities for a self-defining human relationship. This is symbolized by both the sound of intrusively noisy trucks incessantly passing by her apartment and the boys’ motor scooters that whisk away Mouchette’s classmates. Mouchette’s one opportunity to experience this mechanical world – when she rode the bumper cars – was only a fantasy that ended in pain and humliation. Her alcohol-fueled father holds his cap and pretends he is driving his truck when he falls drunkenly into bed: mechanical control is what dominates his dreams. They all have their contraptions: her father has his truck, Mathieu and the rabbit shooters have their guns, and Arsene has his animal trap. In fact, the adult world is so artificial and schematic that, as far as Mouchette is concerned, there is a sense of unreality to it. What is real, and what is not? When Arsene and Mathieu appear to be fighting to the death in the forest, they suddenly and mysteriously start laughing and drinking together. Arsene tells Mouchette that the storm was a “cyclone”, but the next day her mother, whom she trusts, tells her that there wasn’t one. Arsene tells her that he killed Mathieu, and the next day she sees Mathieu perfectly unharmed. Was all her suffering on behalf of Arsene just a dream? After seeing her mother die in suffering and the innocent rabbit blown apart by the hunters’ rifle shots, life itself must have been held in question.

Thus Mouchette is very much an existentialist tale of loneliness and isolation, while Au Hasard Balthazar is more of an expressionistic nightmare of pure suffering. Mouchette was impaired, however, by the progressive austerity of Bresson’s now-rigid mise en scène. This is exemplified in Bresson’s differing adaptaions of the two texts by Bernanos. As literary works, both Bernanos’s Diary of a Country Priest, and his Mouchette were told as first-person French histoires. Bresson’s earlier filming Diary of a Country Priest was faithful to Bernanos’s first-person narrative, and the result was brilliant. But by the time of the filming of Mouchette, Bresson eschewed such causation-infected narrative contrivances, to the detriment of the viewing experience. This degree of aesthetic self-discipline on the part of Bresson distances the viewer from the character of Mouchette and enervates the power of the story. Although Mouchette may be more sophisticated and more profound, Au Hasard Balthazar is more powerful.

In the last analysis, one might ask whether Mouchette was devoid of any hope at all. That final calling out to the tractor driver on the part of Mouchette in the film is reminiscent of Joseph K’s final, hopeful glance up to the lighted window in Franz Kafka’s The Trial. This was one last appeal for a meaningful interaction. Something more than the cold stare that Mouchette received might have saved her life. But those life-saving “something more” gestures are all-too rare in this world

 

L'originale è qui:

http://www.filmsufi.com/2009/03/mouchette-robert-bresson-1967.html