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Au Hasard Balthazar
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Our DVD Price: £15.99 RRP: 
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Film Description
Unadorned, unassuming, unsentimental, Bresson's masterpiece puts a donkey centre stage and through him we see all humanity. Never was an animal treated with such respect by a filmmaker; never were we viewed, in all our stupidity and transcendence, with such unrelenting compassion. 'Everyone who sees this film will be absolutely astonished, because this film is really the world in an hour and a half' - Jean-Luc Godard.
Film Information
| Director | Robert Bresson | ||||
| Starring | Francois Lafarge, Phillippe Asselin, Anne Wiazemsky
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| Genre | World Cinema
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| Country | France | Language | FRENCH | Year | 1966 |
DVD Extras
Restored print; Picture gallery; Bresson filmography.
Technical Details
| Certificate | PG | Length | 91 mins | Label | NOUVE | ||
| Cat No | NPD1023 | Format | DVD | Black & White | |||
| Region | 0 | Aspect | 16:9 anamorphic widescreen | ||||
| Subtitles | English. | ||||||
2 Stills
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Share your thoughts and opinions - write a review
Review by Doug Cummings on 26th October 2004
Of all of French auteur Robert Bresson's films, Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) may be his most beloved and yet rarely screened film. Ranked in the top twenty all-time great works of the cinema in Sight & Sound's recent polling of over 200 international critics, Bresson's masterpiece is a stunning parable framed through the stages of a donkey's birth, life, and death as it shoulders the pain of the world. Unlike most movies with animal characters, however, the donkey Balthazar remains completely non-anthropomorphic, mysterious and inscrutable, appearing only sporadically in the film's elliptical narrative.
Bresson, ever the chronicler of inner states, focuses more on the human characters in his story (one of his few non-literary adaptations) and draws from a cast of non-professional actors (or "models") who embody characters in rural France: the teenaged Marie (Anne Wiazemsky, future wife of Jean-Luc Godard) finds herself emotionally drawn to an amoral hoodlum, Gerard, and spurns her more conventional lover, Jacques; Marie's father inherits a farm property
and prides himself on its upkeep to a degree that scandalizes the local community; Arnold, a town drunkard, wanders around until he finds himself embroiled in a murder case.
The film is famous for its inimitable Bressonian touches: the beautiful faces of his models with downcast eyes and hidden souls, their physical actions emphasizing their hands; the vivid soundtrack assembled in careful tandem with every frame of the film-from layered rural sounds to material textures to Balthazar's heartbreaking braying; the precise use of Schubert's meditative sonata; the
cumulative power of the film's paradoxical treatment of behaviors and desires that reveal a portrait of the human condition; the philosophical tensions of free will and fate, suffering and redemption. It's a teasing, haunting, and deeply affecting achievement that could quite possibly alter the way you watch movies forever.
View more reviews by Doug Cummings
Article - "Robert Bresson: The Cinema of Hidden Souls"
by Doug Cummings
Monday 9th May 2005
Some filmmakers are creative tyrants, using cinematic techniques to prescribe emotional reactions. Other filmmakers believe less is more, offering subdued, elliptical, ambiguous works that paradoxically elicit deeper and more enduring feelings. In this latter categor... View article in full
Article - "Bresson's lucid cinema: Lancelot du Lac and The Devil, Probably"
by Jonathan Hourigan
Monday 31st March 2008
Lancelot du Lac
Lancelot du Lac is a towering, luminescent achievement. Bresson’s eleventh feature, his third in colour and the first of three collaborations with the distinguished Italian cinematographer, Pasqualino de Santis, it is amongst Br... View article in full
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This film is part of the following Film Collections
Sight and Sound Critics Choice 2002
Including: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andrei Rublev, Au Hasard Balthazar, Bicycle Thieves, Breathless (Godard, 1959), Charlie Chaplin - City Lights, Fanny and Alexander, Fellinis 8 1/2, Intolerance, Ivan The Terrible (Parts 1 & 2).
This film is part of the following Customer Film Lists
Films i wish others loved more. by Shane
Films Jeremy Paxman Won't Like by Alan Boshier
The recent deaths of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni were marked in fulsomely philistine fashion by BBC's Newsnight programme; in particular Mr. Paxman excelled in his very realistic portrayal of an arch art cinema hater. So, as a service to the esteemed Mr. Paxman, here is a list of films he should steer well clear of; accidental exposure would risk extreme apoplexy and other symptoms of cultural and artistic myopia.
Movie Weekness by Idris Babur
Reliving a year full of inspired film watching.
Top 10 DVDs of 2005 by David Parkinson
Recommendations from fellow customers
by Jean Renoir
More films directed by Robert Bresson
More films starring Anne Wiazemsky
Jean-Luc Godard Collection (Volume 2)
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