The Devil, Probably

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Film Description

In his penultimate film, Bresson lays bare the psyche of Parisian youth Charles as he drifts through politics, religion and psychoanalysis, seeking answers from each but ultimately rejecting them all. Keenly aware of the flawed, compromised society in which he lives, he comes to the conclusion that suicide is his only option.

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Review by Jonathan Hourigan on 2nd April 2008

Bresson was often drawn to existing literary sources, allowing him to concentrate on the substance and form of his films. The Devil, Probably is that rarity, an original script, and may therefore be interpreted as particularly personal. The central character, Charles, is bourgeois, intelligent and well-liked – he is also alienated, disillusioned and suicidal. Made in Paris less than a decade after the events of 1968, it seems nihilistic. But it is only ‘the devil probably’. It’s man who commits the ecological atrocities the film represents and it is man, or man reconciled with God, who can turn from the temptation of evil. The film is prescient, urgent, cautionary and powerfully expressive. These are not the virtues of nihilism and this is a vital, profoundly humane film.

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Review by Howard Schumann on 27th November 2003

Robert Bresson's The Devil, Probably, is a powerful cry of despair aimed at a world without values. In this 1977 film Charles, (Antoine Monnier) a young man of about twenty, rebels against society's destruction of the planet and arranges his own death as a protest. Bresson describes his work as "a film about the evils of money, a source of great evil in the world whether for unnecessary armaments or the senseless pollution of the environment." The film begins and ends in darkness and light is meager throughout. One is not used to color in a Bresson film but here color is almost non-existent.

Charles looks like a typical College student but has an air of superiority that is irritating. He has a nucleus of friends that are concerned about him but he gives little in return, showing no outward emotion and they all seem to move about in a catatonic state. Concerned about where Charles seems to be headed, his friends arrange for him to visit a psychiatrist but he tells Dr. Mime (Regis Hanrion) that his problem is only that he "sees things too clearly".

He reads from a crumpled brochure in his pocket, telling the doctor with great irony what he would lose if he lost his life: family planning, package holidays, cultural, sporting, linguistic, the cultivated man's library, all sports sickness, credit cards, and so forth. On his way to his ultimate protest, the young man hears the sound of a sublime Mozart piano concerto coming from an open window. He stops to listen as if trying to find the source of grace but is denied. When he sees that the music is only coming from a television set, he continues his journey to its inevitable conclusion.

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Review by marc pitanza on 19th September 2000

In THE DEVIL, PROBABLY, we see the quintesential exploration of bresson's own obsession: human movement. In the film one does not view performances; one views actions. Bresson's "sensations" are definitly felt here. This is a film that swings in mood, location and setting like verses in a poem by Rimbaud. Bresson paints a naked portrait of the psyche of parisian youth. A must have for Bresson fans and fans of true cinema.

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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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