Les anges du péché

An early work by Bresson, I was lucky enough to see a restored version of the film at Cannes Film Festival this year. It is a fine film, though unfortunately is not so fresh in memory. It is a different sort of film from his later work, lacking both its intense bleakness and its incredible originality. It is nonetheless a very powerful and pure work, which explore the Christian themes of self-sacrifice and redemption with a kind of intense, candid, clear-sighted conviction that one would expect from Bresson. Its story about two women who choose to join a convent, and the different reasons for doing so (one being essentially self-less and the other a selfish who is "on the run")is far more compelling than it might sound. As usual there is a brilliant precision in its film language and narrative, and it conveys its social ambiance and characters (the various nuns mostly) using Bresson's typically stripped-down, modest style which mangages to be engagingly dramatic. For an atheist I also found myself completely engaged by the film's concerns because of the honest, complex and sparing way in which Bresson explored them. He was certainly a very different sort of Christian to most of the ones who come knocking at my door...

Robert Bresson's first feature film, ANGELS OF SIN examines the power of religious piety and sets the story within a Dominican convent where female ex-cons are rehabilitated, and makes great play of a professional cast.

Our angelic protagonist is Sister Anne-Marie (Faure), hailed from a well-to-do family, but resolves to devote herself to the noble work of reforming the sinner, and her prime object is Thérèse (Holt), a prisoner claims that she is innocent, and right upon her release, she takes her revenge to the man who should be accountable for her imprisonment and then joins the convent to dodge the punishment, much to Anne-Marie's delight (who doesn't twig her true purpose), who takes Thérèse under her wing.

But Anne-Marie's beneficent intention and zealous alacrity is brushed aside by Thérèse's penitence-free lying-low stopgap, who in turn, cunningly stokes discords between a naive and vivacious Anne-Marie and the more stolid and jealousy-inflamed ones whose telling opinions of the former are at once self-revealing and acrimonious, after a squabble about a black cat, its fallout has Anne-Marie ousted from the convent, but it takes her sacrificial final act (a bit sickly though) to finalize her lofty mission, redemption is achieved with haunting clarity in its solemn coda.

A rigid exercise in his craft of shaping up a spiritual parable, Bresson's self-disciplined style is in its inchoate state, stunning chiaroscuro and beatific soft focus compositions notwithstanding, the story has been retouched with a sentimental glamor mostly owing to Renée Faure's virtuous performance in the center, an effect soon Bresson would ditch roundly after THE LADIES OF THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE (1945), whereas a fiercely snarky Jany Holt manifests more stamina and inscrutability which is more likely consonant with Bresson's aesthetics.

The internal power play and peer pressure inside a convent is only scuffed without patent virulence, which saves us from another nun-demonizing diatribe and grants Bresson a more sagacious eye on religion and humanity, although ANGELS OF SIN can be hardly extolled as a groundbreaking jumping-off point from a future auteur.

An absorbing melodrama with great performances from Renée Faure, Sylvie and Jany Holt. Novice nun Anne-Marie, slightly worryingly over-confident, embarks on a fervent mission to redeem a particularly troubled convict, Thérèse.

The script is really strong, and particularly as it portrays the life of the convent. The saints'-wisdom-tombola and the conversation in the laundry are charming, and the ceremonies and submissions quietly powerful.

Anne-Marie's urge to do good becomes increasingly insufferable, and then unhinged to the point where she denounces the sisters' pet cat. The cat, rather than her thankless protégé Thérèse, whose response to Anne-Marie's selfless love, or perhaps her foolish religious pride, comes increasingly to the fore in a deeply moving ending.

Before World War Two, France had one of the most vibrant movie scenes in the world, just behind Hollywood and Germany. But with the onslaught of WW2, most of the French filmmakers fled the continent. However, director/scriptwriter Robert Bresson decided to stay, and took advantage of the void to direct his first feature film, June 1943's "Angels of Sin." He would direct only thirteen full-length films, but his impact in cinema remains high, especially to those working in film in the late 1950s during what is known as the 'French New Wave' era.

Jean-Luc Godard placed Bresson in the highest echelon of French film directors. "Bresson is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music." Francois Truffaut called him one of the very few true "auteurs." At 42 when Bresson handled his first feature film in "Angels of Sin," he had spent his younger years as a painter and a photographer. Bresson had directed only one short film, 1934's 'Public Affairs,' but he had written four film scripts prior to 1940 which became movies. Enlisting in the French Army when war broke out, Bresson was captured by the Germans and spent a year in a prisoner-of-war camp before paroled.

Under Germany's thumb, Vichy France restructured French cinema, and the dearth of filmmaking talent made Bresson a highly-sought after commodity. The Catholic director was assisted by famous dramatist Jean Giraudoux and Dominican priest Raymond Bruckberger, who suggested a book on the Sisters of Bethany who rehabilitate female convicts. Bresson's screenplay is centered on Anne-Marie (Renee Faure), a do-gooder who decides to join a convent to help those incarcerated. Her first assignment is Therese (Jany Holt), a bitter woman who unwittingly took the rap for her boyfriend's stealing. Once Therese is paroled, she immediately kills her former lover, and seeks to hide out from the police by joining the convent. Therese, the nunnery's bully, gets Anne-Marie in trouble where she's banned from the convent. Anne-Marie is so persistent in her attempts to reform Therese she repeatedly slinks back at night, leading to a spiritual awakening for both. "However distant from his later work it may be," says film reviewer Erik Ulman, "'Angels of Sin' remains not only recognizably a Bresson film, but one of great power." This is one of only two movies he had hired professional actors; all his others consist strictly of amateurs. His debut set a commonality which appears throughout his future movies, including his characters' salvation and redemption. Like his subsequent films, Bresson's pares down superfluous details of events not crucial to the main plot, known as ellipsis.

Some critics draw a parallel between the convent and Vichy France in "Angels of Sin" which Bresson subtly gives certain hints. German officials monitored each of the 230 films produced by the French during WW2, carefully inspecting and cutting any negativity towards the Axis powers. Popular for French film-goers during the war were adaptations of literature and drama, crime and melodramatic thrillers. German and Italian-produced films attracted only flies in France. Film critic Greg Klymkiw noticed "Angels in Sin" "deals very cleverly and subtly with the way in which the nunnery operates in comparison to the prison and most importantly, how the secular world is essentially the Vichy and the religious world, the Resistance." "Angels of Sin" was Bresson's only directed film during the war. But it was a springboard to one of the most fertile body of works in French cinema by one director.

More people should see this beautiful film! It is easily available on amazon.fr (with subtitles), free for streaming on youtube or google video, or for download on the usual sites. It looks great and the print is fine for 1943. The grim corridors of the prison and the foggy streets outside the prison, makes for a suitably noirish contrast to the shining white walls and robes in the convent. Although the professional actors and the suspenseful plot make this an atypical Bresson film, the careful camera framing and the discrete panning produces typically sparse and detailed interiors. The plot may be melodramatic and music a bit intruding at times, but almost every scene is a joy to behold. There are a lot of interesting little touches that show in great detail the daily life and the more mundane side of convent life, clothing regulations, mores etc.

I find that I watch this film more for the aesthetic quality of the individual scenes than for any statement the film as a whole might have. There are also many oddities: For example when Therese knocks upon the convent door after shooting her betrayer, sister Anne Marie is chanting a text from what, one might assume, is a book of prayers. The title, however, reads: "Leo Tolstoj : Krig og fred", which makes it a Norwegian or Danish version of Tolstoy's War and Peace. Strange? But the most impressive and memorable sight in the film for me is the early scene when the submissive sisters lay face down with arms outstretched cross-like on the cold floor. It is almost frightening in its austere beauty, and also very strange for anyone without convent practice. It is the strangeness that does it. Like every Bresson film, I guess.