Four Nights of a Dreamer

Revered for his minimalist approach to cinema, writer-director Robert Bresson shows an unerring artistic eye for his surroundings in this French-Italian co-production (in French with English subtitles); however, he stumbles with this pallid script (inspired by Dostoyevsky's short story "White Nights") about two young people in Paris. It's a flashback-heavy non-romance between a starving artist and a suicidal girl. After stopping her from leaping from a bridge, the painter finds himself drawn to the girl during an intimate conversation wherein they reveal to each other their past and present regrets (she's still pining for her fickle lover). Bresson and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme do capture lyrical, lazy bits of business--and sensual, though not particularly erotic, female nudes. Unfortunately, the characters never take shape, and the amateur actors (a Bresson specialty) aren't compelling. ** from ****

From all the Bressons I've seen this week, this one is the hardest to describe. I liked a lot, but I don't exactly know what it was that I liked. The film, taking place mostly at night in the streets and on the bridges of Paris is somewhere in between the typical lethargy and an a-typical hysteria and is about utterly lonely people that meet up with people who are even lonelier. It's fascinating to look how those change directions all the time, interrupt actions to start a completely different one, jump from one anecdote to another. It's a fascinating jumble; you never know what is going to happen next and very similar to Cassavetes' Shadows (which I tend to like more).

An art-school kid meets a sad-faced girl on the Pont-Neuf; she's about to leap. It seems her beau left for Yale, swore he'd meet her one year later to the day--and he's blown her off. Love ensues between the couple on the bridge; Joe Yalie fails to make his appointment; and all seems to be heavenly for the two young lovebirds. Until, of course, days later, Joe Yalie comes a-callin'...

The relationship between a painter's self-torturing love life and his efflorescent work life was explored with a riotous, blasting, punk-rock yet p**s-elegant glee by Martin Scorsese and company in the short film LIFE LESSONS. Bresson's version of a similar tale is, to put it lightly, less communicative. Late Bresson--from THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC on--puts a premium on mum's-the-word. But in a late, underappreciated masterpiece, UNE FEMME DOUCE, Bresson's deliberate muteness worked: this adaptation of a Dostoevsky story about a blinkered husband decrypting his wife's suicide prods at the question "What do women want?" with comic and sensuous tactics unseen elsewhere in Bresson. And the emphasis on the unreadable--made literal in Bresson's concentration on shoulders, hands, backs of heads--fit the material like a glove.

The Dostoevsky source material for FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER is simpler stuff. And more psychological stuff, too--which, mated with Bresson's deliberately dime-store-Indian, anti-acting style, makes for incoherence. You can't make out just exactly what Bresson thinks this movie is about, except a touching, and not altogether lecherous, affection for Today's Youth. It has freaky asides, like his other unhinged youth movie THE DEVIL PROBABLY: an art student pontificates on his moral agenda for painting in a bowlegged scene that suggests Bresson standing up in the movie theatre and reading from a tract. It has bits of rock music performed live that take you back to the with-it-ness of Otto Preminger's SKIDOO. And it has the hero's weird, unfinished, Pop Art-meets-Matisse paintings, everywhere. And it ends with a sadder-but-wiser shrug.

You get the feeling Bresson's heart and soul slammed painfully into every frame of this movie. It's also inscrutable and not absorbing in the least. Is this the fate of all master directors who make it to a ripe old age--they keep their chops, but they simply have no more stories they're impassioned to tell?

This is one of the worst movies made by a well acclaimed director, i've ever watched. A travesty, seems even like a mockery of Dostoevsky's short story. I am not sure if my contempt is due to the comparison with the Luchino Visconti masterpiece (WHITE NIGHTS, 1957). But i think i would still dislike it, even i hadn't watched Visconti's film. Maybe not that much though.

FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER has nothing to do with dreamers. Dreams, lovers and love. To say this is absolutely dry, emotionless and cold, would be an understatement. It is even worse than this. Actors with a charisma of a table, lifeless characters acting absolutely weird, displaying only lust occasionally, and definitely not love, romance or anything else human.

Only reason i gave it 4 stars is out of respect for Dostoefsky. Some of his words are spoken here, so i can't rate it lower. Still, this movie is a disgrace.

Quatre nuits d'un rêveur was shown in the U.S. with the title Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971). It's written and directed by Robert Bresson, based on the short story "White Nights" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Bresson has moved Dosteovsky's story from 19th Century St. Petersburg to 20th Century Paris, which I think works very well. Both cities are centers of art and romance, and the story and film are all about art and romance.

Jacques, a painter (Guillaume des Forêts), prevents Marthe (Isabelle Weingarten) from committing suicide, and naturally, he falls in love with her. (In view of Ms. Weingarten's sadness and her ethereal beauty, Jacques basically had no choice but to fall in love with her.)

However, we soon learn that Marthe is in love with another man. He has been in the U.S. for a year, and was due home on that day. That fact that he did not call her is what prompted her suicide attempt.

The film follows Marthe and Jacques for the four nights of the title. They walk the streets of Paris, and return to the Seine where musicians on a tourist boat are playing samba music. Jacques is serious about his painting, and discusses art with a friend who comes to visit.

We know something is going to happen, but we don't know what. You'll have to see the film- -or read the short story--to find out what that something is.

Bresson--as always--directs with the secure sure hand of a master. Every shot is beautifully framed, and we can almost feel the Paris night and hear the lapping of the Seine against its banks.

We saw this intense, quiet film at the wonderful Dryden Theatre in Rochester's Eastman House. Other reviewers have noted that it's difficult to purchase on DVD. That's unfortunate, because it would work fairly well on the small screen, and it definitely is worth finding and seeing. It's a jewel-like masterpiece.