Four Nights of a Dreamer

"Four Nights of a Dreamer" is my first Robert Bresson film, and my first impression of his style and ethos. This film is one of several adaptations of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "White Nights", but from what I gather from reading about the other adaptations this is the only one worth seeing other than Luchino Visconti's lovely "Le notti bianche". While I enjoyed that film nearly as much as this one, "Four Nights of a Dreamer" is more striking and ambitious, thanks to Bresson's intelligent and thoughtful screenplay and the beauty of the cinematography and simple economy of Bresson's direction.

The adaptation is loose, but needs to be. Dostoyevsky's writing is too reliant on the reader's perception and the emotional core of the story to be effective when literally translated to film, but is ripe for interpretation, and Bresson's is particularly interesting as he moves the story to 1970's France, introduces more emotion and passion to the characters, and actually makes the cinematic cliché of the aimless artist interesting and involving.

The story is simple, Jacques (the 'dreamer') meets Marthe as she is about to commit suicide because her lover had promised to meet her that night after being away at Yale for a year but hadn't shown up, they become friends, share their stories over four nights until Marthe's lover shows up and they are forced to part. Bresson's script is remarkable, though, in its occasional wit and humor, in the uniqueness of its characters, in its observations on modern life and being in love. Even more impressive than the screenplay is the striking cinematography by Pierre Lhome, particularly during the nighttime scenes in Paris, which is shockingly beautiful at times.

My first impression of a legendary director like Bresson could have resulted in disappointment, but I am now interested in exploring his filmography because I found his mute style so appealing. Most interesting was his ability to be very literal and clear through his use of the camera without seeming heavy-handed at any point. This is a wonderful, strikingly beautiful film.

9/10

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 ****

I saw this film twice with Japanese subtitles. Tonight I saw a print (and very different version) with English subtitles.

In this film, Bresson makes everyday life beautiful.... the lights on the river, the Brazilian music coming from a beautifully lighted tour boat going under the bridge the lovers are on... The story is small... An aimless artist prevents a woman from suicide and listens to her story and tries to help her reunite with her lover. This story seems to be seen through a dark filter of the beauty of Paris and its people.

A scene where the heroine is making love in the next room while her mother is walking back and forth calling her name, not realizing that her daughter is right next door... Her voice gets louder and softer and louder...

The scene with the aimless artist following one beautiful woman, only to be distracted by another beautiful woman whom he then follows....

There are many small beauties in this film. And my telling you about them will only make you anticipate them with pleasure.

Bresson, working with a minor little story has created a film of great beauty. Good luck finding it....I was fortunate enough to see it at a theater twice, where the beauty of the scenery could be appreciated. For some reason, it is not out in video or DVD. The DVD I saw probably had the photographer setting up his camera in the dark theater... and shooting at the screen!

Four Nights of a Dreamer is not quite my favorite of the adaptations of Dostoyevsky's White Nights as that would to Visconti's achingly romantic and sad melodrama Le Notti Bianche, but it is a fairly engrossing drama that features some welcome and (from Bresson) unexpected humor that marks this as if not a departure than something a little different (though maybe needed after his prior, much more depressing but still great A Gentle Woman from two years before, also a Dostoyevsky story). What makes it so different is not that it focuses on someone who has an obsessive even OCD streak, but how he shows the character.

I think Jacques is so quiet about his obsessions, making odd eye-less paintings that no one will probably see outside of his one male friend and doing countless recordings into his portable tape recorder where he goes back to listen to the existential tragic romantic musings, and it may not be noticeable at first that he would be what is dubbed today an "Incel" (in France, you can get one of those at McDonald's, har har). Yet he is nice and sweet to the young Marthe, who is about to jump into a river when she first meets her as she is despondent over her lover not coming to see her since his return to Paris and to be by her side as she is overcome with her many many feelings about him.

I have to wonder if by this point in his career, or there may be less to wonder as it just seems to be the case, that 70 year old Bresson so knew his minimalist style, and this in a period of post Free-Love would-be Sexual Revolution times, that it was time to poke a little fun at what we are seeing. That may sound like a bold statement, but take the part of Marthe's "History" segment where we see her and her mother go to a film screening (she was kind of duped to go by some local guy who just wanted to screw with her) and it is a violent shoot-em up spectacle... only this being Bresson, everything is drained of emotion, to the point where a man is shot and style writhes around in poetic fashion and waits to do a hand motion until he can finally be at rest in death.

I watch that and couldn't help but laugh, and it is intentional (I should hope), and that was a pleasant surprise given that Robert Bresson was coming off of some of the most emotionally rigorous and sad films ever made (just imagine if Marthe and her mother had been seated for Mouchette!) This is not the dominant mode, but there is not only a sly streak here and there, and an apparent running commentary on the Jacques character - Bresson doesn't come out and say it directly, he doesn't have to as that is just the filmmaker he was, that while not a bad person he certainly is so alone that he has become maladjusted and his love for Marthe is both genuine and misguided - but on romance itself as a kind of mood.

I say this and yet I do think there are parts of this that have genuine romantic feelings, or at least there are those passages in the night segments where Jacques and Marthe come across groups playing guitar and singing, one group on a boat sailing down the river while some others are more vaguely Hippie/Folk like, and it is something that may or may not be affecting the characters but it does affect us. There is even a mood to some of these parts where these maybe/maybe not melancholic love-birds walk around and maybe Linklater saw this and had it somewhere in the back of his mind when writing/directing the first Before entry(?) Or if Jesse and Celine were less talky and more... French (yes, even more than Celine, one more har-har).

The end of the film is what makes this even more memorable or just interesting than what came before it. It is very good on the whole, and there is a sweetness to much of it that is so compelling to watch given that this filmmaker was so set in his ways with his actors and the whole "you must do this many takes so you are drained to your minimal essence as a peformer" while there is still an intensity in the eyes and some of the physical movements and gestures, which take on some extra importance (such as Jacques moving around those bottles and cans in his cabinet and his OCD is on full display to me, or the way Marthe looks at herself naked in the mirror as guitar plays).

Once that ending comes, it is this less ironic to me than inevitable; he will continue to paint and talk to his tape recorder, and his "non" life will go on. For now. This is a sneakily remarkable film that on paper is melodrama and executed is more satirical, if that makes sense.

My Rating : 6/10

Minimalist, inconsequential and bland - that's how I would describe 'Four Nights of a Dreamer'.

Bresson's typical ascetic approach to cinematography is no doubt visible however it fails to make any impact on this viewer.

The aimless artist meets a damsel in distress is cinematic cliche and while there are bits of 1970's life and society of France - the lack of emotion makes the story ineffective and dispassionate.

No doubt the worst film-work of all of Bresson's stellar filmography.