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Rants, Rates, Slags, Slates. Manic-depressive posts from Red Wright-Hand. Because there are thousands of worthless blogs out there and who am I not to add to their number?
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Thursday, November 20, 2003
The world’s most punctilious blog takes only slightly under two weeks to report that I had the (somewhat-)recent opportunity to view a theatrical screening of The Devil Probably (d. Robert Bresson, 1977), introduced by none other than Richard Hell, who I can literally say looked a Hell of a lot worse than when I saw him perform live in 1982. (I'm looking lots worse since that evening myself, but not a Hell of a lot worse. I hope the distinction is clear.) The discomforting fact proved to be that, while Hell has apparently become a touring spokesman for this particular masterpiece (and Bresson in general), he hasn’t become a particularly good spokesman; while introducing the movie, he lost his train of thought more than once, complained of hearing loss (but not from having seen the movie so many times, ha ha), and more or less rambled self-involvedly about how much Devil affected him when he first saw it. (In 1999! This truly surprised me, as Hell would seem to be, or was at one time, the epitome of NYC-hipsterism, and if there was anywhere you might see Bresson’s masterfully austere films without too much trouble, it would be Manhattan, so what the hell took Hell so long to recognize the great man's work? Hell, even the Philadelphia repertory houses showed his movies back in the 80s, which is when and where I fell in love with them, so you know they were playing in New York too. Was Hell too sleepy from heroin to pick up a schedule from the Thalia or the Bleecker Street Cinema? On the other hand, I never wrote Love Comes in Spurts, so there.) Anyhow, an uncomfortable introduction of the gosh-isn't-Uncle-Richard-getting-dotty variety notwithstanding, The Devil Probably is another outstanding movie from one of my favorite directors (whose L’Argent I sometimes consider the very greatest film ever made). Devil is the story of an almost beatifically anguished young man in contemporary (c. 1977) Paris, of whose death we learn in the very first minute, and whose deliberate abstention from life becomes a supreme comment on a spiritually polluted world. Who is responsible for this awful condition? "The Devil Probably." Or is the young man "simply" depressed to a clinical degree? The film would be unendurable (as it apparently was for a few audience members who walked out of the screening) if not for the characteristic care which went into every shot (there’s a great one where the hero, literally en route to his death in a cemetery, overhears some Mozart through an apartment window, stops on the sidewalk to peek in, realizes the music is coming from a TV set and continues on in disgust), as well as the clear sense that there is nothing fashionable or self-righteous whatsoever in Bresson’s despair, rather that he is working as clearly as his gifts allow him to perceive the elements surrounding him. This, as so many other of his films, is a deeply personal wail of horror at how far humanity tends to fall from its ideals. |
