Robert Bresson

Les dames du Bois de Boulogne

Les dames du Bois de Boulogne

This unique love story, based on a novelette by Denis Diderot and with dialogue written by Jean Cocteau, follows the maneuverings of a society lady as she connives to initiate a scandalous affair between her aristocratic ex-lover and a prostitute. With his second feature film, director Robert Bresson was already forging his singularly brilliant filmmaking technique as he created a moving study of the power of revenge and the strength of true love.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1945
  • 84 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • French
  • Spine #183

Special Features

  • Stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes photos
  • Essays by François Truffaut and David Thomson
  • New and improved English subtitle translation

    New cover by Christine Ditrio

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • Stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes photos
  • Essays by François Truffaut and David Thomson
  • New and improved English subtitle translation

    New cover by Christine Ditrio
Les dames du Bois de Boulogne
Cast
Paul Bernard
Jean
María Casares
Hélène
Elina Labourdette
Agnès
Lucienne Bogaert
Madame D.
Jean Marchat
Jacques
Credits
Director
Robert Bresson
Story by
Robert Bresson
From a story by
Denis Diderot
Dialogue
Jean Cocteau
Producer
Raoul Ploquin
Cinematography
Philippe Agostini
Editing
Jean Feyte
Camera operators
Maurice Pequeux
Camera operators
Marcel Weiss
Production design
Max Douy
Set decoration
James Allan
Set decoration
Robert Clavel
Assistant director
Roger Mercanton
Sound
Robert Ivonnet
Sound
René Louge
Music
Jean-Jacques Grünenwald

Current

Once There Was Everything
Once There Was Everything

The director of the newly released Columbus takes a close look at how doors open onto philosophical mysteries in the films of French master Robert Bresson.

By Kogonada

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Robert Bresson

Writer, Director

Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson

A singular, iconoclastic artist and philosopher, Robert Bresson illuminates the history of cinema with a spiritual yet socially incisive body of work. Famously dubbed a “transcendental” filmmaker (along with Yasujiro Ozu and Carl Dreyer) by Paul Schrader, Bresson is notable for continually refining the strict precision of his style—abolishing psychology, professional actors, and ornate camera work, and instead concentrating on the rigid movements of his “models” (as he called his actors) and the anguished solitude of his martyred characters. While the alternately tender and brutal allegory Au hasard Balthazar is widely considered Bresson’s masterpiece, he had a long, visionary career that began in the forties and ended in the eighties, and was full of consistently fine films—the period drama Les dames du bois de Boulogne, the ascetic character study Diary of a Country Priest, and the minimalist tragedies Pickpocket and Mouchette among them.