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| Isabelle Weingarten and Guillaume des Forêts in Four Nights of a Dreamer |
Cast: Guillaume des Forêts, Isabelle Weingarten, Jean-Maurice Monnoyer, Giorgio Maulini, Lidia Biondi, Patrick Jouané, Jérôme Massart. Screenplay: Robert Bresson, based on a story by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Cinematography: Pierre Lhomme. Production design: Pierre Charbonnier. Film editing: Raymond Lamy. Music: F.R. David, Louis Guitar, Chris Hayward, Michel Magne.
Robert Bresson's spare, terse Four Nights of a Dreamer is not for those who want their love stories lush and passion-filled. It's about the accidental and fragile nature of mutual attraction. Jacques (Guillaume des Forêts) is an artist whom we first see thumbing a ride out of Paris into the country, where he does somersaults and annoys a promenading family by briefly bursting into song. Then he returns to the city where, out walking at night, he sees a young woman on the verge of flinging herself into the Seine. She is Marthe (Isabelle Weingarten), who is distraught because she thinks she has been abandoned by the man she loves. For four nights, Jacques tries to help her reconnect with him, and just when they seem to be forming their own connection, they encounter her lover on the street and she goes off with him. Jacques returns to his apartment and resumes work on his painting and his dreams. The Parisian night's soft colors and shadows and the music of street performers provide the emotional content of this understated romance, which shows the steady hand of its director without his frequently harsh view of human attempts to connect with one another.
