Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971)

Four Nights of a Dreamer / Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)
Four Nights of a Dreamer / Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)

Genre: Drama
Director: Robert Bresson
Starring: Isabelle Weingarten, Guillaume des Forets, Maurice Monnoyer
Duration: 87 min.
Rating: 8.6/10

Summary:
The 'dreamer' is Jacques, a young painter, who by chance runs into Marthe as she's contemplating suicide on the Pont-Neuf in Paris. They talk, and agree to see each other again the next night.  Over the next couple of nights, Jacques falls in love with her...


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Four Nights of a Dreamer is directed by Robert Bresson, it is his second film film in color, and is based on the short story White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky.  It is a well-crafted and compelling romantic story with a surprisingly light almost comical tone.  The dreamlike cinematography is outstanding and filled with gorgeous scenes of Paris, especially during the night.   

All of the music used in the film is diegetic, and these scenes are the highlights of the film.  Including several beautiful long takes of random street musicians performing, and one absolutely hypnotic two-minute scene of Isabelle Weingarten standing naked in front of a full length mirror while a Spanish ballad plays on the radio. 

Often overlooked and underrated, Four Nights of a Dreamer is truly one of Bresson's greatest works, and definitely his most beautiful.  It is a downright shame that the only version of this film available is a bootleg of dubious origin with terrible video quality.    

Four Nights of a Dreamer / Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)

Four Nights of a Dreamer / Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)

Four Nights of a Dreamer / Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)

Four Nights of a Dreamer / Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)

Four Nights of a Dreamer / Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)

Four Nights of a Dreamer / Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)

Four Nights of a Dreamer / Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)

Four Nights of a Dreamer / Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)

6 comments:

Hermann Rorschach said...

While I won't be checking this one out, I now know what 'diegetic' means.

Rrisetter said...

Siq Post Bro

The Angry Vegetarian said...

So now I'm going to have to figure out how to watch this. I will find it, as I always do. I'm a resourceful vegetarian.

The Angry Lurker said...

Sounds like a real slow burner.

Biff Tanner said...

Yeah looks just a tad slow for me.

The Angry Vegetarian said...

Ok, so finding it wasn't that hard. I just did a google search of the title and the first result was the movie on video.google. Very cool.

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