"Au hasard Balthazar" is a co-production between Sweden and France from 1966, so this film is almost 60 years old now, maybe older if you get here a little later to read this review of mine and France is definitely the defining country here because this is where the film is set and also people are speaking French from beginning to end. Apparently, a little Latin is included as well. Given the mid1960s, it is not really a surprise that this film is still black-and-white, but does have sound. They were also going with the French title here for releases in the English-speaking territories, so this says it all. The writer and director was Robert Bresson, who was already around the age of 65 when this came out, so minimally younger when it was filmed and this is a contender for his most known work, if it is not even a given that this is by far his most known work. He worked on a double-digit number of films over his career that started already in the 1930s, but it was not a high double-digit amount. He was not the most prolific filmmaker in contrast to other French greats from his time. This movie we have here, which runs for over 1.5 hours, but under 100 minutes won really big at Venice back then and also scored solidly with the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics and a few more bodies here and there. It is far from forgotten now as we are deep in the 21st century and it is self-explanatory that this film is for example also still shown in Germany on the big screen. This was where I saw it two days ago and there were many people in this actually really big room where it was shown. I am glad about that because I really love donkeys and they are a bit underrepresented in movies I would say, even if there was a successful Polish film from not too long ago that had a bit of a similar background with a donkey being at the center of the story and as we follow the grey animal, we find out about the people next to him.
It is not too different with this movie here. The donkey is the star and so is the story. You will not find any really famous names in the cast here, for pretty much every cast member this film here is also easily their most known. The majority of performers is French, but there are two exceptions. First would be one of the female protagonist's love interests portrayed by Walter Green. I would at least imagine he is not French with the name. What stands out about him, probably even more than his performance here, is that he realized one career credit in the movie industry is enough for him and he went on to work as a dentist afterwards. And of course that he is indeed the father of actress Eva Green, who appreciated acting more than her dad. Green plays the good guy here, who seems genuinely in love with the character of Marie, who, however, is drawn to the dark side portrayed by François Lafarge. The latter acted in more films than Green, but also did not come close to lead actress Anne Wiazemsky, who was so young here and kept acting until the late 1980s and then lift on for another 30 years before passing at the not really old age of 70. She was born in my city Berlin, even if I would have thought her to be Polish given the name. But I see her birth name even different, sounded very Russian. It is also interesting that she was married to Godard for over a decade in the 1970s. You cannot blame him. She is absolutely breathtakingly stunning in this film here, when during shooting she was maybe 18 or 19 only. This movie here was apparently her film debut and the screen time she has showed that she would not be going away anytime soon.
There is also no other lead in this film except the donkey perhaps. With my appreciation for this animal, it is also tough to choose if I liked him more or if I preferred Wiazemsky. Maybe a shared victory. The two also have a lot in common here. Both are basically suffering throughout the movie. The donkey is never really treated like a beloved creature by anybody here, but only used as an animal to perform duties and if he is not fast or strong enough, he is beaten. He can never really get out of his role, even if there are maybe two occasions where people at least talk kindly about him. With the girl, it is not much different. She also cannot really get out of her role as all the men that see and approach her desire her, but do not really treat her well either. Or actually, the character played by the aforementioned Green does, so in a way she is more to blame than the donkey because she is really held back by her feelings and hormones because of her attraction to the young brute who does not treat her well at all. Who hits her, takes her sexually whenever he wants to and also is not scared of showing her that he likes other women too and is in touch with those. He is definitely considered the main antagonist. The moment when he literally sets the donkey on fire was one of those the hardest to take and maybe it is a case of foreshadowing about what is going to happen to the girl in the end if she stays too long in the young man's proximity. The one thing he maybe isn't is a murderer. Apparently, a character got killed, not one we really know about, and we are presented a suspect. The police then also come to the suspect's place, but tell him that he is free and he will not go to court or jail. So, there we have an example of how justice did not win and it is definitely not a film where beauty defeats the beast, but rather the opposite where the beast devours beauty and leads to its demise, even if we are not told explicitly that the young woman is dead in the end or how she died, but we hear the words that she is gone and won't return and it seems unlikely that she was just sent to live in another city.
What we do know is that donkey dies in the end. It feels almost biblical how he is surrounded there by all those sheep that initially take a bit away from this being a sad moment. There were people laughing in the crowd when the donkey was surrounded by the sheep here. This also shows us that the donkey is of course the key player here. The film starts with his birth, his very young and also very furry days and ends then with him leaving this Earth. Of course, he is also included in the title, so there is no doubt that he is the big player in here, even if he disappears for quite some time in the second half of the movie. It is not a very long film, but there were scenes that did not really do a lot for me. They were also not so bad that I would say they should have been omitted, but they just did not add super much. This includes all about the murderer. The scene when he is confronted by the brutes is one that felt a bit strange to me because he initially seems to be so eager to physically defend himself, but then when it counts, does nothing. The celebration of his "innocence" was also not too great. What was more interesting, was when the young brute leader gives the man a gun to defend himself against the arriving police (officer) and the boy knew that there were no bullets in the barrel, so probably he was planning for the man to be killed by the police officer because he now knew the man would not be getting to jail, even if he tells the alleged killer something different. So there was certainly some scheming going on. Maybe this young man there was a bit of a French equivalent to James Dean, who was already dead at that point for (almost) a decade, but still already a defining icon of (American) film culture. You will not find too much harmony in this movie. One example was the opening when the donkey is still a furry baby and later on there was a scene in which the female protagonist petted the donkey and put some flowers on his head. That was cute. Maybe she realized that the two were not so different after all.
As for other positive emotions, I thought that the funniest moment was maybe how the donkey was looking at the circus animals, something he had never seen before and probably also the other way around. Interesting nature encounter, even if the cages made it a bit sad. Admittedly, they also saved the donkey's life. When the film begins, you will also hear donkey noise. I interpreted it as an expression of discomfort. I may be wrong there too. So yeah, there were some scenes in this film I really liked and others that did not do a lot for me like for example also towards the end when the girl is with this considerably older man and does not really have any other option than to sleep with him there. It is implied. After all, it was the 1960s and they did not get too graphic. But it also would not have fit into the film's narrative. Another thing that caught my attention was how on at least two occasions cars drove by to interrupt the young bad guy's actions, so there was a glimmer of hope for us in the audience that somebody could get out and do something, but it was not meant to be and the boy literally looked at the car driving away and immediately afterwards he continued with his awful actions. What stays in the end, is also those words from the old lady directed at the young female protagonist when the latter tells her about her affections for the brute and she just responds by calling her a "poor, poor girl" or something like that. I do not have the exact words and it may have been something different in the French script anyway as I was watching with English subtitles. But it really underlines the overall tone in this movie. There are no winners really and those who come closest are certainly not the good guys, but the violent ones. It feels realistic though and that is what matters most and does not take away any quality from the outcome here. So I give this film a thumbs-up overall, which was never in doubt, even if I wanted to like the film even a little bit more than I finally did, but who knows, maybe I can change it to an even higher rating if I ever rewatch. You should watch it too, just don't expect a feel-good movie. It is the polar opposite.
It is not too different with this movie here. The donkey is the star and so is the story. You will not find any really famous names in the cast here, for pretty much every cast member this film here is also easily their most known. The majority of performers is French, but there are two exceptions. First would be one of the female protagonist's love interests portrayed by Walter Green. I would at least imagine he is not French with the name. What stands out about him, probably even more than his performance here, is that he realized one career credit in the movie industry is enough for him and he went on to work as a dentist afterwards. And of course that he is indeed the father of actress Eva Green, who appreciated acting more than her dad. Green plays the good guy here, who seems genuinely in love with the character of Marie, who, however, is drawn to the dark side portrayed by François Lafarge. The latter acted in more films than Green, but also did not come close to lead actress Anne Wiazemsky, who was so young here and kept acting until the late 1980s and then lift on for another 30 years before passing at the not really old age of 70. She was born in my city Berlin, even if I would have thought her to be Polish given the name. But I see her birth name even different, sounded very Russian. It is also interesting that she was married to Godard for over a decade in the 1970s. You cannot blame him. She is absolutely breathtakingly stunning in this film here, when during shooting she was maybe 18 or 19 only. This movie here was apparently her film debut and the screen time she has showed that she would not be going away anytime soon.
There is also no other lead in this film except the donkey perhaps. With my appreciation for this animal, it is also tough to choose if I liked him more or if I preferred Wiazemsky. Maybe a shared victory. The two also have a lot in common here. Both are basically suffering throughout the movie. The donkey is never really treated like a beloved creature by anybody here, but only used as an animal to perform duties and if he is not fast or strong enough, he is beaten. He can never really get out of his role, even if there are maybe two occasions where people at least talk kindly about him. With the girl, it is not much different. She also cannot really get out of her role as all the men that see and approach her desire her, but do not really treat her well either. Or actually, the character played by the aforementioned Green does, so in a way she is more to blame than the donkey because she is really held back by her feelings and hormones because of her attraction to the young brute who does not treat her well at all. Who hits her, takes her sexually whenever he wants to and also is not scared of showing her that he likes other women too and is in touch with those. He is definitely considered the main antagonist. The moment when he literally sets the donkey on fire was one of those the hardest to take and maybe it is a case of foreshadowing about what is going to happen to the girl in the end if she stays too long in the young man's proximity. The one thing he maybe isn't is a murderer. Apparently, a character got killed, not one we really know about, and we are presented a suspect. The police then also come to the suspect's place, but tell him that he is free and he will not go to court or jail. So, there we have an example of how justice did not win and it is definitely not a film where beauty defeats the beast, but rather the opposite where the beast devours beauty and leads to its demise, even if we are not told explicitly that the young woman is dead in the end or how she died, but we hear the words that she is gone and won't return and it seems unlikely that she was just sent to live in another city.
What we do know is that donkey dies in the end. It feels almost biblical how he is surrounded there by all those sheep that initially take a bit away from this being a sad moment. There were people laughing in the crowd when the donkey was surrounded by the sheep here. This also shows us that the donkey is of course the key player here. The film starts with his birth, his very young and also very furry days and ends then with him leaving this Earth. Of course, he is also included in the title, so there is no doubt that he is the big player in here, even if he disappears for quite some time in the second half of the movie. It is not a very long film, but there were scenes that did not really do a lot for me. They were also not so bad that I would say they should have been omitted, but they just did not add super much. This includes all about the murderer. The scene when he is confronted by the brutes is one that felt a bit strange to me because he initially seems to be so eager to physically defend himself, but then when it counts, does nothing. The celebration of his "innocence" was also not too great. What was more interesting, was when the young brute leader gives the man a gun to defend himself against the arriving police (officer) and the boy knew that there were no bullets in the barrel, so probably he was planning for the man to be killed by the police officer because he now knew the man would not be getting to jail, even if he tells the alleged killer something different. So there was certainly some scheming going on. Maybe this young man there was a bit of a French equivalent to James Dean, who was already dead at that point for (almost) a decade, but still already a defining icon of (American) film culture. You will not find too much harmony in this movie. One example was the opening when the donkey is still a furry baby and later on there was a scene in which the female protagonist petted the donkey and put some flowers on his head. That was cute. Maybe she realized that the two were not so different after all.
As for other positive emotions, I thought that the funniest moment was maybe how the donkey was looking at the circus animals, something he had never seen before and probably also the other way around. Interesting nature encounter, even if the cages made it a bit sad. Admittedly, they also saved the donkey's life. When the film begins, you will also hear donkey noise. I interpreted it as an expression of discomfort. I may be wrong there too. So yeah, there were some scenes in this film I really liked and others that did not do a lot for me like for example also towards the end when the girl is with this considerably older man and does not really have any other option than to sleep with him there. It is implied. After all, it was the 1960s and they did not get too graphic. But it also would not have fit into the film's narrative. Another thing that caught my attention was how on at least two occasions cars drove by to interrupt the young bad guy's actions, so there was a glimmer of hope for us in the audience that somebody could get out and do something, but it was not meant to be and the boy literally looked at the car driving away and immediately afterwards he continued with his awful actions. What stays in the end, is also those words from the old lady directed at the young female protagonist when the latter tells her about her affections for the brute and she just responds by calling her a "poor, poor girl" or something like that. I do not have the exact words and it may have been something different in the French script anyway as I was watching with English subtitles. But it really underlines the overall tone in this movie. There are no winners really and those who come closest are certainly not the good guys, but the violent ones. It feels realistic though and that is what matters most and does not take away any quality from the outcome here. So I give this film a thumbs-up overall, which was never in doubt, even if I wanted to like the film even a little bit more than I finally did, but who knows, maybe I can change it to an even higher rating if I ever rewatch. You should watch it too, just don't expect a feel-good movie. It is the polar opposite.
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