MILDRED PIERCE (1945) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Noir Meets Melodrama Via Criterion Blu

Loving mother, horrid daughter - Melodrama Meets Noir

Mildred Pierce (1945)
Dir. Michael Curtiz
Nvl. James M. Cain
Scr. Ranald McDougall
Starring: Joan Crawford, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson,
Bruce Bennett, Zachary Scott, Butterfly McQueen, Lee Patrick

Review By Greg Klymkiw

James M. Cain wrote plenty of books with murder in them (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity), but the novel upon which the film Mildred Pierce is based, is bereft of murder. We can thank studio Warner Brothers, director Michael Curtiz and screenwriter Ranald McDougall for thinking about inserting one glorious lollapalooza of a homicide as a sturdy bookend to the movie version. This delicacy of mother-daughter madness gets piquantly spiced-up with that one necessary ingredient, thus allowing for the roiling psychological complexity of the tale to meld melodrama with film noir styling.

A murder. In a house. By the beach. It's night. A woman flees the scene. She contemplates suicide on a wharf just outside of a sleazy dockside watering hole. She's picked up for questioning. She tells her story.

Such is the opening of Mildred Pierce. The aforementioned woman is the title character. She's played by Joan Crawford (not long after MGM let her go for becoming box office poison). After this picture, she was poison no more. She even won an Oscar. For good reason too. Nobody suffers like Crawford's character suffers in this grim story about a mother who loves her ungrateful daughter too much.

Mildred's first marriage to the hapless, unemployed sad-sack sap Bert Pierce (Bruce Bennett) ends. His former business partner, the unbelievably agreeable, charming scumbag Wally Fay (Jack Carson), has always held a torch for her and tries to move in for some amorous gravy drippings. She spurns him and tries to make ends meet by home baking.

Eventually Mildred needs something more substantial than selling her pies, so she gets hired as a waitress by Ida (Eve Arden), the manager of a restaurant and wisecracking perennial bachelorette who eventually becomes her best friend. Our heroine tries to keep her job a secret from her daughters, 16-year-old Veda (Ann Blyth) and 10-year-old Kay (Jo Anne Marlowe). Kay would never have a problem with this - she's a total loving sweetie-pie. Veda on the other hand, is an absolute horror; a nasty, haughty socialite. Veda discovers Mildred's waitress uniform and bestows it upon the family's maid Lottie (Butterfly McQueen). Veda pretends to believe her Mom bought the outfit for Lottie to wear. She knows better. She is, in fact, ashamed and spitefully does this to make Mildred admit she works as a waitress.

Our heroine decides she needs to move up in the world - especially if she is to keep showering her grotesquely mean, selfish and spoiled eldest daughter with everything money can buy. She cuts a deal with horny hunk of congealed drool matter Wally and ends up starting her own restaurant. It's such a success that she ends up hiring Kay as the manager and begins to open a small chain of eateries.

The only thing missing in Mildred's life is love. Though Wally is a bucket of slime, he's a charming and rich sleaze ball. Instead, Mildred settles upon Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott) a handsome (in a weaselly kind of way) high society playboy with plenty of assets, but no money and a pile of debts. Oh, he's going to make her pay. And suffer, of course. Veda takes a shine to Monte's dashing lifestyle.

In fact, she takes too much of a shine to the man her mother loves.

Naturally, there will be a murder.

One of the cool things (and there is so much about this movie that's cool - pure and simple) is just how strong and complex the female characters are (even naughty Veda). The men, however, are a piece of work - almost hilariously so. Given that the most attractive male figure is played by slightly pudgy Jack Carson probably says everything we need to know. However, it's probably worth noting that Mildred's eventual paramour is a moustachioed, wiry and bony scumbag and her "decent" ex-husband is a borderline castrato who eventually settles down with the hausfrau-like Mrs. Biederhof (Lee Patrick).

That Mildred eventually has to suffer the indignity of watching her child die of pneumonia before her very eyes in the home of the hausfrau while testicle-free ex-hubby looks on uselessly is the stuff of great melodrama and definitely the kind of thing most movies today would have no idea how to master. Well, Mildred Pierce more than rises to the occasion.

What's extraordinary about the whole affair is how director Curtiz (Casablanca) swathes the picture with the thick fog and dark shadows of post-war ennui and all that became film noir. We get plenty of sun-dappled Malibu to go with the melodrama, but we're also served up with dank cocktail lounges, cheap dressing rooms with gum-snapping songstresses who show just a little too much leg and cleavage on stage plus a delightful number of frauds, double-crosses and infidelity to fill several blacker-than-black crime pictures.

And, of course, we get murder.

Oh, glorious murder!

And then, let's not forget a mother's love for her daughter, albeit an ungrateful little missy-saucy-pants. A mother, you see, will do anything for her daughter, even if said progeny gets boned by the shitheel her mother loves.

In such circumstances, can homicide ever be far behind?

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-stars

Mildred Pierce is available on Blu-Ray and (if you must) DVD with a new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, a new conversation with critics Molly Haskell and Robert Polito, an excerpt from a 1970 episode of "The David Frost Show" featuring Joan Crawford, the terrific 2002 feature-length documentary "Joan Craw­ford: The Ultimate Movie Star", a Q&A with actor Ann Blyth from 2006, presented by Marc Huestis and conducted by film historian Eddie Muller at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, a segment from a 1969 episode of the Today Show featuring Mildred Pierce novelist James M. Cain, a trailer, an essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith and new cover art by Sean Phillips.

SPELLBOUND - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Zaniest Collaboration Twixt Alfred Hitchcock, David O. Selznick and, for good measure, Ace Screenwriter Ben Hecht, Genius Production Designer William Cameron Menzies, Floridly Overwrought Composer Miklos Rozsa and the biggest WTF in movie history, Salvador Dali.

Spellbound (1945) *****
dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck,
Leo G. Carroll, Rhonda Fleming, Michael Chekhov

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Of the four official collaborations between producer David O. Selznick and director Alfred Hitchcock, I've always considered The Paradine Case the worst, Notorious the most romantic, Rebecca the best and Spellbound the most utterly insane. The latter description of the latter film is entirely appropriate since it's a murder mystery set in an asylum wherein psychoanalysis is utilized to discover deep meaning in a recurring dream (designed, no less, by surrealist Salvador Dali) in order to find out exactly whodunit.

If this isn't insane, then I don't know what is.

Spellbound also has the distinction of being wildly, deliciously melodramatic, almost crazily romantic and when it needs to be, thanks to the genius of the Master himself, nail-bitingly suspenseful.

Selznick was responsible for bringing Hitchcock to America and signing him to a longterm talent contract. For much of their association, Hitchcock was lent out to other studios, which suited him just fine as he was able to do his own thing without having to tolerate (what Hitchcock perceived to be) the constant interference of the famous auteur producer of Gone With The Wind. Of the four aforementioned collaborations, Notorious was eventually sold outright to RKO in the midst of production while the other three proved to be one of the most dynamic producer-director battlefields in movie history.

Hitchcock and Selznick detested each other. Hitch thought of Selznick as a meddling vulgarian whilst Selznick viewed the portly Brit as a mad genius who needed his sure and steady hand (or psychoanalysis, if you will).

The Chilly Ice Goddess Must Melt.

To this day, Rebecca, a virtually flawless film that more than ably sets the stage for Hitchcock's extremely mature latter work (notably Rear Window and Vertigo) is casually (and sadly) dismissed by the Master of Suspense in the famous interviews with Francois Truffaut as not really being "a Hitchcock film", but rather, "a David O. Selznick film". In many ways, it seems to me that Spellbound might well have been the most ideal collaboration between the two men. Selznick wanted desperately to make a film that extolled the virtues of psychoanalysis (which he felt had been an enormous help to himself - though there appears to be no proof he ever really "got better" as Selznick's maniacal megalomania followed him to the grave). Hitchcock wanted to make a great suspense film and was certainly drawn to the notion of psychoanalysis being used to unravel a mystery.

Add to this mix, the magnificent talent of Hollywood's best screenwriter Ben Hecht (The Twentieth Century, Nothing Sacred, Gunga Din, The Front Page, Scarface and among many others, Wuthering Heights) and Salvador Dali to design the dream sequences and you've got a picture that guaranteed success. (And yes, it was a multi-Oscar-nominee/winner, though not for Hitch, and a huge hit at the box office.)

Hitchcock, purportedly refused to have anything to do with Dali's dream sequences (other than adhering to their imagery as scripted for purposes of the plot) and they were ultimately directed by the ace production designer/director William Cameron Menzies (Gone With The Wind, Things to Come). The hearty cinematic stew that is Spellbound also features a most flavourful ingredient, a great over-the-top score by the legendary Miklos Rozsa - replete with plenty o' theremin usage. Gotta love the theremin!

NYMPHOMANIAC - Hubba Hubba!

What this ultimately yielded was a wonky, intense, romantic and thoroughly engaging murder mystery wherein the director of an asylum in Vermont, Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll), is being forced into an early retirement to make way for a younger, more vibrant head head-shrinker Dr. Anthony Edwardes (the handsome, sexy, stalwart Gregory Peck). The asylum's ace psychoanalyst, Dr. Constance Peterson (the mouth-wateringly gorgeous Ingrid Bergman) is so committed to her work, that most of her colleagues view her as an impenetrable Ice Goddess.

This chilly demeanour, however, stands her in good stead in the results department and she's probably the only person who can adequately handle the asylum's most over-the-top nymphomaniac (Rhonda - "hubba hubba" - Fleming).

But even ice is susceptible to eventually melting and soon, Constance gets definitely hot and bothered and drippingly wet as she succumbs to the rugged, manly charms of Dr. Edwardes. Even more tempting is that on the surface, this stiff rod of manhood is the sort of gentle pansy-boy Constance needs.

Deep down, he is sensitive and most importantly, he is… wait for it - in pain.

Yes, pain!

He needs a good woman for more than amorous attention, he needs her to PSYCHOANALYZE him. When it becomes plain he's not all he's cracked up to be and might, in fact, be a murderer and impostor, it's up to the head-over-heels healer of heads to solve the mystery lodged in Dr. Edwardes's mind.

This is all, of course handled with Hitchcock's trademark semi-expressionistic aplomb and untouchable knack for rendering suspense of the highest order. There isn't a single performance in the film that isn't spot-on (Leo G. Carroll is suitably and alternately sympathetic and malevolent, whilst Peck acquits himself admirably as the troubled leading man), but it's Ingrid Bergman who really carries the picture. Her transformation from Ice Queen to a sex-drenched psychiatrist with a delightful blend of matronly and whorish qualities is phenomenal. She's mother, lover and doctor - all rolled into one magnificent package. And she's never looked more beautiful. Selznick knew this better than anyone and Hitchcock himself knew all too well how to compose and light for beauty.

In one of Selznick's delightful memos from when he first brought Ingrid Bergman to America he wrote:

"...the difference between a great photographic beauty and an ordinary girl with Miss Bergman lies in proper photography of her – and that this in turn depends not simply on avoiding the bad side of her face; keeping her head down as much as possible; giving her the proper hairdress, giving her the proper mouth make-up, avoiding long shots, so as not to make her look too big, and, even more importantly, but for the same reason, avoiding low cameras on her...but most important of all, on shading her face and invariably going for effect lightings on her."

Damn!

They don't make movies like this anymore! And, sadly, they don't make producers like Selznick anymore.

Some things, however, never change. How Ingrid Bergman was nominated the same year for an Oscar for her luminous, but limp-in-comparison performance in The Bells of St. Mary's over Spellbound is yet another mystery of the Oscars we all must put up with.

Not to put too fine a point on it - but, I must - Spellbound is, indeed, spellbinding and it's easily one of the great pictures by both Masters - Selznick and Hitchcock.

"Spellbound" is now available on Blu-Ray via 20th Century Fox/MGM. The copious extras are a mixed bag. A commentary with film historians Thomas Schatz and Charles Ramirez Berg is a real disappointment compared to the great Marian Keane commentary on the Criterion DVD. These guys are all over the place with spotty info and critical analysis bordering on the, shall we be charitable and say, rudimentary. There are a series of docs including one on the film's place as the first to deal with psychoanalysis, a backgrounder on the Salvador Dali sequences, a cool interview with Hitchcock conducted by Peter Bogdanovich and a really delightful doc on Rhonda Fleming. There's a Lux Radio play version of the movie with Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli and a trailer. The movie looks wonderful on Blu-ray, but I have to admit to preferring the care taken with the Criterion DVD transfer which ultimately has a better grain structure and seems closer to 35mm without all the over-crisp qualities that high definition adds/detracts when it comes to older films. I, of course, continue to be in the minority in this belief. That said, I am very happy with the few Hitchcock Blu-Rays that have been released to Blu-Ray. The transfers are impeccable and genuinely maintain the "film" look without too much digital interference (of the aesthetic kind).

Fritz Lang's SCARLET STREET with Edward G. Robinson - Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw - On Blu-Ray via Kino-Lorber

A timid cashier celebrates 25-rip-snorting-years of toil in a mens clothing store. Sauntering home to be with his harridan wife, he wonders what it would be like to have a young woman love him. He gets his wish. Sort of. A streetwalker cons him with expert assistance from her brutal pimp and lover. Can murder be far behind?

Scarlet Street *****
(1945) dir. Fritz Lang
Starring:
Edward G. Robinson,
Joan Bennett,
Dan Duryea

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I've been waiting to laugh in your face ever since I met you. You're old and ugly and I'm sick of you. Sick! Sick! Sick!"

-Joan Bennett to Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street

If you've never felt - even once - that dreadful, sickening, soul-sucking feeling of digging yourself into a deeper hole, then good for you. You must obviously live a charmed life. Most of us know, however, when we're already in one of those holes and instead of clambering out while we still can, we shove our respective spades into God's good earth and just keep digging. Why do we do it? Especially when we know we're digging ourselves deeper than we can ever possibly hope to clamber out of? Well, sometimes one just hangs on to a wisp of hope that the thing you think you need is, like some buried treasure, just a few more feet below.

Once in awhile, a hand will thrust itself down and offer you a way out of the depths. Sometimes you'll take it but oft-times you won't. Even those who do accept the helping hand will, most of the time, do so with regret. They allow themselves to be hoisted up just long enough to grab a few fresh breaths, grab a bite to eat and maybe think about packing a box lunch and then dive back down into the open jaws of the hole.

When we first meet Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson) in Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street, we hear a boisterous, heartfelt group of men singing "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow" so loudly that their voices are spilling onto the wet, dark streets of New York. Once we're inside the brightly lit party room of a private gentleman's club, remnants of a sumptuous meal with liquor still flowing, the singing builds to a rousing climax of cheers. A meekly appreciative Chris, is clearly the recipient of this gleeful admiration. His boss delivers an extremely moving speech that extolls the virtues of honesty, loyalty and hard-work that Chris has displayed over the years as a cashier with the company - capping off the tribute by presenting his "old friend Chris" with a gorgeous gold watch encrusted with jewels.

It's when the boss departs early for the reason that one can "never keep a woman waiting", Chris looks out the window just as his employer exits the building and enters the awaiting limo below - its only other passenger being a stunning, young, platinum blonde.

Chris knows this is not the boss's wife and he wonders aloud: "I wonder what it's like to be loved by a young girl." Cue hole-digging just about here. Chris has picked up the spade and is eager to use it.

Later that evening, Chris walks the empty streets. He hears a scream. From a distance Chris sees a woman under a lamppost being slapped around by a man. Chris surprisingly bolts into action and rescues the beautiful young woman by beating the vile pig with his umbrella. The weasel scurries away, clutching the money he's robbed from the woman. Chris walks the young lady home and they stop for a drink in a basement dive. Anyone else would have realized that the sexy Kitty March (Joan Bennett) is a common streetwalker (and not a fashion model as she claims to be) and that the rat-faced thug who stole her money is not some random thief, but Johnny Prince (Dan Duryea), her pimp and lover.

That Chris is oblivious to this and swallows all her lies, exaggerations and vaguely disingenuous flirting is pretty much the beginning of the end. His spade plunges deep into the ground. The hole-digging begins in earnest.

It's also to actress Joan Bennet and director Fritz Lang's credit that we almost believe Kitty, too. She's packed tightly and curvaceously into her - ahem - Sunday go to meetin' time best and her straight, lush tresses that hang down to her shoulders, progressively unravel into schoolgirl-like curls and frame her soft, square face with a distinctively high forehead, pert nose, soulful eyes and ready-for-kissin-and-a-slurpin lips. Yup, she's Madonna and Whore, but discretely dolled-up like a teenage Catholic High School girl. Bennett's sultry voice and the dialogue (courtesy of the great screenwriter Dudley Nichols) veer from innocence to slutty, from genteel to crass and from surprising erudition to white trash street smarts. She's an incredible and indelible female character - a smart cookie in the wrong place at the wrong time and getting by as best she can in what is decidedly a man's world. Even more haunting is that there are more than enough hints that she's suffered a great deal of abuse over the short time she's been alive on this planet. She takes the foul Johnny Prince's beatings with a grain of salt since they're almost a small price to pay for his "support", companionship and first-rate cocksman-ship. In another instance, she only seems to be half-cracking a wiseacre when she describes her feelings about Chris, Edgar G. Robinson's staggering portrait of the jowly, hangdog white-knight-moneybags-meal-ticket in this way: "If he were mean or vicious or if he'd bawl me out or something, I'd like him better."

Robinson, of course, is great - an actor who's never delivered anything less than a brilliant performance throughout his long and distinguished career. In Scarlet Street, we're moved and repulsed by his character in equal measure. He toils away as a cashier at the high-end men's clothing store, surrounded by handsome, well-dressed colleagues who all seem content with their manhood and place in the world. Chris, on the other hand, goes home every night to his wife, a shrieking harridan who might best be described by quoting George about Martha in Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - she's neither a woman, nor much of a human being, but rather represents a kind of "slashing, braying residue that calls itself" his wife. Not that Chris is a prize catch. He admits to marrying her, almost in a whine, because he was afraid of being lonely. It's sad as all hell, but frankly, pretty damn pathetic. And God knows if Chris was even able to perform his husbandly duties in the boudoir when he admits with only the slightest hint of irony (so slight, it might not be ironic at all) that:

"I never saw a woman without any clothes."

Even more pathetic is that he's clearly a gifted artist, but creates his work in an atmosphere of his wife's verbal abuse and threats that she'll toss all his paintings in the trash. Granted his painting is the only escape he knows, but he thinks so little of his work that he doesn't even sign his paintings.

Worst of all, Chris displays inordinate stupidity and weakness when he allows himself to be duped by Kitty and Johnny. He not only keeps handing her scads of cash he's embezzling from his employer, but eventually allows her to take full credit for his artwork which eventually catches the eye of a prominent New York art dealer and visual arts critic. For all of this, he's getting no nookie and when he tries to hug or kiss her, she shrinks away in disgust.

One of the most complex, brilliant and emotionally wrenching scenes in movie history occurs when he realizes he's been duped and still professes his love for her. He begs her to marry him and Kitty's response is unbearably vicious. What's amazing about this moment is that we're moved by both characters (and performances). We're shocked and saddened by how mean she is to Chris, but at the same time, we sympathize with this young woman who's been dealt far too many bad hands in life and is surviving in way that stems directly from her social situation. Looking at the deep hurt in Chris's eyes is also profoundly moving, but we also want to slap that pathetic, jowly face of his and demand that he "man-up".

Scarlet Street is an American remake of Jean Renoir's equally wonderfully picture La Chienne, but for me, the main difference is that Lang's film descends even deeper than Renoir's into a pit of the most foul, ugly human behaviour. And even though it does, the film is infused with a high degree of humanity.

From dramatic beat to dramatic beat, Scarlett Street moves lower and lower on the rung of humanity's ladder. Just when you think the picture has reached the lowest depths, it plummets even deeper. As such, the film is both courageously relentless and astoundingly ahead of its time.

Recent Friedkin and Ulrich Seidl excepted, Fritz Lang - in 1945!!! - managed to pull off a picture that seems more fresh and vital than most anything made today. Scarlet Street feels like it could have been made just yesterday.

After many years languishing in the public domain, the movie has been digitally restored from materials on deposit at the Library of Congress and brought to Blu-Ray via Kino Lorber. The Bluray features a stills gallery and an audio commentary by David Kalat.

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne - Review By Greg Klymkiw - With magnificently overwrought melodramatic dialogue by Jean Cocteau, Robert Bresson's dark, sexy tale of vengeance is not unlike some alternately vicious and romantic Gallic pairing of Fritz Lang and James M. Cain with healthy dollops of MGM womens' weepies. "Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne" is part of the continuing TIFF Cinematheque retrospective of the complete works of Robert Bresson as organized and curated by the legendary film programmer and curator extraordinaire James Quandt.

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) dir. Robert Bresson
Starring: Maria Casarès, Paul Bernard, Elina Labourdette, Lucienne Bogaert

*****

By Greg Klymkiw

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and Robert Bresson easily delivers one of the sexiest, nastiest femmes fatales ever committed to film in his truly astounding Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne. Maria Casarès, who played the memorable Nathalie in Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise and was a favourite of Cocteau, takes on the role here of Hélène, a stunningly gorgeous woman of considerable affluence whose boredom and trifling leads to playing a dangerous game of deception and revenge.

Casarès is so astounding in this role, it sometimes shocks me that she wasn't whisked away to Hollywood by the likes of David O. Selznick to bring the sort of exotic foreign flare to Tinseltown studio pictures that the likes of Hedy Lamar, Ingrid Bergman, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich delivered. With cheekbones to die for, dark piercing eyes, a stunning aquiline proboscis and lips that were made to alternately plant big wet smooches and to drip with blood, Casarès commands the screen here with the sort of screen presence designed to tantalize and terrorize.

She might well be the original spider woman of cinema - and her kiss is most deadly.

When Hélène seeks to liven things up with her foppish lover Jean (Paul Bernard), she offers up a "Dear John" speech designed to engorge his gonads and get him hot and bothered enough to put some spice back into their affair. Jean, not one to take a hint, boneheadedly admits to feeling similarly. He proposes they maintain their deep love as FRIENDS, but part as lovers.

Jean, take it from me, this was not a good move.

Hélène is cool about it all. Too cool. Her mind calculates a plan to get the ultimate revenge upon Jean - one that's so "take-no-prisoners" in its approach that it threatens to bring more than one innocent party down. She sets the wheels in motion for Jean to fall so madly in love with another woman, Agnès (Elina Labourdette) that he obsessively pursues her (with Hélène's manipulative assistance) until she falls in love with him too.

Marriage bells are imminent and Hélène even offers to completely coordinate the lavish public nuptials. Jean, it seems, has fallen for a former prostitute. Most of Parisian society is aware of this. Jean, blindly and madly in love, is not.

The story, rife as it is with so many foul twists and turns orchestrated by the nasty Black Widow Spider Woman, is a corker. While we follow with pure salacious joy, Bresson makes superb use of Jean Cocteau's ripe dialogue with a mise-en-scene that delivers a grotesque creepy-crawly pace that's punctuated several times with emotional coldcocks upon both the viewer and the characters in the piece whom Hélène victimizes.

After the wedding ceremony, Agnès takes ill when she discovers the guest list is replete with all the men she has serviced as a prostitute. Jean, still unaware of the deception perpetrated upon him is greeted with Hélène's foul scorn when she maliciously announces to him outside the church: "You've married a tramp. Now you must face the consequences. You're suddenly so sentimental. Since your marriage seems to mean so much to you, you mustn't run off. Return to Agnès' side. You won't be the only one to console her. All her lovers are inside. And there are plenty of them!"

Both the dialogue and Casarès's delivery are like a butcher knife to the gut. We've experienced her manipulations, but we've also been dragged through the pain Agnès has felt throughout the film - trying to hide her shame, trying to deny the love she feels for Jean and wishing she could undo everything to finally, for once, experience the sort of joy in life she once imagined having in childhood.

Bresson knocks us flat-out - not just with despair, but in those moments the film flirts with and eventually succumbs to the purity and power of love.

His movie is at once heartbreakingly dark and wildly romantic. Once again, it seems, for all of Bresson's (and his egghead champions) insistence upon avoiding typical tropes of commercial cinema, he yields a movie that offers everything an audience would want - including the kitchen sink.

That said, it's Robert Bresson's kitchen sink and as such, he delivers both the real goods and great cinema all at once. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is deeply moving and Bresson proves, once again, that he has few equals.

"Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne" is part of the TIFF Cinemtheque's major retrospective organized and curated by the legendary programmer James Quandt. Aptly titled "The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson", this and every other Bresson film is unspooling at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto and over a dozen cinemas across North America. The film is screening at TIFF Bell Lightbox Thursday February 23 06:30 PM and Monday March 5 06:30 PM. "Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne" is also available on a stunning Criterion Collection DVD. This is definitely worth owning, but only AFTER or in TANDEM with seeing the picture ON A BIG SCREEN - ON FILM.

To order tickets and read Quandt's fabulous program notes, visit the TIFF website HERE.