Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)
Directed by Robert Bresson

Film Review

Of the thirteen full-length films that Robert Bresson directed Quatre nuits d'un rêveur is the one that is most overlooked, certainly the most atypical and possibly the hardest to pin down.  Inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky's short story White Nights (which had previously been adapted as Le Notti Bianche (1957) by Luchino Visconti), the film appears to have far more in common with Bresson's New Wave contemporaries than a filmmaker renowned for his spare depictions of suffering and redemption.  Guillaume des Forêts, who plays the central character Jacques, has such a striking resemblance to Jean-Pierre Léaud, the most emblematic actor of the Nouvelle Vague, that you can easily deceive yourself into thinking the film was made by Rivette, Godard or Truffaut, and the story it tells is one that would not be out of place in the oeuvre of Eric Rohmer.  And yet whilst Quatre nuits d'un rêveur was undoubtedly influenced by the French New Wave, and serves equally as a homage, parody and critique of this movement, it is unmistakably the work of Bresson, as intense, perceptive and flawlessly crafted as any other film he made.

This is a film that, like many others of its time, reflects the disillusionment that was widely felt in France in the wake of the May 1968 anti-government protests, a succession of strikes and demonstrations that paralysed the whole country and brought it to the brink of civil war before fizzling out like a damp squib.  Jacques, the main character, is the perfect embodiment of soixante-huitard idealism, an abstract painter whose naive daubings (in bold primary colours on ludicrously large canvases) reveal not only a childishly free-spirited temperament but also an old-fashioned romanticism founded on a concrete belief in the righteousness of basic ideals.  To surrender to a perfect notion of love, selfless and inviolable, appears to be Jacques' sole quest in life, and it is clear that this is what drives his art - submission to the absolute is, after all, what love and art are all about.

How unfortunate that the woman Jacques falls for during his nocturnal perambulations around Paris is one whose notion of love is more tied to the physical than the spiritual plane.  In the parlance of film noir, Marthe is the archetypal femme fatale, the corrupting female whose sole raison d'être is to lure the unsuspecting hero of high ideals to his doom.  Marthe's notion of love is sordid and shallow compared with Jacques', a means of gratifying the body rather than enriching the soul.  When her former lover fails to return to her as promised, it is as much her over-developed narcissism as a feeling of rejection that leads her to attempt suicide (in the clichéd manner of jumping into the Seine).  Her idea of love is selfish and destructive, whereas for Jacques love is something pure and life-affirming, the magical lodestone that guides both his art and his life.  In the course of the film, both characters are led to betray their ideals as they come to discover what love really is.

Whereas most of the films that Robert Bresson made during this last and most revealing phase of his career are austere and grimly pessimistic, Quatre nuits d'un rêveur has a surprising warmth and lightness about it, although it is hard to tell wither Bresson is being ironic or sincere in his portrayal of the younger generation.  Neither Jacques nor Marthe is a particularly flattering depiction of modern youth - the one is a self-sufficient dreamer who imprisons himself in a fantasy world; the other is a self-centred hedonist who lives only for the moment.  Both come across as hippies who have yet to realise the fragility of their illusions. For the present, happy, deluded children, they are content living in that glorious spring of 1968, oblivious to the disappointments to come.  The failure of ideals would be the central theme of Bresson's next film, Lancelot du lac (1974), a more scathing piece of post-68 commentary implausibly framed as Arthurian legend.

Film Synopsis

One night, a young painter, Jacques comes across a young woman, Marthe, who is about to commit suicide by jumping off the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris.  Marthe is heart-broken because her former lover, who left her a year ago, failed to keep their meeting on the bridge. Jacques is instantly attracted to Marthe and asks if they can meet up the following night.  She agrees, and they spend the next few nights wandering the streets of Paris, sharing their fantasies and dreams.  By the fourth night, Jacques has fallen hopelessly in love with Marthe, but then who should appear but her former lover...