Farber on Bresson - 1

 

مانی فاربر. می‌گویند چیزی در نوشته‌هایش است که آن‌ها را «ترجمه‌ناپذیر» می‌سازد. تحلیل‌های بلندش به کنار، یادداشت‌های کوتاهِ او بر فیلم‌ها که بیشتر در گزارش‌های جشنواره‌ی نیویورک در طیِ سالیان منتشر شده‌اند نمونه‌های درخشانی از کوتاهِ‌نویسی بر فیلم‌ها هستند. نمونه‌هایی که از توصیفِ دقیق و تیزبینانه می آغازند و به سرمشق‌هایی در دیدن و نوشتن بدل می‌شوند. و چه چیزی بهتر از رجوعِ مدام به آن‌ها؟ همین یادداشتِ کوتاهش بر موشت را بخوانید – می‌توان با الهام از تعبیری که خود برای فیلمِ برسون به کار برده گفت که بخشی از آن چیزهای مهمّی که یک نوشته‌ی کوتاه بر فیلمی باید انجام دهد همین‌جا یافتنی است. چند تایی از نوشته‌های بلندِ ‌او را پیشتر احسانِ خوشبخت در وبلاگش به عرصه‌ی وب سپرده بود.

این یادداشت را از اینجا آوردم.

 

On Mouchette:

Bresson's Mouchette, by about three hundred miles the most touching and truly professional film in the festival, is about a fourteen year old girl of the peasant class, living in a small French village, the daughter of two alcoholics. The film has apparently melted down to a short story, being adapted from a Bernanos novel, but it moves on about five levels. It has to do with the surpassing beauty of a girl who is in a state of excruciating physical discomfort. On another level, it is about difficulty, an almost pure analysis of its sides and, in this case, the way it multiplies when luck is out. Other levels deal with a particularly bitter village and its inhabitants (the snare theme, life chasing the human being into extinction); the conception of people as being so deeply rooted in their environment that they are animal-like: the simple effect of a form briefly lit by a truck's headlights.

Mouchette, played by Nadine Nortier, has a touching toughness, the crushing sense of not expecting anything from anybody, and a harrowing know-how about every niche of village life. Nortier's singularity is tied to painful appearances: apathetic about her well-being, hair uncombed and probably lice-ridden, a large part of the painfulness has to do with large lumpy legs, stockings that won't stay up, big shoes. Despite all these humiliations, she is never cartoony and has an enormous, sombre dignity.

Some of the most important things movies can do are in this film. The barmaid, for instance: a queer and singular girl, as muscular as she is narrow, her character, which has tons of integrity and stubbornness, is just barely caught: through a crowd of locals, from an off-angle, pinning up the top flap of her apron, drying the glasses. The role is backed into through gesture and spirit, rather than through direct portrayal. Then there is the great device of placing Mouchette's house on a truck route, and milking that device for the most awesome, mysterious wonders. Also, for a film that is unrelievedly raw, homely, and depressed, it seems a wild perversity to bloom for five minutes into sudden elation with Mouchette and a likeably acted boy riding some dodgems at a fair. After so many misused amusement parks in film, it is remarkable to come across one that works.

 

Source: Negative Space: Manny Farber On The Movies; New York Film Festival 1968; p. 230-234.