Les Anges du péché (1943)

Robert Bresson’s first full-length film contains many of the essential ingredients and themes which would recur time and again in his subsequent works, but it is, at the same time, startlingly different to his later films.  The nature of sin, the susceptibility of the human spirit to evil, and the path back to redemption are ideas which underpin much of Bresson’s cinema, and it is interesting to see how the director evolves his approach to these matters in the course of his long film-making career.

For anyone familiar with Bresson’s later films, the most striking thing about Les Anges du péché is that it is a conventional film, made using standard film-making techniques with professional actors.  Yet, at the same time, the film bears the unmistakable stamp of its creator, both in the film’s subject matter (the necessity for redemption in spiritual fulfilment) and its directness.   In comparison with Bresson’s final film, L’Argent (1980), there are probably more similarities than differences, even though the visual style of the two films could scarcely be more different.  Les Anges du péché is perhaps the more complex film, because it deals with the idea of redemption from two quite different perspectives, that of Thérèse and Anne-Marie Lamaury.  The sinner and the saint are equally deserving of spiritual renewal, and the fact that both find grace through each other is a typically Bressonesque comment that in human nature there are no absolutes in good or evil.

© James Travers 2002

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