Quatre nuits d’un rêveur (1971) - film review

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 towards Marthe and asks if they can meet up the following night.  She agrees, and they spend the next four 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...

Quatre nuits d’un rêveur is Robert Bresson’s melancholic and highly individual ode to young love.  More of a visual poem than a piece of drama, it is made in the cold minimalist style of the director’s later works, yet it is profoundly moving in its humanity and perceptiveness.  As in all Bresson’s films, the actors were trained to give unemotional performance, and whilst this would at first appear strange for a love story, it actually serves the film well.   By playing down the outwards signs of love, the film gives us a keener insight into how it affects the soul.  As is typical of Bresson’s cinema, we are drawn to matters spiritual rather than things corporal, and the result is one of his most stirring, and surprising, works.

© James Travers 2002

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