LE DIABLE PROBABLEMENT

LE DIABLE PROBABLEMENT ("The Devil Probably" 1977, France, Robert Bresson)
My sickness is that I see clearly.

Bresson's second-last film, in color, just over a decade since the more faith-affirming AU HASARD BALTHAZAR which it echoes. We learn at the outset that Charles has died, perhaps a murder, perhaps a suicide, then retrace the bleak events of the six months leading up to his final moments. Bresson expert James Quandt describes this as "a moral tale...to illustrate that the world is hopelessly corrupt and despoiled, and that the various solutions society offers – traditional religion and the 'new' Church, political and ecological activism, psychoanalysis, art – are variously fraudulent, misguided, impotent." Perhaps - though Quandt is more prone to find loss of faith and absence of God in Bresson's films (and life) than others might be. Still there's no denying, Charles finds little in this world in which to place any faith.