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The Devil, Probably

Antoine Monnier (Actor), Tina Irissari (Actor), Robert Bresson (Director) Rated:
Unrated
Format: DVD
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 41 ratings
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Genre Drama
Format Color, Multiple Formats, Subtitled, NTSC
Contributor Henri de Maublanc, Tina Irissari, Laetitia Carcano, Antoine Monnier, Nicolas Deguy, Robert Bresson
Language French
Runtime 1 hour and 35 minutes
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Product Description

An alienated Paris youth and his friends seek life's meaning in religion, politics, psychoanalysis and love.

Product details

  • Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ 1.37:1
  • Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
  • MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ Unrated (Not Rated)
  • Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 2.72 ounces
  • Item model number ‏ : ‎ 25524977
  • Director ‏ : ‎ Robert Bresson
  • Media Format ‏ : ‎ Color, Multiple Formats, Subtitled, NTSC
  • Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 35 minutes
  • Release date ‏ : ‎ September 18, 2012
  • Actors ‏ : ‎ Antoine Monnier, Tina Irissari, Henri de Maublanc, Laetitia Carcano, Nicolas Deguy
  • Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English
  • Studio ‏ : ‎ Olive Films
  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B008DL4K8Q
  • Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 41 ratings

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
41 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Luc REYNAERT
5.0 out of 5 stars Self-destruction
Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2016
The main character in this movie, who is 'more intelligent than the other ones' is confronted with political, psychoanalytical and religious gibberish, the misuse of scientific discoveries for the fabrication of deadly weapons (atomic bombs), economic (unrestrained growth, drugs) and environmental (pesticides) catastrophes, ridiculous police interventions and relational difficulties (real love is impossible).

Faced with a devastating human habitat, the 'hero' of the film can only choose the ultimate solution, in the ancient way.
This movie (a formidable uppercut) should not only be characterized as a masterpiece, but above all, as a very serious wake-up call for all human beings, and, in the first place, for its fundamentally diabolic masters.
For Robert Bresson, man himself is the devil, and not probably. His destructive actions are nothing less than a global planetary suicide.
A must see.
7 people found this helpful
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R. Williams
5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Best from a Giant of Cinema
Reviewed in the United States on July 26, 2012
Bresson's canon is completely insane. The number of great films he made but also, the combined intensity of those works is dazzling.

This film is probably more timely today than when it was made. It's like looking back into a prior, pupal stage of collapse from a vantage point the author clearly saw. The whole point of this film is that it's not about the subject, Charles, or whatever his name is. It's truly a meditation on the degree to which all who are coming out of the chute, such as it has been shaped, are doomed. There are so many great sections in the film, but the one about the environment is probably the most powerful: as usual Bresson fetishizes the sound of saws, and the thud of trees hitting the forest floor. Like Faulkner's "Delta Autumn," this is a world eating itself but so lost in its own dream of power that it can't tell that dinner is being served from its own hind quarters. The only salvation is to submit to one of a number of practitioners who can help you join the ranks of the ignorant (in return, of course, for a princely sum). This is not subject shifting, it's subject irrelevance as a consequence of the systematic machination of fixed outcomes, serving masters who never appear (likewise L'Argent, Bresson's breathtakingly brilliant final work).

That said, some of what the other reviewer, who complains about late Bresson, claims cannot be denied, but you pretty much want to look past it. Not necessarily to the ideas, but to a deeper sense of tragedy, more like the original Greek version, before Euripedes, where the viewer is not invited to 'identify' but rather to participate.
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Film Buff
3.0 out of 5 stars Robert Bresson's gray end-game
Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2014
Robert Bresson's 1977 meditation on the state of the contemporary world The Devil, Probably (Le diable probablement) is his twelfth and penultimate film. After his detour Camelot-way in Lancelot du Lac (1974) the film posits the same bleak and nihilistic agenda this time through the story of a group of students in Paris who are presented as products of a society which is sick to the very core. There was a time when Bresson's protagonists were predestined to receiving grace, even if they had to go to prison to attain it. That died out with his adoption of color from Une femme douce (1969) onwards, and The Devil, Probably amounts to his bleakest, his grayest, his most cynical and his most critical work. Indeed, there is a whining, hectoring edge to proceedings which shows him at his least likable and least approachable. Bresson's films exist on an extraordinarily high level of achievement and are essential viewing for the most part, but I found watching this one a wearisome experience.

Ignoring his usual lofty sources (Diderot, Tolstoy, Bernanos, Dostoyevsky), Bresson adapted The Devil, Probably from a mundane newspaper article. At the beginning we learn that a student has been found dead in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris having either committed suicide or having been murdered. The following 90 minutes detail the last 6 weeks of the student's life. Named Charles and played by Antoine Monnier, he is the intelligent son of rich parents who recoils from the society that surrounds him with his friend Michel (Henri de Maublanc) and two girls, Alberte (Tina Irissari) and Edwiga (Laetitia Carcano), the first of whom the two men share the affections of. Charles attends student anarchist meetings and university classes where he learns about what 'they' are doing to 'us'. Cue extensive footage of oil spills, nuclear tests, seal culling, deforestation, waste disposal sites, insecticides being sprayed on crops, cars dumped on waste ground, the effects of lead poisoning on kids, aircraft fumes poisoning the ozone layer, and the rest. In short we have the whole green agenda which in 1977 was still relatively new. Charles' worldview is crystalized most clearly when he takes a session with a psychiatrist. He admits he is intelligent, possibly more intelligent than most around him, but because society is fundamentally wrong with governments lying, companies profiteering and with no clearly defined prevailing sense of morality, be it Christian or otherwise, to study and succeed means contributing to the evil that surrounds him. By doing 'nothing' he is therefore doing society more good than doing 'something'. Charles' solution is therefore to commit suicide, or at least have a friend do it for him. No life is better than bad life and bad is what the human species is according to the director. We cannot solve the problem if we are part of the problem. Bresson seems to suggest that his death will be followed (should be followed?) by all our deaths in a future completely void of hope.

At the time Bresson's point of view seemed hugely impressive and when the film won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival that year Rainer Werner Fassbinder no less stood up and declared: "Robert Bresson's Le Diable Probablement...is the most shattering film I've seen this Berlin Festival. I think it's a major film [...]. In the future - and this world will probably last for another few thousand years - this film will be more important than all the rubbish which is now considered important but which never really goes deep enough. The questions Bresson asks will never be unimportant". That may well be true, but the message conveyed in the film is one that has been repeated many times over since (sometimes more skillfully) so as to make it seem a cliché. Looking back with hindsight, viewers now will recognize the importance of the message, but will be bored by its repetitious attacks on familiar targets, especially when the attitude Bresson adopts (reinforced by his usual dour mise-en-scène, use of amateur 'models' who are forced to look expressionless throughout, avoidance of humor, and disregard of any hope whatsoever) remains so resolutely misanthropic. As I have stated in my other Bresson reviews I am a huge admirer of his and find even his other bleak color films (especially Lancelot du Lac and L'Argent [1983]) to be masterpieces. This one however just doesn't do it for me. I don't mind the director's anti-commercial stance, a stance which suited him well down the years, but in The Devil, Probably he states his grim case with implacable force in a direct even simplistic manner which smacks to me of propaganda. Unlike his other color films which force us to think deeply and interact with the texts in a meaningful way, this one leaves no room for that so that we feel goaded into supporting its dogmatic left-wing agenda. Whether we agree or not, basically speaking I do not like being told how to think and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Bresson devotees will find plenty of the usual compensations in this film. The film's conclusion is telegraphed at the beginning as per usual telling us the fate towards which the main character is headed. Narrative tension is sacrificed so as to focus us on the reasons (the process) rather than the result. Bresson time and again points his camera into empty square spaces (usually door frames, stairways and vacant rooms) into which characters enter as if predicting a program which has already been mapped out. Grace may have disappeared from the film, but the characters still echo the Catholic predestinarian Jansenism which was always Bresson's main reference point. With cameraman Pasqualino De Santis Bresson continues pointing his camera downwards, catching characters' legs and hands rather than faces - again 'process' is more important than result. There is also the usual disregard for psychological character motivation. We don't know why Charles moves from woman to woman or why he elects to help a drug addict. We don't know why Alberte leaves Michel for Charles, much less why she returns to him. These are all narrative questions of zero importance to the director, intent as he is on showing us that it doesn't matter what the characters say or do, their destiny will be no different. Coming to this film from the very best of Bresson (which I take to be Diary of a Country Priest [1950], A Man Escaped [1956], Pickpocket [1959], Au hasard Balthazar [1966] and Mouchette [1967]) we recognize the film language at once, but realize the sympathy amply shown for characters in those films is absent here. Finally the film constitutes an end-game not only for the characters, but for the whole of western civilization as well, a civilization which Bresson sees as fundamentally doomed. This is not a scenario that anyone can feel comfortable with. That may be the point, but the film's one-dimensional misanthropic harangue is a million miles away from the subtlety of his best work.

Artificial Eye's presentation here is good, the pictures (aspect ratio 4:3 - 1.33:1) sharp and the sound (Dolby Digital Mono) clear. As with most of their Bresson releases there are no extras, a disappointment when the film itself is short (95 minutes). Perhaps a commentary and an intelligent documentary would make the film more interesting. Frankly though, this is a film for Bresson enthusiasts only. For others its appeal is rather hard to gauge. Perhaps some people will trust Fassbinder's judgement over mine. You'll have to buy it and find out for yourself, or perhaps you could test watch it on YouTube first.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Helen Hickman
5.0 out of 5 stars Another Bresson Masterpiece.
Reviewed in Canada on July 30, 2013
Verified Purchase
This is certainly one of Bresson's masterpieces, The film is unforgettable, many of the images will stay with me forever. Bravo Bresson!
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Daryl Chin
5.0 out of 5 stars Late Bresson
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 20, 2008
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Sometimes, the outward manner of a work of art (the "style" or "form") may be incredibly rigorous and intensely stylized, yet the thematic concerns (the "story" or "content") may be wildly disorganized, almost anarchic. It may seem a heresy to say this of Robert Bresson, but after UNE FEMME DOUCE (1969), his concentration on youth and his determined pessimism led him into a series of increasingly fragmented works, perhaps mirroring his fractured sense of the world.

THE DEVIL, PROBABLY is surely one of the most schizoid film in Bresson's career: there are (literally) unleavened chunks of didactic discourse, droning lectures over immaculately edited stock footage showing atrocities done to animals (baby seals, etc.) and the planet. The "message" isn't even subtle: Bresson wants to clobber his viewer with his vision of a planet gone beyond redemption, now in the throes of degradation and destruction. Yet Bresson lingers over his youthful protagonists, in their (deliberately) blank ambiguity (innocence? inexperience?), and he allows the camera to catch them in moments which come perilously close to emotion.

The fracture in the movie's structure is symptomatic of what seems to be an almost hysterical need to make a statement on Bresson's part (and he was never known for didacticism before). Yet, as photographed by Pasqualino De Santis, this is one of Bresson's most seductively tacticle works, with the lighting seeming to irradiate most of the scenes.

The late 1960s and early 1970s seemed to be a time when many in the French cinema were driven to make apocalyptic fantasies: Godard with ALPHAVILLE and WEEKEND, Truffaut with FAHRENHEIT 451, Louis Malle with BLACK MOON, Alain Resnais with JE T'AIME JE T'AIME, even Jacques Demy with THE PIED PIPER. But Bresson didn't turn towards science fiction for his apocalypse: he turned to science fact, and let the facts speak for themselves to come up with this vision of hell on earth.
12 people found this helpful
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hiro617
3.0 out of 5 stars むむ
Reviewed in Japan on November 26, 2004
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これも日本限定公開でしたね、、ＶＨＳなのですが発送の手違いで２度同じテープを手にしたのですが両方ともオープニングクレジットのセーヌ川？の遊覧船のシーンでノイズが入ってました。もしかしたら全製品に入っている可能性があります。
内容はヒロシマを頂点とする“不安の時代”を汚れた川に住む魚のように喘ぐ青年が刻一刻と死の影に蝕まれて行くという落ち込んでる時には絶対見てはならぬ、映画です。
プリント状態はそんなに良くないし、もちろん日本語字幕などありません。
たいした事件もおきず、この時代に生きることが事件です、姉さん。な内容なので字幕がないのはとっても辛かった、、
フリッツラングもこの手の青年の苦悩を描いた映画を構想していたようで見方を変えるとフランス版時計じかけのオレンジなのかな？と無駄な想像を働かせてしまう、まったりとした映画でした。
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MarkusG
5.0 out of 5 stars Late Bresson movie
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2008
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In The Devil Probably (1977) we follow Charles, young and alienated and probably searching for a meaning of life, or maybe he has given up on that. Like other Bresson movies like L'Argent, the actions and intentions of the protagonist is not always totally clear, at least not to me. Bresson does not give us an easy or mainstream story played by mainstream actors. Instead he gives us his vision of the world and society. Here he also uses what he calls "models" insetad of "actors", that is the actors are just to deliver the lines and not really act by displaying emotions and so on.

As I see it, Charles problem is not just as he says: that he sees things too clearly. That is, he sees all the bad stuff in the world and therefore can't find any meaning in anything: environmental pollution, the list of things you "have to do" like raising a family, education, work and so on makes him sick and bored near death. Charles is a slacker in the 1970s, and he refuses to contribute to the society he finds so rotten (but he clearly has no problem using others money). But clearly Charles also has got problems relating to other people. He finds himself "superior" and more intelligent than others (and feelings of "superiority" is a theme in Bressons earlier Pick Pocket). And therefore he don't really care for others, despite his idealism with books about "saving the planet". The other characters are more caring about each other - and for Charles. (Maybe Charles is even a sort of fascist?) I won't go into the ending here as it may spoil the experience. This dark movie demands some reflection afterwards.

The DVD from AE has very clear and stable picture. There are no extras, but at a price of 8GBP it is very good value for money.
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thisnameisalive
4.0 out of 5 stars noble material
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 5, 2009
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Though I hesitate to use the archaic language of religion, on some level I saw Charles (this film's protagonist) as the spirit sputtering and fading in inhospitable times. Through him we see a spirit which is loosened from its moorings and exploring. He looks into the possibility of finding a way to live which includes retaining his integrity, but the world will not let him do both and deep down Charles seems to know what the outcome of his search will be before it reaches its conclusion. He is keeping half an eye out for something that is worth his attention and his time - for something that he can invest himself in, for something that will make his life worth living. He encounters, and half heartedly engages with, political activism, spirituality and love. The dialogue that revolves around all of these is somewhat insipid and hollow and I felt as distant and as bored as he seemed to while watching much of the film. It's as though the world in which he attempts to live is a lake polluted by waste burbling out of the pipes of industry, and he simply can't stomach diving into it. So he skirts around the edges of his life vainly seeking fresh water.

Though 'The Devil, Probably' deals with ecological themes, I felt that the real pollution here was to be found in what people were saying. Language swirls through this film like mustard gas. What these people were saying often sounded intelligent enough but on closer examination was in fact rather empty, and morally bankrupt in particular. Whether it came from the mouths of the members of a Marxist political group, who Charlie dismisses as idiots. Or the pages of a crass 'lifestyle' magazine which seems to map out a future for him that he detests. Or from his mathematics lecturers who are smart enough to understand nuclear physics but allow their efforts to fall into the hands of people who will use them to build ever more spectacular ways of blowing people up. Or members of the clergy who listlessly go through the motions of promoting a God who even they don't seem to believe in anymore. Or from Charles himself, who talks about his own supposed superiority and steals from grocery stores as well as stealing his friends girl without remorse. My favorite example of this semantic pollution came from a psychoanalyst who offers words of wisdom such as: "Do you know that the feeling of being crushed by the society that you live in might well be the result of that spanking you got a a child? That, together with the painful dream of being murdered for a good cause, would point to the development of psychomotor symptoms and explain the root of your disgust and your wish to die." This kind of Orwellian language conceals more than it than reveals and has an aura of authority while at the same time managing to be misleading or meaningless. Perhaps Robert Bresson would agree with the Taoist notion that: those who don't know say and those who don't say know.

Given this films themes, you would expect it to be full of anguish but it isn't and this is problematic. All of Bresson's characters seem to react and interact primarily with their intellects rather than with any kind of passion and they seem to be half in the land of the living and half in the land of the dead. I'm reminded of Descartes words: 'Without the passions, the soul would have no grounds whatever to remain joined to the body.' I suppose that the impassivity could be seen as a Buddha-like lack of attachment, or as a comment on the film maker or artist as watchful bystander, or as an antidote to the way in which much of contemporary culture bypasses our intellect and appeals directly to our baser emotions, but its an approach that makes Bresson's films difficult to engage with. Charlie does sometimes show an acute sensitivity at least - while he waits in a car and trees are being cut down with chainsaws around him, he can't bear to listen or watch and he puts his hands over his ears. But without passions or even interests to anchor him to the material world he begins to float away like a paper cup in a freezing winter breeze.

The camera is static throughout much of the film and many of the scenes would make excellent photographs. The sense of stasis is also highlighted (by way of contrast) in a sequence in which Charles catches a fish and he and his friends are delighted by its spirited struggle for survival. The police arrive to enforce a no bathing rule and Charles and company hide in the long grass by the riverbank. In a rare playful moment they play hide and seek with a policeman but the fun can't last in '...a world where egos are measured with tabloids, where automobiles double for morals, where beliefs are like naps - you leave them behind when somebody touches you and in a place where oil always takes precedence over life...' as Anis Mojgani put it in a poem.

Like most people, Charlie's friends are more pragmatic than he is and manage to make compromises but he simply can't adjust to such a flawed world. As he ducks out of commitments and enumerates the bitter virtues of doing nothing, the trajectory of his life slowly and inexorably begins to resemble more the Indian proverb: 'It is better to sit down than to stand, it is better to lie down than to sit, but death is the best of all.' Relenting to his friends suggestion he goes to see a psychoanalyst who inadvertently gives him, by example, yet more evidence of the irredeemably vain, superficial and money grabbing nature of contemporary society. Charles tells him that his problem is that he sees too clearly and the analyst offers some clumsy analytic babble in return but he does at least give him a useful tip about how to kill himself. In a way he takes the analysts rather predictable counsel that instead of being concerned with or trying to fix the culture that we share, he should try to fix himself - he does indeed fix himself, once and for all. When his end and the end of the film comes I didn't see the martyrdom of a saint because Charles already seems to be somewhat corrupted, and because he can't beat them his future would seem to be one of joining them or else of despair. To live in despair is to live with a feeling of emptiness and as Bresson said: "...there is something which makes suicide possible - not even possible but absolutely necessary: it is the vision of the void, the feeling of void which is impossible to bear." It's as though he had been set the thankless task of attempting to light a candle underwater.

Perhaps his assessment of his prospects was correct and perhaps he was better off hitting the ejector seat and bailing out of this world before he became something that he hated. But I can't help thinking that the world needs more people like Charles in it, now more than then (in the late 1970's when this film was made) and that perhaps we should consider not sacrificing them to our hollow Gods.

As something of a connoisseur of fine corduroy, I appreciated the fact that so many of this films cast were clad in that noble material.
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