It’s a clever microcosm of the movie\u2019s worldview — or at least the protagonist\u2019s \u2013 in which a bunch of disagreeable strangers uncomfortably crammed together, wasting time talking while hurtling towards a catastrophe entirely out of their control. The Devil, Probably<\/em> starts with a litany of dire statistics about nuclear devastation and harrowing footage of environmental disasters. (Not a great movie to watch with someone who loves baby seals.) Its idealistic young people squabble over the most effective means of protest, getting hung up on petty disagreements about process, the way idealistic young people are wont to do. Charles is having none of it. As far as he\u2019s concerned, the only proper form of protest in the modern world is a rebuke of the entire endeavor. He\u2019s going to kill himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Devil, Probably<\/em> was initially banned by the French government for fears it could be an incitement to teenage suicide. It screened exactly once at the New York Film Festival in 1977, then wasn\u2019t shown again in the U.S. until it was rereleased in 1995. I suppose it is, indeed, a dangerous film \u2013 dangerous in ways that movies with ideas can bump up against conventional wisdom and unsettle audiences looking for easy, feel-good bromides. (This was the summer of Star Wars<\/em>, after all.) Bresson was 76 years old when he made the picture. An art cinema legend for austere Catholic allegories like Mouchette<\/em> and Au Hasard Batlthazar<\/em>, the director had previously worked in such a timeless, literary tradition I can\u2019t imagine how jarring it must have been to see him make a color film set in present day Paris. (Probably like seeing Fellini and Marcello adrift among 1980s feminists in City of Women<\/em>, or those bizarrely unpleasant \u201870s movies in which John Wayne tried to play a contemporary cop.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bresson famously refused to work with actors, instead hiring first time performers he called \u201cmodels\u201d and running them through take after take until all their affectations and energy had been forcibly worn away. His \u201cmodels\u201d were mostly young and beautiful. They look like figures out of religious paintings, positioned in carefully composed still frames. (Monnier, who plays Charles, is the great-grandson of Henri Matisse and resembles an androgynously handsome bird.) Bresson did not believe in guiding our emotions with a musical score, and shot exclusively with a 50mm lens because it\u2019s the closest to how the human eye perceives things. This lack of adornment, plus the somnambulant performances, leave a lot of audiences out in the cold. But if you find your way onto Bresson\u2019s frequency, his films can feel like they\u2019ve transcended cinema\u2019s inherent artifice and found a purer, more exaltedly spiritual mode of storytelling. There\u2019s a reason Paul Schrader has made an entire career out of remaking Pickpocket<\/em> and Diary of a Country Priest<\/em>. There\u2019s also a reason Bresson\u2019s most beloved movie stars a donkey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The title alone should tip you off that The Devil, Probably<\/em> is his most blasphemous picture. An early, earnest church discussion is drowned out by bleats of the maintenance man cleaning the pipe organ and running a vacuum cleaner, while one of Charles\u2019 girlfriends surreptitiously slips dirty pictures into the prayer books. The protagonist tries in vain to be a libertine, attempting to lose himself, like so many others around him have, in sex, drugs and music. But his fundamental despair is unresolvable. What I think worried the French censors is that there\u2019s nothing hysterical or self-pitying about Charles\u2019 suicidal ideation. The act is not a reaction to the world around him so much as a level rejection of it. The ultimate refusal. I believe this is why no less an authority on the subject than Richard Hell called<\/a> The Devil, Probably<\/em> \u201cthe most punk movie ever made,\u201d marveling at how a septuagenarian on the other side of the world knew exactly what he meant when he wrote \u201cBlank Generation.\u201d (Both came out in 1977, curiously enough.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n I saw The Devil, Probably<\/em> for the first time almost a decade ago, during a period when I wasn\u2019t doing particularly well. To say that the movie spoke to me back then would be an understatement, and in my mind I\u2019d remembered it as being much funnier than it seems to me today. (Though I maintain it still might be the most comedic of Bresson\u2019s films, the tragedy tempered by a healthy awareness of Charles\u2019 fundamental ridiculousness.) Maybe now that I\u2019m eight years older and sadder, I just don\u2019t find these things as amusing as I used to. But I can still respect the rigor of the argument, the austerity of Bresson\u2019s filmmaking and the unwavering, cross-generational appeal of what another rocker once described as \u201ca denial, a denial, a denial.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Devil, Probably” is streaming on the Criterion Channel<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/devilprobably-1024x576.jpg\")
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