Movie: “The Devil Possibly”
The penultimate film by Robert Bresson, he received a Silver Bear for it at the Berlinale 1977 (Fasbinder was among others on the jury). The original title swings, “Le diable probablement”, seductive and demonic. The anarchy of May ’68 is a thing of the past; now environmental pollution and climate catastrophe are coming to the fore. The trail of blood from a slain seal runs across the ice like a brush stroke. Destruction is preached. The great city of Paris contracts in nihilism, the boys and girls are fatalistic in a somnambulistic way until the end, you can feel the spirit of “Out of Breath”, Belmondo and Jean Seberg. Bresson hasn’t worked with acting professionals for a long time: “As if with the cinema,” wrote Frieda Grafe, “a space had become possible in which the old break between life and its representation no longer applies.” (DVD and Bluray, at UCM One) Fritz Goettler