Films are Still Best on Film

Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket

“Shudderings of images awakening.” -Robert Bresson, Notes on Cinematography

Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket and Au Hasard, Balthazar have been playing in regular rotation at Anthology Film Archives for more than 50 years as part of Essential Cinema, which may well be the world’s longest ongoing repertory series. Respectively just eleven and four years old (!) when they were selected, these now-classics have more than stood the test of time. They are indeed essential. In an interview I did years ago with Tilda Swinton, she says the donkey in Au Hasard, Balthazar gave her “favorite film performance of all time.” Pickpocket, a portrait of the ascetic life of a criminal in which objects are as vibrant and expressive as the people in the film, exemplifies the uniquely sensuous nature of Bresson’s so-called minimalism.

I went to see the films last Tuesday at Anthology (we’re now in the “B” section of the Essential schedule–Robert Breer, James Broughton, and Luis Buñuel to follow). Au Hasard, Balthazar was shown first, in an exceptionally good DCP (pristine restoration, with finely toned black-and-white images that did justice to Ghislain Cloquet’s cinematography). Pickpocket followed, in a B+ quality 35mm print, which showed a little wear and tear, and some inconsistency in image contrast. 

Two things were striking: the high quality of the digital projection, and the clear superiority of the experience of watching the 35mm print. It was the difference between watching a very good simulation of a film and watching an actual film in the format in which it was made, and in which it was made to be seen. There is an aura around the projection of a film print, which bears the traces of history, that can’t be duplicated digitally. After all, every projection of a print carries evidence of past screenings, and brings the print a little closer to its demise. 

Most importantly, the 35mm projection simply offers a richer and more immediate experience. How to explain this? As always, one can turn to David Bordwell. In a 2012 symposium “From 35mm to DCP” in Cineaste magazine, Bordwell wrote “At the level of the image, the shift from 35mm prints to digital projection involves some loss of the ‘film look’--shimmer, flutter, and the general vibrancy of images whose contours and textures are created by random distribution of microscopic grains of silver halide.” The vibrancy can also be said to include the subtle flicker of light that gives celluloid film its unmistakable pulse.

Think of a projectionist inspecting a reel of film before its screening. The celluloid strip runs through their hands; it is a tactile art form. I thought about tactility while watching Pickpocket, with its countless closeups of the thief’s hands, surreptitiously invading the space of his targets. The film ends with a different kind of touch, as the thief, Michel, reaches through the prison bars that form a screen separating him from Jeanne. He reaches across the screen, to grasp love and redemption. 

Film–or at least film prints–are not forever, and it is not clear how much longer new prints will be made. Practical matters, like the rapidly increasing cost of shipping canisters of film, will hamper the screening of prints. But there is an encouraging hunger for 35mm among film programmers and young cinephiles, partly as a response to the digitization of everything, but also because of the clear superiority of the film experience. (For New Yorkers, Analog Film NYC is a valuable guide to upcoming celluloid screenings.)

The original German poster for Pickpocket