FILM BRESSON Au hasard Balthazar [1966] – Records of Material Objects in the Cinema #10: A Band-Aid on Anne Wiazemsky’s Leg

Iconic image of famous auteur looking for his cut. Can he see anything with his shades on, through a fog of smoke from his Gitane?


Records of Material Objects in the Cinema #10: A Band-Aid on Anne Wiazemsky’s Leg


MUBI blogs Written by Daniel Kasman, 13 January 2012


Ignore the short post but slip down to the comment by Matt

I’m curious if it is noticeable in the film’s scene rather than just a still from the film? Sometimes a shot like this may last a second or two – but as a frozen frame it seems so much more significant.

David Bordwell once laid out a whole color theory about an Angelopolous film. When I went back to see the scene it passed by so quickly that it barely registered. But, clearly, he had seen it on an editing device [or DVD] and was able to watch the film frame by frame. Which essentially made it a different scene.

There’s the viewer of the film and the maker of the film. Whether film or digital, editing involves looking at individual frames or freeze framing. Nowadays the viewer of a DVD can stop the film in much the same way as the editor does. The difference is the film-maker started off with a lot more footage to edit down to his final film, the viewer only has the final cut, whether to view as a film or frame by frame.