Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) was French filmmaker Robert Bresson's second film and made under one of the most difficult periods in modern French history. The film was based on a subplot in a Denis Diderot short story that had been written between 1765 and 1780 and published posthumously in 1796 as Jacques le Fataliste fataliste et son maître . The story is about the widowed Madame de la Pommeraye, who is seduced by Monsieur des Arcis. Desperate to know if he still cares for her, she pretends that she is no longer in love with him to see how he will react. Rather than declare his love, des Arcis admits he no longer wants her. Angered by the rejection, de la Pommeraye vows revenge and is determined to ruin his reputation. For his adaptation, Bresson wrote the scenario and chose iconic artist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau to create the dialogue. In Cocteau and Bresson's modern-day version, Hélène (Maria Casares) breaks up with her lover Jean (Paul Bernard) and wants to ruin his life and his reputation. Like de la Pommeraye, she hires Agnès (Elina Labourdette), a young dancer living in Vichy, France, who works as a prostitute in order to take care of her ill mother, Madame D. (Lucienne Bogaert). Hélène pays off Agnès' debts and gives her an expensive apartment, then sets up Jean to fall in love with Agnès and marry her so that Hélène can reveal publicly that Agnès is really a prostitute.

Shot at the Studios Pathé-Cinéma in Paris for Les Film Raoul Ploquin production company, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne began filming in April 1944, shortly before the Allied invasion of France in June. Due to wartime hardships, the sets were sometimes so cold that the actors' breath is visible onscreen and scenes were often shot at night. The political upheaval and resulting war that came to the streets of Paris forced the film to stop production and did not resume for several months. Eventually, this interruption forced Bresson to resume filming without members of the original crew.

Despising theatric acting, the director's approach was to rehearse the actors speaking their lines over and over until he had stripped away all the emotion and potential for overacting. Still, Bresson had trouble with the mercurial Casares, who is best remembered as the long-suffering wife of Jean-Louis Barrault in her first film, Children of Paradise (1945). Casares had come from the stage, where she had earned a reputation for excellence, but as this was only her second film she was still prone to what Bresson considered overacting, forcing him to find a way to tone down her style. He later said, "To get courage, she used to drink a little glass of cognac before acting. When I chanced to discover this, I asked her to take a sedative instead, which she willingly did. Then things started to go better." Bresson had other issues as well; he was unhappy with Cocteau's dialogue and their relationship had become strained. He had to replace Alain Cuny, his original choice for the role of Jean, with Jean Marais and then replaced Marais with Paul Bernard.

Bresson was dissatisfied with Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne when the film was released in France on September 21, 1945, believing that allowing Cocteau to write the screenplay cost him the control he needed to create a better film. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne was the last Robert Bresson film that would be completely cast with professional actors. He preferred to work with non-professionals, whom he called "models," and trained them to act in an understated manner so that it would be the audience who would feel the emotion rather than the actors.

SOURCES:
http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm=4010.html
Bresson, Robert Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983
Cinematheque Ontario Robert Bresson
Dixon, Wheeler Cinema at the Margins
Ebert, Roger "Robert Bresson was Master of Understatement" The Chicago Sun-Times 23 Dec 99
https://en.unifrance.org/movie/1366/the-ladies-of-the-bois-de-boulogne
Klinowski, Jacek and Garbicz, Adam Feature Cinema in the 20th Century: Volume One: 1913-1950: a Comprehensive Guide
Reader, Keith Robert Bresson

By Lorraine LoBianco