In Lancelot du lac, Bresson turns from the historical chronicle of Joan of Arc to Arthurian legend. The film bears comparing with Perceval (1978) by Eric Rohmer, a filmmaker who shares Bresson’s interest in the antinomies of free will and predetermination. Whereas Rohmer presents chivalry as the flowering of courtly ethics, Bresson deflates any notions of heroism, seeming to regard the combat of the knights as mindless slaughter. The adulterous love between Guinevere and Lancelot, far from being either a cause or a symptom of the decline of Arthur’s reign, becomes here its most human feature. The extremely elliptical narrative is matched by an arresting use of framing and montage to break the Arthurian mythology into sharply delineated shards of armor, bloodshed and rigorously understated pageantry. The film is notoriously dark (visually speaking), as if the celluloid itself were manifesting the kingdom’s nefarious decay. – DP