Shortly after serving an 18-month sentence as a German prisoner of war, Bresson directed his first feature film in Occupied France. The film itself is about prisoners—in this case, female criminals who are taken into the care of a convent upon their release from jail. Although there is remarkable and even noirish use of chiaroscuro in those rare scenes when the camera and the characters leave the convent, these serve primarily as contrast to the gentle and elegant austerity of the convent itself. Bresson uses a thoroughly classical style with an emphasis on storytelling and with a surprising amount of wit and warmth, yet the unadorned precision so characteristic of the filmmaker’s work as a whole is already evident. Likewise, the emphasis on the possibility of redemption – particularly within the milieu of the convent and the prison – foreshadows the Bresson to come. – DP