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The Devil Probably
(Le diable probablement)

Introduction by Stephen Prina
Screening on Film
Directed by Robert Bresson.
With Antoine Monnier, Tina Irissari, Henri de Maublanc.
France, 1977, 35mm, color, 95 min.
French with English subtitles.
Print source: The Film Desk/Olive Films

Once banned in France as an incitement to teenage suicide, Le diable probablement offers a haunting portrait of a truly lost generation. Within a group of young environmentalists looking to address the crisis of world hunger, one strangely charismatic member leaves, rejecting political activism as insufficient to cope with the sickness of contemporary society and resolving to kill himself as the ultimate gesture of refusal. Describing the film as “voluptuous,” Truffaut explains: “Two beautiful girls and two handsome boys animate the film…and I am insisting on their beauty because it is in part the subject of the film: wasted beauty, wasted youth. Bresson plays with these four faces, deals them out like face cards in a card game." – DP

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