Who is it that is making a mockery of humanity?

The environment is doubly poisoned in Bresson’s The Devil, Probably. First there is the environment we all share, of contaminated rivers, deforestation and endangered fauna. Then there is the poisoned atmosphere of Paris, where young upper-class intellectuals and street bohemians “want to know everything and end up doing nothing.” These urban fauna, bent on self-destruction in a world of auto-destruction, move through the city dazed and uncertain, idling with sex, drugs and books, staring at each other blankly as the world around them accelerates into stupidity. 

Bresson’s oblique framing of these adolescents, refugees from a Garrel or Rohmer film, emphasizes their disconnection from each other and from a world they can’t change. The film opens with its ending, telegraphing the sullen protagonist’s quest for spiritual meaning in a cemetery. “In the future,” wrote Fassbinder, “this film will be more important than all the rubbish which is now considered important but which never really goes deep enough.” – A.S. Hamrah