Bresson's prison cycle [Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, and The Trial of Joan of Arc] provides an excellent opportunity to study the transcendental style in depth for several reasons: one, because the prison metaphor is endemic to certain theological questions; two, because Bresson's statements clear up much of the ambiguity in which critics are often forced to operate; and three, because there are few cultural elements intermingled with transcendental style in his films. (p. 60)

[In] transcendental style the form must be the operative element, and for a very simple reason: form is the universal element whereas the subject matter is necessarily parochial, having been determined by the particular culture from which it springs. And if a work of art is to be truly transcendent (above any culture), it must rely on its universal elements. (p. 61)

In film, "surface-aesthetics" is the everyday, and is practiced by Bresson…. (p. 62)

Bresson's use of the everyday is not derived from a concern for "real life," but from an opposition to the contrived, dramatic events which pass for real life in movies. These emotional constructs—plot, acting, camerawork, editing, music—are "screens."… Screens prevent the viewer from seeing through the surface reality to the supernatural; they suppose that the external reality is self-sufficient.

This is why Bresson's work seems so perverse to the uninitiated viewer: Bresson despises what the moviegoer likes best. (pp. 63-4)

Bresson has an antipathy toward plot…. The plot "screen" establishes a simple, facile relationship between the viewer and event…. The viewer feels that he himself has a direct contact with the workings of life, and that it is in some manner under his control….

In Bresson's films the viewer's feelings have no effect on the outcome…. The events are predestined, beyond the viewer's control and beyond—seemingly—Bresson's. (p. 64)

In the everyday Bresson replaces the "screens" with a form. By drawing attention to itself, the everyday stylization annuls the viewer's natural desire to participate vicariously in the action on screen. (p. 69)

The everyday blocks the emotional and intellectual exits, preparing the viewer for the moment when he must face the Unknown. The intractable form of the everyday will not allow the viewer to apply his natural interpretive devices….

One of the dangers of the everyday is that it may become a screen in itself, a style rather than a stylization, an end rather than a means. The everyday eliminates the obvious emotional constructs but tacitly posits a rational one: that the world is predictable, ordered, cold. Disparity undermines the rational construct.

Disparity injects a "human density" into the unfeeling everyday, an unnatural density which grows and grows until, at the moment of decisive action, it reveals itself to be a spiritual density. (p. 70)

[Bresson's] narration does not give the viewer any new information or feelings, but only reiterates what he already knows. The viewer is conditioned to expect "new" information from narration; instead, he gets only a cold reinforcement of the everyday.

When the same thing starts happening two or three times concurrently the viewer knows he is beyond simple day-to-day realism and into the peculiar realism of Robert Bresson. The doubling does not double the viewer's knowledge or emotional reaction, it only doubles his perception of the event. Consequently, there is a schizoid reaction; one, there is the sense of meticulous detail which is a part of the everyday, and two, because the detail is doubled there is an emotional queasiness, a growing suspicion of the seemingly "realistic" rationale behind the everyday. If it is "realism," why is the action doubled, and if it isn't realism, why this obsession with details? (p. 72)

Techniques like doubling cast suspicion on the everyday, and the next step of disparity goes farther: it tries to evoke a "sense" of something Wholly Other within the cold environment, a sense which gradually alienates the main character from his solid position within the everyday. Jean Sémolué [in Bresson] has distinguished three levels of such alienation in Diary of a Country Priest: (1) sickness: the priest and his body, (2) social solitude: the priest and his parishioners, (3) sacred solitude: the priest and the world of sin. The young priest is unable to relate to any of the elements in his environment; even nature, which does not figure in Sémolué's schema, seems hostile to the suffering priest as he collapses under the gray sky and tall, dark barren trees. At this level Bresson's theme would seem to fit his pseudodocumentary everyday technique: the unending conflict between man and environment is one of the cardinal themes of documentary art.

But the conflict is more complicated than it at first seems. The source of this alienation does not seem to be intrinsic to the priest (his neurosis, misanthropy, or paranoia) or to his environment (antagonistic parishioners, inclement weather), but seems to originate from a greater, external source. The priest is the frail vehicle of an overwhelming passion which in the context of Diary of a Country Priest is called the holy agony (la Sainte Agonie). (pp. 72-3)

The levels of alienation demonstrated by Sémolué are actually extensions of the holy agony. In fact, what seems to be a rejection by the environment is more accurately a rejection by the priest—and not because he wishes to estrange himself, but because he is the unwilling (at first) instrument of an overwhelming and self-mortifying passion. (p. 73)

On each level the priest's alienation originates in neither the environment nor himself, but in an overpowering, transcendental passion. (p. 75)

[Each Bressonian] protagonist struggles to free himself from his everyday environment, to find a proper metaphor for his passion. This struggle leads Michel to prison, Fontaine to freedom, and the priest and Joan to martyrdom.

The viewer finds himself in a dilemma: the environment suggests documentary realism, yet the central character suggests spiritual passion. This dilemma produces an emotional strain: the viewer wants to empathize with Joan (as he would for any innocent person in agony), yet the everyday structure warns him that his feelings will be of no avail. (pp. 77-8)

The trigger to that emotional release occurs during the final stage of disparity, decisive action, and it serves to freeze the emotional into expression, the disparity into stasis. (p. 78)

The decisive action has a unique effect on the viewer, which may be hypothesized thus: the viewer's feelings have been consistently shunned throughout the film (everyday), yet he still has "strange" undefined feelings (disparity). The decisive action then demands an emotional commitment which the viewer gives instinctively, naturally (he wants to share Hirayama's tears, Michel's love). But having given that commitment, the viewer must now do one of two things: he can reject his feelings and refuse to take the film seriously, or he can accommodate his thinking to his feelings. If he chooses the latter, he will, having been given no emotional constructs by the director, have constructed his own "screen." He creates a translucent, mental screen through which he can cope with both his feelings and the film…. Bresson uses the viewer's own natural defenses, his protective mechanism, to cause him, of his own free will, to come to the identical decision Bresson had predetermined for him. (pp. 81-2)

Stasis is the quiescent, frozen, or hieratic scene which succeeds the decisive action and closes the film. It is a still review of the external world intended to suggest the oneness of all things. In Diary of a Country Priest it is the shadow of the cross, in A Man Escaped it is the long shot of the darkened street with Fontaine and Jost receding in the distance…. (p. 82)

This static view represents the "new" world in which the spiritual and the physical can coexist, still in tension and unresolved, but as part of a larger scheme in which all phenomena are more or less expressive of a larger reality—the Transcendent. (p. 83)

The prison metaphor is endemic to Western thought. Western theories, whether theological, psychological, or political, are inevitably couched in terms of freedom and restraint. On the theological level, the prison metaphor is linked to the fundamental body/soul dichotomy, a linkage which is made by the wellsprings of Western thought…. (p. 88)

As the body becomes identified with the prison, there is a natural tendency toward self-mortification. The country priest mortifies his body and at the moment of death surrenders himself into the hands of God. In Pickpocket the metaphor is reversed; Michel's prison is crime, his freedom is in jail. His is also a self-mortification, but it does not lead to death. (p. 89)

The prison metaphor gains in complexity and depth as Bresson extends it to the theological paradox of predestination and free will. The body/soul conflict is a dichotomy for Bresson: he prefers the soul to the body, even to the point of death; whereas the predestination/free will conflict is a paradox, it cannot be resolved by death but has to be accepted on faith. Predestination/free will is a complex and contradictory concept, and Bresson's prison metaphor adapts to this complexity. (p. 90)

In his films man's "freedom" consists of being a "prisoner of the Lord" rather than a prisoner of the flesh. Joan of Arc seemingly chooses martyrdom of her own free will, yet the film also repeatedly emphasizes that her fate is predetermined…. The only tension, as in predestinarianism, is whether or not she will choose her predestined fate. (pp. 90-1)

Bresson's treatment of the prison metaphor justifies his often rather voguish labeling as a "Jansenist."…

The mysterious, conciliatory element in the predestination/free will paradox is grace. (p. 91)

In Bresson's films grace allows the protagonist to accept the paradox of predestination and free will…. (p. 92)

Bresson's theology, his formulation of the problems of body and soul, predestination and free will, grace and redemption, seems obviously Jansenist, but to infer from this, as some critics have, that his aesthetic and artistic influences were also Jansenist is incorrect. Jansenism, like Calvinism, had little feeling for aesthetics or art in general, and almost none for the "visual arts" in particular. (p. 95)

The Scholastic aesthetic [defined by Jacques Maritain in Art and Scholasticism] is … appropriate for Bresson's art because it allows a place for the intellectual formulation of ideas within the form. Logic was not opposed to mystery but just another means to appreciate it. The Schoolmen "attempted a task not yet clearly envisaged by their forerunners and ruefully to be abandoned by their successors, the mystics and the nominalists: the task of writing a permanent peace treaty between faith and reason." This aesthetic, which could serve both faith and reason in East and West, can also serve the seemingly contradictory qualities of Bresson's film-making. (p. 97)

Artistically, Bresson's films bear … resemblance to Byzantine portraiture, an art form which lived out an aesthetic similar to Scholasticism before there was the need to create an aesthetic. (p. 98)

Bresson uses frontality to create a respectful, noncommitted attitude within the viewer which can result in a stasis very similar to that evoked by a religious icon.

The long forehead, the lean features, the closed lips, the blank stare, the frontal view, the flat light, the uncluttered background, the stationary camera, these identify Bresson's protagonists as objects suitable for veneration. (p. 100)

His techniques of portraiture come from Byzantium, his theology of predestination, free will and grace from Jansenism, his aesthetics from Scholasticism. To each tradition he brings the virtues of the other, and to cinema he brings the virtues of all three. Perhaps this is why no religious denomination has ever embraced Bresson's seemingly religious films; they haven't figured out what sort of heretic he is yet. (p. 105)