Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

Essential Viewing

France/Sweden

Feature Film

Original Title: Au hasard Balthazar

Writer/Director: Robert Bresson

Cinematographer: Ghislain Cloquet

Composer: Jean Wiener

Cast: Anne Wiazemsky, Walter Green, François Lafarge, Jean-Claude Guilbert, Philippe Asselin, Pierre Klossowski, Nathalie Joyaut

A donkey named Balthazar experiences cruelty, mistreatment, and even a little bit of love at the hands of his various owners, whilst also bearing witness to a lifetime’s worth of man’s inhumanity to man (and beast), in Bresson’s beautifully photographed magnum opus, a film that perhaps manages to capture the spirit of all of man's various vices and virtues. Iain.Stott