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Rating: 
Summary: Not for Bresson fans only
Review: Although the later, experimental Bresson films are great in their own right, this early film should appeal to everyone
who enjoy beautifully made conventional cinema. Jean Cocteau's
dialogue is witty, elegant, musical, stylized yet psychologically insightful. The scenes are as elegant, economical, and lucid as in the best of the well-made play tradition. Any playwright or screenwriter could take lessons from this film. Bresson brings his usual interest in religious issues (free will and the evil of the attempt of one person to have control over another) to the melodramatic story--melodramatic in the best sense, too, bringing to mind Henry James, Tennessee Williams, and Euripides. Maria Casares (the Poet's Death in Cocteau's "Orpheus") is brilliant--even iconic-- as a Dark Lady motivated by love to commit an awful (psychological) act of revenge. The gamine actress who becomes her unwitting instrument is rather irritating at first, but gradually grows on one in subsequent viewings. Besides his interest in spiritual issues, Bresson also brings an overall austerity of style to the film--which he abandons only in the final scene, whose lush cinematography (reminiscent of the cinematography in Ingrid Bergman's very similar sickbed scene at the climax of Hitchcock's "Notorious") heightens the amazing
emotional/spiritual impact of the finale. Lyrical, psychological,
classical, spiritual, deeply emotional--this film is one-of-a-kind.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing Transfer
Review: As it was stated by another reviewer, the Criterion transfer of "Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne" is quite disappointing. The film seems loose in the gate and therefore the picture is very instable; it's jumping a lot, which is very irritating. Also, there is some noise present in the background.
So although Criterion did clean up the print quite much, this effort is in vain due to the imperfect transfer. I wonder why nobody has noticed this at Criterion? And its a problem which could have been corrected quite easily....
Considering the high price Criterion asks for this title: don't buy it!
Rating: 
Summary: Worth owning for much re-visiting
Review: For consistency of tone, measured pace, and assured craft, this is a very fine film. I think of the word EXQUISITE. I think of the word LOVE. I think of the word FRANCE. I remember some lines from this film -There is no such thing as love, just the proof of love-To own and revisit and so to be reminded of what the best of cinema has to offer.
Rating:
Summary: Bresson a million carats film maker!
Review: Helene (Maria Casares)is a passionate but also a cool woman who falls in love with Bernard . The sad day arrives when Bernard confess her he no longer loves her. This is the starting point of a careful revenge from the inner depths from her soul against Labourdette and her mother.
The script is overknown. But in hands of Bresson it became in another masterpiece in his career.
Bresson was a man concerned around the huge possibilities of visual expressions; so you may consider all his films as mude films with unnecesary subtitles.
Bresson belongs to a reduced category of giants filmakers such as Dryer, Murnau or Renoir but gifted of poetic atmosphere since the opening sequences of any of his previous or next films.
If you 're really interested in his filmography you'll find out such hidden treasures that you'll convince by yourself that Bresson is not only enoughly known even today, but he's a genius in the caleidoscopic sense of the word.
The minimalism is a concept that I disagree in Bresson's case. His spiritual concerns hardly may be entitled ; the genius is always contemporean and that is why he escapes to any reduced category.
This film must have been a true revelation in its age. Jean Delanoy for instance won a deserved triumph in Cannes with the Pastoral Symphony, for instance , but you feel that Delanoy is in a lineal level ; he's just a storyteller without the bliss of Bresson.
"The art and nothing more the art ; we live from the art for not dying from the truth" Nietszche.
Rating:
Summary: 10 Stars; a masterpiece; One of the great French films
Review: I hadn't seen this one before & now, thanks to Criterion, I've seen it 5 times in two weeks, that's how great it is, & that's how obsessed I am with Bresson's incredible, ultra-subtle style of speaking volumes with the unsaid, the unspoken in the images, or what Andre Bazin called the 'ellipsis.' This film actually was a popular success at the time & is Bresson at his most romantic within his already estabished less-is-more strategy; a more passionate version of his later more austere visual style, here it flows like a great piece of music, like something out of the best Mozart or Beethoven (the beautiful soundtrack is also similar to 19th century classical mixed with Ravelian modernity), & stands-up to any number of repeat viewings, long after the very simple story of manipulation & revenge & all the Cocteau dialogue itself is known by heart. The cinematography is a breathtakingly shaded, soft, almost silent-film-like black-&-white by Philip Agostini (Le Jour se leve, Rififi) & though the camera moves constantly you are never ever aware of it unless you look for it; it never draws attention to itself. The level of acting Bresson gets out of all four leads --Maria Casares, Lucienne Bogaert, Elina Labourdette & Paul Bernard-- is just spectacular, untouchable, unbelievably great. Maria Casares takes the cake though, she is just electrifying & oozes a level of mystery, mischief & upper-class-noir Bette Davis & Gloria Swanson never dreamed of (just compare this to the 'good girl' she played in 'Les Enfants du Paradis,' as Baptiste's wife). The print they transferred to DVD isn't perfect like certain other restored films of this period such as "Les Enfants Du Paradis," & has quite a few tracer lines & imperfections through it which they cleaned up to the extent they could. However, this is still an essential DVD purchase for anyone even remotely interested in the great films of French cinema, & Criterion is to be commended for making it available to the public at large, so they don't have to wait 5 years for rare screenings to experience true art & true artists at work.
Rating:
Summary: 10 Stars; a masterpiece; One of the great French films
Review: I hadn't seen this one before & now, thanks to Criterion, I've seen it 5 times in two weeks, that's how great it is, & that's how obsessed I am with Bresson's incredible, ultra-subtle style of speaking volumes with the unsaid, the unspoken in the images, or what Andre Bazin called the 'ellipsis.' This film actually was a popular success at the time & is Bresson at his most romantic within his already estabished less-is-more strategy; a more passionate version of his later more austere visual style, here it flows like a great piece of music, like something out of the best Mozart or Beethoven (the beautiful soundtrack is also similar to 19th century classical mixed with Ravelian modernity), & stands-up to any number of repeat viewings, long after the very simple story of manipulation & revenge & all the Cocteau dialogue itself is known by heart. The cinematography is a breathtakingly shaded, soft, almost silent-film-like black-&-white by Philip Agostini (Le Jour se leve, Rififi) & though the camera moves constantly you are never ever aware of it unless you look for it; it never draws attention to itself. The level of acting Bresson gets out of all four leads --Maria Casares, Lucienne Bogaert, Elina Labourdette & Paul Bernard-- is just spectacular, untouchable, unbelievably great. Maria Casares takes the cake though, she is just electrifying & oozes a level of mystery, mischief & upper-class-noir Bette Davis & Gloria Swanson never dreamed of (just compare this to the 'good girl' she played in 'Les Enfants du Paradis,' as Baptiste's wife). The print they transferred to DVD isn't perfect like certain other restored films of this period such as "Les Enfants Du Paradis," & has quite a few tracer lines & imperfections through it which they cleaned up to the extent they could. However, this is still an essential DVD purchase for anyone even remotely interested in the great films of French cinema, & Criterion is to be commended for making it available to the public at large, so they don't have to wait 5 years for rare screenings to experience true art & true artists at work.
Rating:
Summary: 10 Stars; a masterpiece; One of the great French films
Review: Robert Bresson's second movie DAMES DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE is a precise, minimalist melodrama of revenge and redemption.
Hoping to get a commitment from her long time upper class lover, a high society woman stages a phoney break up. To her shock, her lover agrees. Filled with jealousy and hate, she manipulates circumstances to get him to fall in love with a pretty but poor cabaret dancer who entertains men on the side (to support her needy family). The dastardly plan leads to an expected public disgrace.
What is unexpected is the moral descent of one woman and the redemption of a fallen woman. Interesting moral fable and not typical of Bresson's later films.
For specialized tastes and true videophiles.
Rating: 
Summary: ONE BAD DAME
Review: Robert Bresson's second movie DAMES DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE is a precise, minimalist melodrama of revenge and redemption. Hoping to get a commitment from her long time upper class lover, a high society woman stages a phoney break up. To her shock, her lover agrees. Filled with jealousy and hate, she manipulates circumstances to get him to fall in love with a pretty but poor cabaret dancer who entertains men on the side (to support her needy family). The dastardly plan leads to an expected public disgrace. What is unexpected is the moral descent of one woman and the redemption of a fallen woman. Interesting moral fable and not typical of Bresson's later films. For specialized tastes and true videophiles.
Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting And Moving Early Bresson
Review: This is a very fine and sensitive early film, austerely shot with extreme care and precision, by the great cinematic master, Robert Bresson. It has a purity of form and content foreshadowing the later style that is really remarkable and achievable under its conditions only by this extraordinary talent. Its obscuring weaknesses come more from the influence of Cocteau who wrote the dialogue and the then current condition of french cinema than from anything that Bresson does with it. I think that anyone who likes authentic psychological/spiritual cinema would be very moved by this film that is admittedly somewhat melodramatic but still genuinely profound, and if you are a devotee of Bresson's art then this is an especially interesting look at how Bresson moved toward the unique and truly great style that fully emerged in Diary Of A Country Priest.
Personally, I have never liked it when a review tells me the plot of a film and I feel wrong in doing it myself, so I will only say that it is about a high woman who spiritually falls and a fallen woman who spiritually rises with the help of the love of a man that a mysterious destiny has placed between them. I give this film only four stars because it is very good, but not as great as what was yet to come from the hand this genius (my favorite) cinematic artist. Highly recommended...
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat obscure but impressive
Review: This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.
"Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne", also known as "Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne" or "Ladies of the Park" is a lesser known French film but is still good. It is based on the story "Jacques le Fataliste" by 18th century author Denis Diderot. It is a story of revenge about a woman scorned . When her boyfriend loses interest in her, she exacts revenge by matching him up with a former prostitute.The result: a scandal.
The film has some nice moments and could be described as a warning not to jilt your love interest.
The Criterion Collection edition contains a disappointingly small amount of special features. There is only a behind the scenes photo gallery and two essays in the liner notes.
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