Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971) User Reviews

A beautiful, haunting film

[Red-125 · 8/10 · 28 May 2012]

Quatre nuits d'un rêveur was shown in the U.S. with the title Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971). It's written and directed by Robert Bresson, based on the short story "White Nights" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Bresson has moved Dosteovsky's story from 19th Century St. Petersburg to 20th Century Paris, which I think works very well. Both cities are centers of art and romance, and the story and film are all about art and romance.

Jacques, a painter (Guillaume des Forêts), prevents Marthe (Isabelle Weingarten) from committing suicide, and naturally, he falls in love with her. (In view of Ms. Weingarten's sadness and her ethereal beauty, Jacques basically had no choice but to fall in love with her.)

However, we soon learn that Marthe is in love with another man. He has been in the U.S. for a year, and was due home on that day. That fact that he did not call her is what prompted her suicide attempt.

The film follows Marthe and Jacques for the four nights of the title. They walk the streets of Paris, and return to the Seine where musicians on a tourist boat are playing samba music. Jacques is serious about his painting, and discusses art with a friend who comes to visit.

We know something is going to happen, but we don't know what. You'll have to see the film- -or read the short story--to find out what that something is.

Bresson--as always--directs with the secure sure hand of a master. Every shot is beautifully framed, and we can almost feel the Paris night and hear the lapping of the Seine against its banks.

We saw this intense, quiet film at the wonderful Dryden Theatre in Rochester's Eastman House. Other reviewers have noted that it's difficult to purchase on DVD. That's unfortunate, because it would work fairly well on the small screen, and it definitely is worth finding and seeing. It's a jewel-like masterpiece.

The weakest Bresson feature in my opinion.

[Amyth47 · 6/10 · 8 December 2019]

My Rating : 6/10

Minimalist, inconsequential and bland - that's how I would describe 'Four Nights of a Dreamer'.

Bresson's typical ascetic approach to cinematography is no doubt visible however it fails to make any impact on this viewer.

The aimless artist meets a damsel in distress is cinematic cliche and while there are bits of 1970's life and society of France - the lack of emotion makes the story ineffective and dispassionate.

No doubt the worst film-work of all of Bresson's stellar filmography.

Striking cinematography and an intelligent script make for a fascinating film

[ametaphysicalshark · 22 November 2008]

"Four Nights of a Dreamer" is my first Robert Bresson film, and my first impression of his style and ethos. This film is one of several adaptations of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "White Nights", but from what I gather from reading about the other adaptations this is the only one worth seeing other than Luchino Visconti's lovely "Le notti bianche". While I enjoyed that film nearly as much as this one, "Four Nights of a Dreamer" is more striking and ambitious, thanks to Bresson's intelligent and thoughtful screenplay and the beauty of the cinematography and simple economy of Bresson's direction.

The adaptation is loose, but needs to be. Dostoyevsky's writing is too reliant on the reader's perception and the emotional core of the story to be effective when literally translated to film, but is ripe for interpretation, and Bresson's is particularly interesting as he moves the story to 1970's France, introduces more emotion and passion to the characters, and actually makes the cinematic cliché of the aimless artist interesting and involving.

The story is simple, Jacques (the 'dreamer') meets Marthe as she is about to commit suicide because her lover had promised to meet her that night after being away at Yale for a year but hadn't shown up, they become friends, share their stories over four nights until Marthe's lover shows up and they are forced to part. Bresson's script is remarkable, though, in its occasional wit and humor, in the uniqueness of its characters, in its observations on modern life and being in love. Even more impressive than the screenplay is the striking cinematography by Pierre Lhome, particularly during the nighttime scenes in Paris, which is shockingly beautiful at times.

My first impression of a legendary director like Bresson could have resulted in disappointment, but I am now interested in exploring his filmography because I found his mute style so appealing. Most interesting was his ability to be very literal and clear through his use of the camera without seeming heavy-handed at any point. This is a wonderful, strikingly beautiful film.

9/10

An aimless artist/dreamer meets a woman considering suicide, and they tell each other their stories.

[michael_chaplan · 10/10 · 10 March 2005]

I saw this film twice with Japanese subtitles. Tonight I saw a print (and very different version) with English subtitles.

In this film, Bresson makes everyday life beautiful.... the lights on the river, the Brazilian music coming from a beautifully lighted tour boat going under the bridge the lovers are on... The story is small... An aimless artist prevents a woman from suicide and listens to her story and tries to help her reunite with her lover. This story seems to be seen through a dark filter of the beauty of Paris and its people.

A scene where the heroine is making love in the next room while her mother is walking back and forth calling her name, not realizing that her daughter is right next door... Her voice gets louder and softer and louder...

The scene with the aimless artist following one beautiful woman, only to be distracted by another beautiful woman whom he then follows....

There are many small beauties in this film. And my telling you about them will only make you anticipate them with pleasure.

Bresson, working with a minor little story has created a film of great beauty. Good luck finding it....I was fortunate enough to see it at a theater twice, where the beauty of the scenery could be appreciated. For some reason, it is not out in video or DVD. The DVD I saw probably had the photographer setting up his camera in the dark theater... and shooting at the screen!

Bresson's caressing camera still can't draw substance from these vacuous characters

[moonspinner55 · 4/10 · 7 September 2017]

Revered for his minimalist approach to cinema, writer-director Robert Bresson shows an unerring artistic eye for his surroundings in "Quatre nuits d'un rêveur", though he stumbles with his vapid script (inspired by Dostoyevsky's short story "White Nights") about two young people in Paris. It's a flashback-heavy non-romance between a starving artist and a suicidal girl. After stopping her from leaping from a bridge, the painter finds himself drawn to the girl during an intimate conversation wherein they reveal to each other their past regrets--but she's still pining for her fickle lover. Bresson and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme capture lyrical, lazy bits of business--and sensual though not erotic female nudes--but the characters never take shape, and the amateur actors (a Bresson specialty) aren't compelling. ** from ****

Dostoevsky Lite

[tieman64 · 14 December 2009]

Though one of Robert Bresson's lesser films, "Four Nights of a Dreamer" is perhaps his most influential.

The plot here is simple: an artist wanders about Paris, observing its various female inhabitants. He loves these beautiful strangers, infatuated with the ideal they represent. He eventually meets Marthe, an attractive woman who is gloomy because her lover promised to meet her when he returned to Paris, but never showed up.

The artist and the woman then spend four days together, sharing intimate stories and romantic gazes, but their relationship ends abruptly when Marthe's lover suddenly reappears. The artist then becomes disillusioned. The lesson: approach leads to destruction, there is no ideal, desire's can never be fully satiated and fantasies are fragile things. Paradoxically, they are precisely that which spurs man onward.

7.9/10 – Though it lacks the polish of Bresson's major works, this little flick nevertheless set the template for later film romances such as "Once", "Before Sunset" and "Before Sunrise". With its long unbroken takes, loving shots of nighttime Paris, river ferries, street performers, musicians and a couple who "promise to meet up again in a year", this film laid the groundwork for a whole new sub-genre of romantic films. See too Minnelli's "The Clock". Worth two viewings.

Better watch Visconti's White nights instead

[thedevilprobably · 1/10 · 9 November 2012]

Of all Bresson's movies, it is the only one that can be easily avoided. Completists only should worry about it.

Given the brilliance of former and further scenarios, this one is inexplicably bland. The main character is dull, aloof when he's supposed to be giving all he has. The heroine is unwatchable- we'll find her later in Eustache's masterpiece "The mother and the whore". The "other guy" who we get to see in the end is just a face in the crowd.

The story in itself is quite of some interest, although the shooting, editing and worst of all clothing makes us wish we were never born. Insects in a distance, the heroes do their thing which appears aimless if not whimsical.

Whoever wishes to see an honest interpretation of the same story will turn with profits to Visconti's "White nights". Use your energy for all other Bresson's movies, forget this one. A shame.

Loners

[spoilsbury_toast_girl · 19 January 2010]

From all the Bressons I've seen this week, this one is the hardest to describe. I liked a lot, but I don't exactly know what it was that I liked. The film, taking place mostly at night in the streets and on the bridges of Paris is somewhere in between the typical lethargy and an a-typical hysteria and is about utterly lonely people that meet up with people who are even lonelier. It's fascinating to look how those change directions all the time, interrupt actions to start a completely different one, jump from one anecdote to another. It's a fascinating jumble; you never know what is going to happen next and very similar to Cassavetes' Shadows (which I tend to like more).

Sadly not the best

[jromanbaker · 5/10 · 7 April 2021]

I watched this film the following day after watching ' Une Femme Douce ', and although I had seen both long ago it is good revisiting any Bresson film, especially as both of them have not been seen as much as a lot of his other films. Both are from Dostoyevsky, and despite not wanting to I found that ' Une Femme Douce ' to be first rate while ' Quatre nuits d'un reveur ' is not. I would like to blame it on the poor copy I have of it and perhaps its condition spoiled the unarguable ' beautiful ' imagery. The river Seine and ' les bateaux- mouches ' that glide down on it are a tourist's dream, plus the singers on it. The film is also concentrated on Pont Neuf, also a tourist's dream, and what with the obvious beauty of the two main actor's it is a seductive film. There is also female semi-nudity in it, and this too is part of the ' dream ' of Paris. All of these images have been used before, and I am astonished that Bresson filmed ( for most of the film ) these cliched images of a complex and often very ugly real city. The story is simple. Man saves a woman attempting suicide because the lover she has waited a year for has not turned up. Once more the suicidal theme recurs in Bresson's work, but I will give no spoilers as to how this rather banal story ends. I love Dostoyevsky as much as I revere Bresson but his ' White Nights ' is not as good in my opinion as the rest of his work. I also disliked the choice of making the two leads such aimless, and clearly well off people. At the very least in ' Une Femme Douce ' the two main characters are in work, or seeking work and both Dominigue Sanda and the excellent Guy Frangin ( why did he not do more cinema ? ) are miles ahead in the acting field than Isabelle Weingarten and Guillaume des Forets in this film. The plus side is that the shallow nature of the early 1970's is well conveyed but like a boomerang this returns hitting at the film and making it shallow in itself. I allow any great director a few failures, and a failure this is, at least from my perspective. I give it a 5 because despite the ( to me ) triviality of love lost for one, and found for the other, the signature moments of Bresson are there. The shots of hands, the lack of music, except from within the scenes, and not imposed, and his no doubt clear eye for detail that other directors fail to see are there. A saddening experience from a director I admire so much.

Have you heard about the lonesome loser? Beaten by the Queen of Hearts every time.

[nunculus · 21 February 2000]

An art-school kid meets a sad-faced girl on the Pont-Neuf; she's about to leap. It seems her beau left for Yale, swore he'd meet her one year later to the day--and he's blown her off. Love ensues between the couple on the bridge; Joe Yalie fails to make his appointment; and all seems to be heavenly for the two young lovebirds. Until, of course, days later, Joe Yalie comes a-callin'...

The relationship between a painter's self-torturing love life and his efflorescent work life was explored with a riotous, blasting, punk-rock yet p**s-elegant glee by Martin Scorsese and company in the short film LIFE LESSONS. Bresson's version of a similar tale is, to put it lightly, less communicative. Late Bresson--from THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC on--puts a premium on mum's-the-word. But in a late, underappreciated masterpiece, UNE FEMME DOUCE, Bresson's deliberate muteness worked: this adaptation of a Dostoevsky story about a blinkered husband decrypting his wife's suicide prods at the question "What do women want?" with comic and sensuous tactics unseen elsewhere in Bresson. And the emphasis on the unreadable--made literal in Bresson's concentration on shoulders, hands, backs of heads--fit the material like a glove.

The Dostoevsky source material for FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER is simpler stuff. And more psychological stuff, too--which, mated with Bresson's deliberately dime-store-Indian, anti-acting style, makes for incoherence. You can't make out just exactly what Bresson thinks this movie is about, except a touching, and not altogether lecherous, affection for Today's Youth. It has freaky asides, like his other unhinged youth movie THE DEVIL PROBABLY: an art student pontificates on his moral agenda for painting in a bowlegged scene that suggests Bresson standing up in the movie theatre and reading from a tract. It has bits of rock music performed live that take you back to the with-it-ness of Otto Preminger's SKIDOO. And it has the hero's weird, unfinished, Pop Art-meets-Matisse paintings, everywhere. And it ends with a sadder-but-wiser shrug.

You get the feeling Bresson's heart and soul slammed painfully into every frame of this movie. It's also inscrutable and not absorbing in the least. Is this the fate of all master directors who make it to a ripe old age--they keep their chops, but they simply have no more stories they're impassioned to tell?