Before World War Two, France had one of the most vibrant movie scenes in the world, just behind Hollywood and Germany. But with the onslaught of WW2, most of the French filmmakers fled the continent. However, director/scriptwriter Robert Bresson decided to stay, and took advantage of the void to direct his first feature film, June 1943's "Angels of Sin." He would direct only thirteen full-length films, but his impact in cinema remains high, especially to those working in film in the late 1950s during what is known as the 'French New Wave' era.
Jean-Luc Godard placed Bresson in the highest echelon of French film directors. "Bresson is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music." Francois Truffaut called him one of the very few true "auteurs." At 42 when Bresson handled his first feature film in "Angels of Sin," he had spent his younger years as a painter and a photographer. Bresson had directed only one short film, 1934's 'Public Affairs,' but he had written four film scripts prior to 1940 which became movies. Enlisting in the French Army when war broke out, Bresson was captured by the Germans and spent a year in a prisoner-of-war camp before paroled.
Under Germany's thumb, Vichy France restructured French cinema, and the dearth of filmmaking talent made Bresson a highly-sought after commodity. The Catholic director was assisted by famous dramatist Jean Giraudoux and Dominican priest Raymond Bruckberger, who suggested a book on the Sisters of Bethany who rehabilitate female convicts. Bresson's screenplay is centered on Anne-Marie (Renee Faure), a do-gooder who decides to join a convent to help those incarcerated. Her first assignment is Therese (Jany Holt), a bitter woman who unwittingly took the rap for her boyfriend's stealing. Once Therese is paroled, she immediately kills her former lover, and seeks to hide out from the police by joining the convent. Therese, the nunnery's bully, gets Anne-Marie in trouble where she's banned from the convent. Anne-Marie is so persistent in her attempts to reform Therese she repeatedly slinks back at night, leading to a spiritual awakening for both. "However distant from his later work it may be," says film reviewer Erik Ulman, "'Angels of Sin' remains not only recognizably a Bresson film, but one of great power." This is one of only two movies he had hired professional actors; all his others consist strictly of amateurs. His debut set a commonality which appears throughout his future movies, including his characters' salvation and redemption. Like his subsequent films, Bresson's pares down superfluous details of events not crucial to the main plot, known as ellipsis.
Some critics draw a parallel between the convent and Vichy France in "Angels of Sin" which Bresson subtly gives certain hints. German officials monitored each of the 230 films produced by the French during WW2, carefully inspecting and cutting any negativity towards the Axis powers. Popular for French film-goers during the war were adaptations of literature and drama, crime and melodramatic thrillers. German and Italian-produced films attracted only flies in France. Film critic Greg Klymkiw noticed "Angels in Sin" "deals very cleverly and subtly with the way in which the nunnery operates in comparison to the prison and most importantly, how the secular world is essentially the Vichy and the religious world, the Resistance."
"Angels of Sin" was Bresson's only directed film during the war. But it was a springboard to one of the most fertile body of works in French cinema by one director.
