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Dostoevsky films! Bresson's Une Femme Douce (1969) & Visconti's Le Notti Bianche (1957) @ 4pm EDT / 20:00 UTC for Hairy Harmonies

Hexbear - A leftist social platform centered around community b… April 7, 2026
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submitted by Camden28 to blorp 17 points | 2 comments

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Today Hairy Harmonies looks at two tales from the masterful author Fyodor Dostoevsky as told through the lenses of two masterful auteurs: Robert Bresson and Luchino Visconti. There have been at least 124 film adaptations of Dostoevsky’s works, but these two are among a handful of the best.

We’ll be blorping at 4:00pm EDT/20:00 UTC right here: blorp.bot.nu/o/visual_cuisine

Matrices for blorptube: matrix.to/#/#visual_cuisine:matrix.org | matrix.to/#/#blorptube:matrix.org

A Gentle Creature (1969) Une Femme Douce

1h 28min 48sec, French with hard-coded English subtitles directed by Robert Bresson

Synopsis: A young woman kills herself, leaving no explanation to her grief-stricken husband. We learn in flashback about how they met, married, and how she failed to adapt her lifestyle to his.

from The Village Voice:

But in “Une Femme Douce” there is no ecstasy, only a barely perceptible relief, in the defenestration which begins and ends the picture, and the most memorable image is not that of escape, but the constant physical presence of the corpse, the luminously pale flesh, the voluptuousness of death itself. By a perverse paradox bordering on necrophilia, “Une Femme Douce” is at once the most frigid and most sensual of all Bresson’s films.

side note: The English translation of the title is alternately made as A Gentle Creature or A Gentle Woman.

White Nights (1957) Le Notti Bianche

1h 41min 46sec, Italian with hard-coded English subtitles directed by Luchino Visconti

Synopsis from Ritz Cinemas (Australia):

In a Tuscan port city, young drifter Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) passes a woman, Natalia (Maria Schell), in tears on a bridge. Over the following evenings, they meet in the same place, and she confides the reason for her vigil: she is waiting for a man whose promise to return has not been kept.

Luchino Visconti’s nocturnal fantasy evokes classic French films of the 1940s in his use of studio sets and high-contrast lighting – a far cry from the Neorealism that had dominated the Italian cinema of the past decade. Yet, amid this heightened artificiality, the aching of human longing shines through.

Content Warnings: none?

A Gentle Creature U.K. rated AA / Quebec rated G Sex & Nudity: Mild Violence & Gore: Mild Profanity: None Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking: Mild Frightening & Intense Scenes: Moderate no ratings (yet) on ‘dogdies’: www.doesthedogdie.com/media/157631 obviously: someone has died also: there isn’t a listing for OMG is this tragic, but be so warned.

White Nights U.K. rated U / U.S. not rated Sex & Nudity: None Violence & Gore: None Profanity: None Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking: Mild Frightening & Intense Scenes: None no ratings (yet) on www.doesthedogdie.com/media/1657216 I can’t think of any warning at all. I might say ‘natural bodies of water’, but I only remember artificial bodies of water.

letterboxd:

letterboxd.com/film/a-gentle-woman/ letterboxd.com/film/le-notti-bianche/

movie links:

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