Eighteen months in a prison camp would take its toll on anyone's inner spirit.
Some people would deal with such an experience by writing about it; other people would talk about it; other people would not talk ever.
Robert Bresson decided to make films.
Whether his subject was the bold knight Lancelot who, with Guinevere, was cheating on his friend Arthur, or whether it was an elegant socialite who wanted to keep her man, his post-prison-experience films all dealt with the idea of being trapped.
He had been arrested by the Germans in 1939: his release from the prisoner-of-war camp in 1941 was just the beginning of a lifetime's obsession.
It was not just the physical deprivation of freedom that fascinated him, but the ways in which emotions and obligations can also seem to leave us no escape.
