The director Robert Bresson was known for his use of nonprofessional actors. It was a practice that he took to its extreme in “Au Hasard Balthazar” (1966), which will be screened at MOMA on July 29 in a series devoted to its distributor, Rialto Pictures. The hero of the film—or its most abiding victim—is a donkey called Balthazar. (In the New Testament, that is the name of one of the Magi who arrive for the birth of Jesus, an event also attended by an ass in the stable.) What lends grace to Bresson’s beast is the patient witness that he bears to the human activities, ranging from the exalted to the monstrous, that take place around him. He is baptized by children, garlanded with flowers at night (the scent of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” hangs over the scene), scourged, and made to perform in a circus act. Finally, he lies down to die, surrounded—in another Biblical reference—by flocks. The film could have sunk beneath this symbolic burden, yet it is lightened by the speed and precision of Bresson’s art; he could derive more from one pair of hands than most directors can from two hours of blood and guts.



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