The Cinematheque

“It’s stunningly beautiful, mesmerising, exhausting, uplifting, amazing—all the things you could possibly expect from a masterpiece.”

Geoff Brown, Time Out

Long a pet Bresson project (he had been trying for two decades to bring it to the screen), Lancelot du Lac presents a masterfully anti-heroic portrait of Camelot and the Age of Chivalry in decline. In Bresson’s severe, startling vision, the heroes of Arthurian legend must face the failure of their impossible quest for the Holy Grail, while Lancelot and Guinevere prove unable to conquer human weakness with the power of love. These dispirited Knights of the Round Table clank noisily about in clumsy armour, reduced to infighting and petty jealousies, and re-enact rituals now debased to mere bloodletting and crude violence. Not unlike his approach in The Trial of Joan of Arc, Bresson abstains from period authenticity: ​“There are horses, knights in armour, a tournament,” he said. ​“All as anachronistic as possible.”

In French with English subtitles

“A masterpiece on every level … There have never been so many arresting images in a Bresson film.”

Richard Roud, Cinema: A Critical Dictionary

“Lancelot du Lac is proof that Bresson cannot age badly, and it is representative of an uncompromisingly singular cinematic vision—discomforting, a little intimidating, but thoroughly remarkable and unlike any other in cinema.”

Chris Darke, Sight and Sound