Au Hasard Balthazar is a film by Robert Bresson.
Jaques Ranciere in his new book “The Future of the Image” refers to this Bresson’s movie to explain the importance of alterity for the composition of the image. Criticizing the technological deteministic approach of Regis Debray in his book Vie et mort de l’image, the author says that “the technical properties of the cathode tube are one thing and the aesthetic properties of the image we see on screen are other”. And it refers to this great movie to say that the images of this film are not “primarly manifestations of the properties of a certain medium, but operations.” He explains that the image is made of relations between elements and functions, and the image become art trough separating and compressing. And he continues saying that it works trough “the operation of the power which separats cinema from the platic arts and makes it approximate to literature: the power of anticipating an effect the better to displace or contradict it“.
