But the strength that remains, which is principally destructive, is the film’s dialectical relationship to most of the other movies that we see, its capacity to make their most time-honored conventions seem tedious, shopworn, and unnecessary. This originality often seems to be driven by hatred and anger, emotions that are undervalued in more cowardly periods such as the present...

Whether these characters are lovable or detestable, they’re lovable or detestable in a TV way – defined by a minimal set of traits that are endlessly reiterated and incapable of expansion or alteration, a fixed loop.

Just as Freud couldn’t always be blamed for the Freudians, Bresson didn’t always feel obliged to behave like a Bressonian.

It’s a sign of this film’s greatness that the enormous sadness that accompanies the final leave-taking of the circus interior is a good deal more than the conclusion of an unpretentious evening’s entertainments; it’s a sublime and awesome coda to the career of one of this century’s greatest artists.

Judging by the the movie’s enduring popularity, the message that stupidity is redemption is clearly what a lot of Americans want to hear.

But the strength that remains, which is principally destructive, is the film's dialectical relationship to most of the other movies that we see, its capacity to make their most time-honored conventions seem tedious, shopworn, and unnecessary. This originality often seems to be driven by hatred and anger, emotions that are undervalued in more cowardly periods such as the present...