Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971)

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Revered for his minimalist approach to cinema, writer-director Robert Bresson shows an unerring artistic eye for his surroundings in "Quatre nuits d'un rêveur", though he stumbles with his vapid script (inspired by Dostoyevsky's short story "White Nights") about two young people in Paris. It's a flashback-heavy non-romance between a starving artist and a suicidal girl. After stopping her from leaping from a bridge, the painter finds himself drawn to the girl during an intimate conversation wherein they reveal to each other their past regrets--but she's still pining for her fickle lover. Bresson and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme capture lyrical, lazy bits of business--and sensual though not erotic female nudes--but the characters never take shape, and the amateur actors (a Bresson specialty) aren't compelling. ** from ****

Of all Bresson's movies, it is the only one that can be easily avoided. Completists only should worry about it.Given the brilliance of former and further scenarios, this one is inexplicably bland. The main character is dull, aloof when he's supposed to be giving all he has. The heroine is unwatchable- we'll find her later in Eustache's masterpiece "The mother and the whore". The "other guy" who we get to see in the end is just a face in the crowd. The story in itself is quite of some interest, although the shooting, editing and worst of all clothing makes us wish we were never born. Insects in a distance, the heroes do their thing which appears aimless if not whimsical. Whoever wishes to see an honest interpretation of the same story will turn with profits to Visconti's "White nights". Use your energy for all other Bresson's movies, forget this one. A shame.

Quatre nuits d'un rêveur was shown in the U.S. with the title Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971). It's written and directed by Robert Bresson, based on the short story "White Nights" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Bresson has moved Dosteovsky's story from 19th Century St. Petersburg to 20th Century Paris, which I think works very well. Both cities are centers of art and romance, and the story and film are all about art and romance.Jacques, a painter (Guillaume des Forêts), prevents Marthe (Isabelle Weingarten) from committing suicide, and naturally, he falls in love with her. (In view of Ms. Weingarten's sadness and her ethereal beauty, Jacques basically had no choice but to fall in love with her.)However, we soon learn that Marthe is in love with another man. He has been in the U.S. for a year, and was due home on that day. That fact that he did not call her is what prompted her suicide attempt.The film follows Marthe and Jacques for the four nights of the title. They walk the streets of Paris, and return to the Seine where musicians on a tourist boat are playing samba music. Jacques is serious about his painting, and discusses art with a friend who comes to visit.We know something is going to happen, but we don't know what. You'll have to see the film- -or read the short story--to find out what that something is.Bresson--as always--directs with the secure sure hand of a master. Every shot is beautifully framed, and we can almost feel the Paris night and hear the lapping of the Seine against its banks.We saw this intense, quiet film at the wonderful Dryden Theatre in Rochester's Eastman House. Other reviewers have noted that it's difficult to purchase on DVD. That's unfortunate, because it would work fairly well on the small screen, and it definitely is worth finding and seeing. It's a jewel-like masterpiece.

Though one of Robert Bresson's lesser films, "Four Nights of a Dreamer" is perhaps his most influential.The plot here is simple: an artist wanders about Paris, observing its various female inhabitants. He loves these beautiful strangers, infatuated with the ideal they represent. He eventually meets Marthe, an attractive woman who is gloomy because her lover promised to meet her when he returned to Paris, but never showed up.The artist and the woman then spend four days together, sharing intimate stories and romantic gazes, but their relationship ends abruptly when Marthe's lover suddenly reappears. The artist then becomes disillusioned. The lesson: approach leads to destruction, there is no ideal, desire's can never be fully satiated and fantasies are fragile things. Paradoxically, they are precisely that which spurs man onward.7.9/10 – Though it lacks the polish of Bresson's major works, this little flick nevertheless set the template for later film romances such as "Once", "Before Sunset" and "Before Sunrise". With its long unbroken takes, loving shots of nighttime Paris, river ferries, street performers, musicians and a couple who "promise to meet up again in a year", this film laid the groundwork for a whole new sub-genre of romantic films. See too Minnelli's "The Clock". Worth two viewings.