Blu-ray Release: Mouchette

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Dec. 8, 2020
Price: DVD $23.49, Blu-ray $27.94
Studio: Criterion


French auteur Robert Bresson (The Devil, Probably, Pickpocket) plumbs great reservoirs of feeling with his 1967 drama Mouchette, a searing portrait of human desperation.

With a dying mother, an absent, alcoholic father, and a baby brother in need of care, the teenage Mouchette seeks solace and respite from her circumstances in the nature of the French countryside and daily routine.

Bresson deploys his trademark minimalist style to heartbreaking effect in this essential work of French filmmaking, a hugely empathetic drama that elevates its trapped protagonist into one of the cinema’s most memorable tragic figures.

Criterion previously released a DVD of the film in 2007; the Blu-ray edition includes the following:

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Audio commentary from 2006 by film scholar, critic, and festival programmer Tony Rayns
  • Au hasard Bresson,a 1967 documentary by Theodor Kotulla, featuring director Robert Bresson on the set of Mouchette
  • Segment of a 1967 episode of the French television series Cinéma,featuring on-set interviews with Bresson and actors Nadine Nortier and Jean-Claude Guilbert
  • Original theatrical trailer, cut by Jean-Luc Godard
  • An essay by critic and poet Robert Polito
Buy or Rent Mouchette

About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.