BFI Membership Quiz #96

Test your Robert Bresson knowledge and win two tickets to any available screening in our Of Sin and Salvation: The Cinema of Robert Bresson season.

12 May 2022

This week’s quiz celebrates the cinema of Robert Bresson. All questions have been compiled especially for our Members by the BFI Reuben Library.

You can complete the quiz just for fun but, for a chance to win a pair of free tickets to any screening in our Of Sin and Salvation: The Cinema of Robert Bresson season (subject to availability), don’t forget to submit your details into the prize draw before midday Monday 30 May.

Congratulations to Chris Gordon-Coker who won the prize draw for our BFI Radio Times TV Quiz.

When you finish, scroll down to view your score and enter our prize draw by following the link. Then fill in the short form and click submit. Good luck!

Robert Bresson directing Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)

How old was Robert Bresson when he directed his first feature film?
- 22
- 32
- 42
- 52
Robert Bresson with Andrei Tarkovsky, winning the Director's Prize at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, for L'Argent and Nostalghia respectively

In a career spanning fifty years, how many feature-length films did Robert Bresson make?
- 11
- 13
- 15
- 17
A Man Escaped (1956)

What is the name of the prison in the opening shot of Bresson’s 1956 film, A Man Escapes?
- Montluc Prison
- La Santé Prison
- Longuenesse Prison
- Fresnes Prison
Pickpocket (1959)

What is the name of the book Jacques (Pierre Leymarie) claims disgusts him in the 1959 classic Pickpocket?
- The Thief’s Guide
- The Prince of Pickpockets
- Pickpockets and Run
- Picking the Right Pocket
Au hasard Balthazar (1966)

What was Balthazar the donkey meant to symbolise in Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)?
- The French Republic
- The Christian faith
- The European Union
- The United States of America
Mouchette (1967)

One day Moucette (1967) gets lost in the woods on her way home from school and ends up spending the night taking shelter from a storm in a cabin. Who is with her in the cabin?
- Mathieu, gamekeeper
- Arsene, the poacher
- Her mother
- No one, she’s alone
Diary of a Country Priest (1951)

What is the priest’s (Claude Laydu) diet limited to in Diary of a Country Priest (1951)?
- Wine-soaked bread with sugar
- Snails fed only with garlic
- Lettuce and sea-salt
- Rum Baba
The Devil, Probably (1977)

In the 1977 French drama film The Devil Probably, which two disciplines fail to repair Charles’s nihilist outlook, leaving him suicidal?
- Religion and psychoanalysis
- Biology and physics
- History and sociology
- Literature and the fine arts
Au hasard Balthazar (1966)

Gérard (François Lafarge) abducts Balthazar, preventing the donkey from carrying the ashes of Marie’s (Anne Wiazemsky) father. What did Gérard want with Balthazar?
- Wanted him to carry contraband over the Spanish border
- He wanted him for food
- He wanted him to transport tourists around the local area
- He wanted to keep him as a pet
L'Argent (1983)

Robert Bresson’s last film L’Argent (1983) is loosely inspired by the first part of which novella?
- Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915)
- Leo Tolstoy’s The Forged Coupon (1911)
- George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945)
- Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899)