Angels of Sin

Angels of Sin original French title Les anges du pch was the first feature film directed by Robert Bresson. Made in 1943, nine years after his comedy short Affaires publiques, it was Bressons only film released during the German occupation of France. Working titles included Bethany, and Bressons favored title The Exchange, but producers felt these titles werent sensational enough.

AnneMarie Rene Faure, a welloff young woman, decides to become a nun, joining a convent that rehabilitates female prisoners. Through their program, she meets a woman named Thrse Jany Holt who refuses any help because she says she was innocent of the crime she was convicted for. After being released from prison, Thrse murders the man she feels is responsible for her imprisonment and comes to seek sanctuary from the law in the convent. AnneMarie clashes with her sisters and elders over her zealousness to reform Thrse, who manipulates and antagonizes her.Though fairly conventional for its time in its approach to narrative filmmaking, Angels of Sin nonetheless contains elements which would later become common in Bressons work, including a featuring of ellipsis the shop owner is hardly visible throughout a sequence in which Thrse buys a gun there is also little context around the relationship of Thrse and the man she murders who, when shot, is only shown in silhouette. Additionally, the film has a prison setting, which would recur in the films A Man Escaped 1956, Pickpocket 1959, The Trial of Joan of Arc 1962, and LArgent 1983. Lastly, the film ends with a shot of crossed hands being handcuffed this form of closeup on hands became one of Bressons most famous stylistic trademarks, and this particular arrangement of the cuffed hands is repeated in the aforementioned The Trial of Joan of Arc. ........

Source: Wikipedia