The art of cinematography, as we well know, derives from a technologic origin, so that the cinematograph (the element of kinema inscribed on film) is produced through an arrangement and operation of mechanisms. To the degree that the human body is captured and redefined by a mechanical eye, Bresson’s human models can be suitably considered mechanisms of scrupulously-weighted human emotion. The human model, moreover, isn’t separated from the scenario; whether against the narrative of the scenario (as in A Man Escaped) or shepherded by its flow (as in Diary of a Country Priest), the human model is a sensuous extension of the mechanism which it generates. This is what I have thus far indicated as being the interstitial space where the human model slides into and is submerged in the liquid space of cinema, i.e. the body-in-kinema. Bresson’s intention, however, is not to repeat or sublimate the mechanism at work as its own end, but to transcend and transform dumb machinery via the corporeal and emotional actuality of the human model, its covenant inscribed on film by the model’s acts of faith (or contrary acts). In this way, the passion of the human model vindicates the mechanical innocence of the camera, by restoring concrete values to the human spectacle. Bresson’s thought is anti-intellectual insofar as the abstract and theatrical uses of cinema have failed to achieve cinema’s true potential as an ‘honest-eyed mechanism’ capable of glimpsing the human model in a pure state.

No intellectual or cerebral mechanism. Simply a mechanism… If, on the screen, the mechanism disappears and the phrases you have made them say, the gestures you have made them make, have become one with your models, with your film, with you — then a miracle.

— Notes on Cinematography, italics mine, p. 18

The idea of the “mechanism” is useful to the extent that it can disappear and be replaced by the purity of human emotion. The mechanism establishes a vocabulary of transparency, so that the human model, the kinetics, the germinal idea, can shine through clearly, resonantly. But it is through automatism that automatism is vanquished. Bresson’s Notes on Cinematography, the text of which was taken from the notebooks he carried with him throughout the preparation and shooting of his films, is written in an epigrammatic style that evokes the same axiomatic terseness of his directing method. Its style owes much to his literary tastes, and especially to the Pensées of Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French mathematician and philosopher with whom Bresson shares the predilection for pithy, elliptical ruminations. Toward the latter end of his life, Pascal was intellectually involved in the formulation of an apologia for the Christian religion, threatened as it was by theological divisions within the Church (between the Jesuit order and the burgeoning Port Royal movement) and also by the tide of intellectual and spiritual skepticism that would announce the approach of the Enlightenment era. Among his proofs for the substantial benefits of reaffirming one’s faith in God and religion was the concept of “the Machine,” a mysterious term used by Pascal to denote the ineluctable instinct of habit and “automatism” in human beings. For Pascal, the human mind is also a machine conducted by the whims and strictures of habit:

For we must make no mistake about ourselves: we are as much automaton as mind. As a result, demonstration is not the only instrument for convincing us. How few things can be demonstrated! Proofs only convince the mind; habit provides the strongest proofs and those that are most believed. It inclines the automaton, which leads the mind unconsciously along with it.

— Pensées, p. 821

Pascal makes a subtly Cartesian distinction between the “automaton” that resides in the human being, and that part of the human mind which separately identifies its emotional/intellectual life. One part of the human model is reached through automatism, or in Bresson’s terminology, via the “mechanism,” while the other half is defined by the mind, which is persuaded by the mental processes of faith and free will. In a “Letter showing the usefulness of proofs, by the Machine,” Pascal presses the point further:

Faith is different from proof. One is human and the other a gift from God. The just shall live by faith. This is the faith that God himself puts into our hearts, often using proof as the instrument. Faith cometh by hearing. But this faith is in our hearts, and make us say not ‘I know’ but ‘I believe’.”

— Pensées, p. 7

It is remarkable that Pascal’s biblical citation (“Faith cometh by hearing,” Romans 10:17) presages the sense-ability with which Fontaine ultimately arrives at his liberation: the sense of sound/hearing. We have by this point arrived at the film’s suspenseful conclusion. Fontaine has finally put his prison-break plan into effect, only this time he has another man joining him, a young prisoner named Jost who was suspiciously installed in Fontaine’s room on the very day Fontaine had been officially condemned to death. The climax of the film begins with the introduction of Jost, who first appears (symbolically) dressed half in German garb and half in French. His attire causes deep unrest and suspicion in Fontaine, for the latter believes the young man is a possible German informant. Will Fontaine share his plans with Jost or must he kill him to evade detection? After a more or less tense and thorough examination, Fontaine takes the young man into his confidence — this act of voluntary faith, following Pascal’s distinctions, is something akin to Fontaine’s believing the young man at his word. In any case, Fontaine’s salvation is only more so enhanced by his decision to save another: strength and faith in community.