Robert Bresson's legendary first film, long believed lost, proves to be cinema's most intriguingly unlikely directorial debut: "A burlesque comedy; a circus with a plot; a piece of filmic doggerel; a cartoon with live actors-and like a cartoon, activated exclusively by energy" (Gilbert Adair). The action takes place in an imaginary country, Crogandie, where (carefully orchestrated) chaos rules, and the Chancellor is a clown (the great Beby, in one of his few movie roles). And everywhere that Beby isn't, the comic Dalio is, in no fewer than three roles. Bresson has commented, in an interview with Peter Scarlet of the San Francisco Film Festival, "I was a painter at the time and I wanted to make a film-a slightly crazy film... I did it without knowing anything about how to make a film. But I wasn't mistaken, I did right away what I was going to do afterward: work by instinct."