I have previously alluded to Constructivist influences in Bresson's work, through Alexander Rodchenko's photographic defamiliarization techniques that emerge in UNE FEMME DOUCE, through Sergei Diaghilev's experiments with light in his Ballets Russes performance of Ode (1928), and through the kinetic light sculpture of Nicolas Schöffer that appears in UNE FEMME DOUCE. In this chapter, I continue this line of inquiry, examining the influence of the Suprematist paintings of Kazimir Malevich and the neoplasticism of Piet Mondrian in LANCELOT DU LAC, and through Vsevolod Meyerhold’s innovative approach to the theater in relationship to Bresson's style in L’ARGENT. The chapter builds on two scholars who have suggested an affiliation between Bresson and Constructivism. Jean-Pierre Provoyeur traces Bresson's concept of the actor as “model” back to the writings of Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, who uses Constructivist principles to argue for the actor as an inexpressive, neutral vessel for the larger composition. David Bordwell similarly links Bresson and Kuleshov in their shared method of building a film from shots of unimportant details, which Bordwell terms “slices of space and instants of time”. Bordwell compares Kuleshov's student Vsevolod Pudovkin's instructions for creating an auto accident by assembling fragments of action to the way Bresson similarly builds a scene through close-ups of body parts.

Vsevolod Meyerhold's concept of the “new theatre” focuses on training actors using biomechanical exercises to establish a repertoire of gesture and movement, montage to juxtapose stasis with movement, uniforms to emphasize anonymity and cohesion, and a privileging of rhythm and color over narrative concerns.