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		Stephen Heath's words, "the shots succeed [one another] with no other tie than the fact of that succession." 35 Through it all, Bresson this most precise of all directors is careful never to show us in one shot anything more than the absolute minimum needed to advance that particular section of his narrative. Although the overall impact of such minimalist technique can be alienating at first, it is also enthralling insofar as it makes us rethink our access to the world of the characters.

		The "Absent One" is also connected to the question of the invisible fourth wall. Typically, the offscreen place occupied by the camera, that privileged angle toward which the entire scene is organized, should never be felt as missing. Its absence should never become conspicuous. What happens though when the geography of the space we are given to see makes it difficult for us to account for our own position in the scene? Let us take Bresson's Trial once again.36 On and off throughout the courtroom scene we are given a third view of the trial: it shows one of Joan's supporters. His position in the room is at first difficult to ascertain. We would like very much to locate him in the area in front of us, that location unrevealed to us between the protagonists (Joan on the left, the judges on the right), but we cannot do so for when the supporter looks at Joan he turns camera right and not left as we wish him to do. To put it briefly, there is only one spot in the courtroom where he can be stationed and that is where we the camera have been standing for most of the earlier shot/reverse shot series. Bresson, in other words, has crossed the stage line for only this series of shots. This unexpected location not only fails to relieve the tension, it aggravates it by suddenly assigning "our" place in the room to this man. So, not only is there an unrevealed area in front of us, but also our own position is given to someone else! As a result, we end up "booted out" of the room, just as happened in the famous Las Meninas (1656) painting by Vel zquez. Some viewers, no doubt, have attributed the unwieldy move to a lack of directorial competence. For others, the technique is praised because it forces us to maintain some needed independence vis- -vis the world of the characters.

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		Directors have also found it possible to articulate offscreen space through their staging. Such an example is provided by Jean Renoir's Nana (1926). It is Noel Burch who first brought our attention to a remarkable scene in