Robert Bresson

  • Robert Bresson – Une femme douce AKA A Gentle Woman (1969)

    1961-1970ArthouseDramaFranceRobert Bresson
    Une femme douce (1969)
    Une femme douce (1969)

    Bresson’s brilliant adaptation of Dostoevsky’s short story (A Gentle Creature) exhibits in its lapidary sequences the political and existential revolt of a young student in Paris. Sharing a theme that can be traced from Bresson’s Mouchette to his fantastic exploration of revolutionary choices in The Devil Probably, Une Femme Douce articulates in its inimitable minimalist mode a range of issues from the ideological options of France post-May ’68 to human relationships. Dominique Sanda is not the conventional, recognizable student revolutionary, but a “gentle” philosopher whose powers of sensitivity and social scrutiny exceed and tease the prosaic, crude disposition of her bourgeois husband. The sequences in the zoo, the museum of natural history and the performance of Hamlet are powerful. On another note, look out for Indian experimental filmmaker Kumar Shahani who was assisting Bresson at this time, sitting diagonally behind Sanda in the sequence at the movie theater.Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Affaires publiques AKA Public Affairs (1934)

    1931-1940ArthouseFranceRobert BressonShort Film

    Quote:
    Bresson’s first film is, totally uncharacteristically, a slapstick comedy, centred around two neighbouring republics, Crogandia and Miremia, and the various disasters that befall the ceremonial unveiling of a statue, the launching of a ship, and the crash-landing of a Miremian pilot in Crogandian territory.Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Au hasard Balthazar (1966) (HD)

    1961-1970ArthouseClassicsFranceRobert Bresson

    Quote:
    The story of a mistreated donkey and the people around him. A study on saintliness and a sister piece to Bresson’s Mouchette.

    Quote:
    In the French countryside near the Pyrenees, a baby donkey is adopted by young children – Jacques and his sisters, who live on a farm. They baptize the donkey (and christen it Balthazar) along with Marie, Jacques’ childhood sweetheart, whose father is the teacher at the small school next-door. When one of Jacques’ sisters dies, his family vacates the farm, and Marie’s family take it over in a loose arrangement. The donkey is given away to local farmhands who work it very hard. Years pass until Balthazar is involved in an accident and runs off, finding its way back to Marie, who is now a teenager. But her father gets involved in legal wrangles over the farm and the donkey is given away to a local bakery for delivery work.Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Journal d’un curé de campagne aka Diary of a Country Priest [+ commentary] (1951)

    1951-1960ArthouseClassicsFranceRobert Bresson

    Quote:
    A new priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregation rejects him immediately. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God. With his fourth film, Robert Bresson began to implement his stylistic philosophy as a filmmaker, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialogue and the music, exacting a purity of image and sound.Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – Procès de Jeanne d’Arc AKA The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962)

    1961-1970DramaFranceRobert Bresson

    Quote:
    Trial of Joan of Arc opens to the austere, fragmented image of the hurried footsteps of an indistinguishable figure dressed in a black robe. Carrying a parchment into the vestibule of a chapel, an unidentified woman delivers a personal statement on her daughter’s religious upbringing and death at the hands of the church, visibly supported by two sympathetic advocates. The somber and official tone of the grieving mother’s testament is subsequently reflected in the demeanor of the accused, Jeanne d’Arc (Florence Delay), who is first introduced through a shot of her manacled hands as she places them on an opened Bible before beginning her sworn testimony in front of the presiding judge, Bishop Cauchon (Jean-Claude Fourneau). Read More »

  • Robert Bresson – L’argent AKA Money (1983)

    1981-1990CrimeDramaFranceRobert Bresson

    Quote:
    In his ruthlessly clear-eyed final film, French master Robert Bresson pushed his unique blend of spiritual rumination and formal rigor to a new level of astringency. Transposing a Tolstoy novella to contemporary Paris, L’argent follows a counterfeit bill as it originates as a prop in a schoolboy prank, then circulates like a virus among the corrupt and the virtuous alike before landing with a young truck driver and leading him to incarceration and violence. With brutal economy, Bresson constructs his unforgiving vision of original sin out of starkly perceived details, rooting his characters in a dehumanizing material world that withholds any hope of transcendenceRead More »

  • Robert Bresson – Journal d’un curé de campagne aka Diary of a Country Priest [+commentary] (1951)

    1951-1960DramaFranceRobert Bresson

    Quote:
    A new priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregation rejects him immediately. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God. With his fourth film, Robert Bresson began to implement his stylistic philosophy as a filmmaker, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialogue and the music, exacting a purity of image and sound.Read More »

  • Jurriën Rood & Leo de Boer – De Weg naar Bresson aka The Road to Bresson (1984)

    1981-1990DocumentaryJurriën RoodLeo de BoerNetherlands

    SYNOPSIS
    The film style of Robert Bresson is the subject of this documentary tribute to the French director and screenwriter, and to his minimalist auteur films about sensitive individuals (or even animals) trying unsuccessfully to survive in a cruel world. Weg Naar Bresson is divided into several segments with specific themes, such as “camera” or “theory,” that are illustrated by film clips, and interviews with Bresson himself (a coup), and also with acclaimed directors Andrei Tarkovsky, Louis Malle, and Paul Schrader (who also wrote a book on three directors, including Bresson).

    – Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

  • Robert Bresson – Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne AKA The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (1945)

    1941-1950ArthouseDramaFranceRobert Bresson

    Quote:
    “Les dames du Bois de Boulogne is a 1945 film directed by Robert Bresson. It is a modern adaptation of a section of Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste (1796), telling the story of a man who is tricked into marrying a former prostitute. The title means “the women of the Bois de Boulogne”, a park in Paris. Les Dames was Bresson’s second feature and is an early example of his dramatic experimentation and innovations in reducing dramatic form to its bare essentials, signifying his status as an auteur, rather than simply a metteur en scène. It is also his last film to feature a cast entirely composed of professional actors.The film’s editing rhythms are similar to Bresson’s later work. However, while his later work often reflects Bresson’s personal Catholic beliefs and Christian-intellectual mentality, Les Dames is a more secular work. The redemptive ending is more secular than spiritual although it does establish Bresson’s later, more refined, thematic obsessions with redemption and salvation.”Read More »

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