Robert Bresson

Description: Filmed mostly in his country home in 1965, ROBERT BRESSON – WITHOUT A TRACE is a revealing discussion with Bresson. Bresson at this time had completed six of his most well known films and was in the process of shooting Au Hasard Balthazar.

Usually a man of few words, having never before granted an interview on camera, Bresson agreed to answer the questions of a then-unknown writer François Weyergans, for the Cineaste de Notre Temps series.

Ranging over topics from the inspiration behind his films, to his ideas on the use of sound, actors, editing and music, and the state of (the then) contemporary cinema (from James Bond to the New Wave), Bresson describes his singular approach to filmmaking.Read More »

This is not a book about cinematography. Cinematography is what Bresson regards as valid film making, as opposed to cinema which is just photographing a play, or the theatre, which is just lies told on a stage (or something). This book contains all the little notes, ideas and bon mots that Bresson jotted down over the years. Some are insightful, most are quite arrogant and dismissive, and quite a few are a bit bonkers. Anyway it’s an interesting look into the mind of a master and fairly short (although that didn’t stop it from being a pain in the arse to scan).

Originally written in French (Notes sur le cinématographe), this is the English translation by Jonathon Griffin.Read More »

Description:

Perhaps the most highly regarded French filmmaker after Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson created a new kind of cinema through meticulous refinement of the form’s grammatical and expressive possibilities. In thirteen features over a forty-year career, he held to an uncompromising moral vision and aesthetic rigor that remain unmatched. Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film is the first comprehensive study to give equal attention to the films, their literary sources, and psycho-biographical aspects of the work. Concentrating on the films’ cinematographic, imagistic, narrative, and thematic structures, Pipolo provides a nuanced analysis of each film-including nearly 100 illustrations-elucidating Bresson’s unique style as it evolved from the impassioned Les Anges du péche to such disconsolate meditations on the world as The Devil Probably and L’Argent. Special attention is also given to psychosexual aspects of the films that are usually neglected. Bresson has long needed a thoroughgoing treatment by a critic worthy to the task: he gets it here. From it emerges a provocative portrait of an extraordinary artist whose moral engagement and devotion to the craft of filmmaking are without equal.Read More »

Quote:
Robert Bresson plumbs great reservoirs of feeling with Mouchette, one of the most searing portraits of human desperation ever put on film. Faced with a dying mother, an absent, alcoholic father, and a baby brother in need of care, the teenage Mouchette seeks solace in nature and daily routine, a respite from her economic and pubescent turmoil. An essential work of French filmmaking, Bresson’s hugely empathetic drama elevates its trapped protagonist into one of the cinema’s great tragic figures*.Read More »

Un metteur en ordre: Robert Bresson (62 min.) is from a 1966 French television broadcast of Pour le plaisir, a cultural television program. This episode concentrates on Au Hasard Balthazar and includes interviews with Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Marguerite Duras and members of the film’s cast. Bresson explains the origin of the film’s title, while his contemporaries describe their reactions to the film. Several extensive clips from the film are presented, after which Bresson and his cast members offer their opinions of the meaning or consequences of those scenes.Read More »