Robert Bresson (1901–99) was a French film director renowned for his austere intellectual style and meticulous attention to detail.
Born in the Bromont-Lamothe commune in central France, Bresson studied philosophy and painting before becoming a scriptwriter in 1934. During World War II, he spent a year as a prisoner of war but also launched himself as a director with the film Les Anges du péché (1943; Angels of Sin.)
Bresson’s distinctive cinematographic style evolved during the 1950s. He used non-professional actors, natural sound, and restrained emotions and produced austere narratives on the subjects of redemption and salvation influenced by a strong Catholic sensibility.
Bresson’s notable films include Le Journal d’un curé de campagne (1951; Diary of a Country Priest,) Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (1962; The Trial of Joan of Arc,) and Le Diable probablement (1977; The Devil, Probably.) His later films explored saintliness, submission, and greed. These include Au hasard, Balthazar (1966; Balthazar,) Une Femmedouce (1969; A Gentle Woman,) and L’Argent (1983, Money.)
Notes sur le cinématographe (1975; Notes on the Cinematographer) collects Bresson’s reflections on cinema written as short aphorisms.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Robert Bresson
Model. Two mobile eyes in a mobile head, itself on a mobile body.
—Robert Bresson
Topics: Fashion
Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.
—Robert Bresson
Films can only be made by by-passing the will of those who appear in them, using not what they do, but what they are.
—Robert Bresson
One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.
—Robert Bresson
Topics: Actors, Acting
In the nude, all that is not beautiful is obscene.
—Robert Bresson
Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing.
—Robert Bresson
Topics: Media
An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.
—Robert Bresson
Topics: Fashion
My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.
—Robert Bresson
The true is inimitable, the false untransformable.
—Robert Bresson
Topics: Originality
When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best — that is inspiration.
—Robert Bresson
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