Robert Bresson

Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth (née Clausels) and Léon Bresson.[10] Little is known of his early life. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and turned to painting after graduating.[11] Three formative influences in his early life seem to have a mark on his films: Catholicism, art and his experiences as a prisoner of war. Robert Bresson lived in Paris, France, in the Île Saint-Louis.

Initially also a photographer, Bresson made his first short film, Les affaires publiques (Public Affairs) in 1934. During World War II, he spent over a year in a prisoner-of-war camp−an experience which informs Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (A Man Escaped). In a career that spanned fifty years, Bresson made only 13 feature-length films. This reflects his painstaking approach to the filmmaking process and his non-commercial preoccupations. Difficulty finding funding for his projects was also a factor.

Although many writers claim that Bresson described himself as a "Christian atheist",[12][13] no source ever confirmed this assertion, neither are the circumstances clear under which Bresson would have said it. On the contrary, in an interview in 1973 he said,

There is the feeling that God is everywhere, and the more I live, the more I see that in nature, in the country. When I see a tree, I see that God exists. I try to catch and to convey the idea that we have a soul and that the soul is in contact with God. That's the first thing I want to get in my films.[14]

Furthermore, in a 1983 interview for TSR's Spécial Cinéma, Bresson declared to have been interested in making a film based on the Book of Genesis, although he believed such a production would be too costly and time-consuming.[15]

Bresson was sometimes accused of an "ivory tower existence".[16] Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, an admirer of Bresson's work, argued that the filmmaker was "a mysterious, aloof figure", and wrote that on the set of Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971) the director "seemed more isolated from his crew than any other filmmaker I've seen at work; his widow and onetime assistant director, Mylene van der Mersch, often conveyed his instructions."[17]

Bresson died on a Saturday in December 1999, at his home in Droue-sur-Drouette southwest of Paris. He was 98. He made his last film in 1983 and had been unwell for some time.[18]

• Notes sur le Cinématographe (1975)—translated as Notes on Cinematography, Notes on the Cinematographer and Notes on the Cinematograph in different English editions.
• Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983 (2016)—translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis, edited by Mylène Bresson, preface by Pascal Mérigeau.

Bresson's early artistic focus was to separate the language of cinema from that of the theater, which often relies heavily upon the actor's performance to drive the work. Film scholar Tony Pipolo writes that "Bresson opposed not just professional actors, but acting itself,"[19] preferring to think of his actors as 'models'. In Notes sur le cinématographe, a collection of aphorisms written by Bresson, the director succinctly defines the difference between the two:

HUMAN MODELS: movement from the exterior to the interior. [...] ACTORS: movement from the interior to the exterior.[20]

Bresson further elaborates on his disdain for acting in later passages of the book, wherein he appropriates a remark Chateaubriand had made about 19th century poets and applies it to professional actors (that is, "what they lack is not naturalness, but Nature.") For Bresson, "to think it's more natural for a movement to be made or a phrase to be said like this than like that" is "absurd", and "nothing rings more false in film [...] than the overstudied sentiments" of theater.[20]

With his 'model' technique, Bresson's actors were required to repeat multiple takes of each scene until all semblances of 'performance' were stripped away, leaving a stark effect that registers as both subtle and raw. This, as well as Bresson's restraint in musical scoring, would have a significant influence on minimalist cinema. In the academic journal CrossCurrents, Shmuel Ben-gad writes:[21]

There is a credibility in Bresson's models: They are like people we meet in life, more or less opaque creatures who speak, move, and gesture [...] Acting, on the other hand, no matter how naturalistic, actively deforms or invents by putting an overlay or filter over the person, presenting a simplification of a human being and not allowing the camera to capture the actor's human depths. Thus what Bresson sees as the essence of filmic art, the achievement of the creative transformation involved in all art through the interplay of images of real things, is destroyed by the artifice of acting. For Bresson, then, acting is, like mood music and expressive camera work, just one more way of deforming reality or inventing that has to be avoided.

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Bresson's directorial style resulted in films "of great passion: Because the actors didn't act out the emotions, the audience could internalize them."[22]

Some feel that Bresson's Catholic upbringing and belief system lie behind the thematic structures of most of his films.[23] Recurring themes under this interpretation include salvation, redemption, defining and revealing the human soul, and metaphysical transcendence of a limiting and materialistic world. An example is A Man Escaped (1956), where a seemingly simple plot of a prisoner of war's escape can be read as a metaphor for the mysterious process of salvation.

Bresson's films can also be understood as critiques of French society and the wider world, with each revealing the director's sympathetic, if unsentimental, view of its victims. That the main characters of Bresson's most contemporary films, The Devil, Probably (1977) and L'Argent (1983), reach similarly unsettling conclusions about life indicates to some the director's feelings towards the culpability of modern society in the dissolution of individuals. Indeed, of an earlier protagonist he said, "Mouchette offers evidence of misery and cruelty. She is found everywhere: wars, concentration camps, tortures, assassinations."[24] Film historian Mark Cousins argues that "[i]f Bergman and Fellini filmed life as if it was a theatre and a circus, respectively, Bresson's microcosm was that of a prison", describing Bresson's characters as "psychologically imprisoned".[25]

Bresson published Notes sur le cinématographe (also published in English translation as Notes on the Cinematographer) in 1975, in which he argues for a unique sense of the term "cinematography". For him, cinematography is the higher function of cinema. While a movie is in essence "only" filmed theatre, cinematography is an attempt to create a new language of moving images and sounds.

Bresson is often referred to as a patron saint of cinema, not only for the strong Catholic themes found throughout his oeuvre, but also for his notable contributions to the art of film. His style can be detected through his use of sound, associating selected sounds with images or characters; paring dramatic form to its essentials by the spare use of music; and through his infamous 'actor-model' methods of directing his almost exclusively non-professional actors. Mark Cousins writes:[25]

So complete was Bresson’s rejection of cinema norms that he has a tendency to fall outside film history. However, his uncompromising stance has been extremely influential in some quarters.

Bresson's book Notes on the Cinematographer (1975) is one of the most respected books on film theory and criticism. His theories about film greatly influenced other filmmakers, particularly the French New Wave directors.

• Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film by Tony Pipolo (Oxford University Press; 407 pages; 2010) pays particular attention to psychosexual aspects of the French filmmaker's 13 features, from Les Anges du péché (1943) to L'Argent (1983).
• La politique des auteurs, edited by André Bazin.
• Robert Bresson (Cinematheque Ontario Monographs, No. 2), edited by James Quandt
• Transcendental Style in Film: Bresson, Ozu, Dreyer by Paul Schrader
• Robert Bresson: A Spiritual Style in Film, by Joseph Cunneen
• Robert Bresson, by Philippe Arnauld, Cahiers du cinema, 1986
• The Films of Robert Bresson, Ian Cameron (ed.), New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969.
• Robert Bresson, by Keith Reader, Manchester University Press, 2000.
• "Robert Bresson", a poem by Patti Smith from her 1978 book Babel
• "Spiritual style in the films of Robert Bresson", a chapter in Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation and other essays, New York: Picador, 1966.
• Robert Bresson (Revised), James Quandt (ed), Cinematheque Ontario Monographs, 2012 (752 pages) (ISBN 978-0-9682969-5-0)
• Neither God Nor Master: Robert Bresson and Radical Politics by Brian Price (University of Minnesota Press, 2011, 264 pages).
• Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943–1983 by Robert Bresson, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis, edited by Mylène Bresson, preface by Pascal Mérigeau (New York Review Books, 2016)

• French New Wave
• Cinema of France
• Auteur Theory
• Robert Bresson Prize

Informational

• Robert Bresson at IMDb
• Robert-Bresson.com: Resource dedicated to Bresson's films
• A Bresson bibliography

Interviews

• Interview with Bresson (1970)
• Interview footage with Bresson from French TV in 1960
• Inside Bresson's L'Argent: Interview with Crew-member Jonathan Hourigan, by Colin Burnett