Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French filmmaker. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson made a notable contribution to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have led his works to be regarded as preeminent examples of minimalist film. Much of his work is known for being tragic in story and nature.

Bresson is among the most highly regarded filmmakers of all time. He has the highest number of films (seven) that made the 2012 Sight and Sound critics' poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. His works A Man Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1959) and Au hasard Balthazar (1966) were ranked among the top 100, and other films like Mouchette (1967) and (1983) also received many votes. Jean-Luc Godard once wrote, "He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music."

Life and career

Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth (née Clausels) and Léon Bresson. 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. Three formative influences in his early life are evident in his films: Catholicism, art, and his experiences as a prisoner of war. Robert Bresson lived in Paris, France, in the Île Saint-Louis.

Initially a photographer, Bresson made his first short film, Les affaires publiques (Public Affairs) in 1934. He enlisted in the French Army on the onset of World War II and was captured by the Germans in 1940 and held as a prisoner of war for more than a year, an experience which informed 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.

Bresson was sometimes accused of an uncompromising "ivory tower existence" outside of mainstream cinema. Later in his life, he said that he had stopped watching other filmmakers' movies in theaters, although he later praised the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981), saying that "It filled me with wonder ... if I could have seen it twice in a row and again the next day, I would have." 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), where Rosenbaum was an extra, 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."

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

Themes and style

Artistic minimalism

Bresson published a collection of aphorisms and reflections in 1975 titled Notes on the Cinematographer (), 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, Bresson defines cinematography as an attempt to create a new language of moving images and sounds. His 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," preferring to think of his actors as 'models'. In Notes on the Cinematographer, Bresson succinctly defines the difference between the two:

<blockquote>HUMAN MODELS: movement from the exterior to the interior. [...]<br />

ACTORS: movement from the interior to the exterior.

</blockquote>

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." In Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag wrote that "Some art aims directly at arousing the feelings; some art appeals to the feelings through the route of the intelligence ... art that detaches, that provokes reflection. In the film, the master of the reflective mode is Robert Bresson." Sontag said that "the form of Bresson's films is designed (like Ozu's) to discipline the emotions at the same time that it arouses them: to induce a certain tranquility in the spectator, a state of spiritual balance that is itself the subject of the film."

In 1973, Bresson explained:

In a 1976 interview with Paul Schrader, Bresson said that he was concerned by what he saw as "the collapse of the Catholic religion" in France. He did not believe the post-Vatican II Church was capable of responding to this challenge. The Devil Probably incorporates some of his criticisms of the post-Vatican II Church. Bresson explained that his youthful protagonist "is looking for something on top of life, but he doesn't find it. He goes to Church to seek it, and he doesn't find it."

Some feel that Bresson's Catholic upbringing and belief system lie behind the thematic structures of most of his films. 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. However, Bresson's films are also critiques of French society and the wider world, with each revealing the director's sympathetic, if unsentimental, view of society's victims. That the main characters of Bresson's most contemporary films, The Devil, Probably (1977) and (1983), reach similarly unsettling conclusions about life indicates the director's feelings towards the culpability of modern society in the dissolution of individuals. Of an earlier protagonist, he said, "Mouchette offers evidence of misery and cruelty. She is found everywhere: wars, concentration camps, tortures, assassinations." Film historian Mark Cousins argues that "If 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".

Bresson explained that his films often address secular themes because he believed that a secular film with religious undercurrents was more likely to resonate with modern filmgoers than an explicitly religious theme. Bresson worried that the new French generation was too materialistic to harbor true religious belief, saying that "every religion is poverty and poverty is the way of having contact with mystery and with God. When Catholicism wants to be materialistic, God is not there." He tried to reach modern audiences indirectly, explaining, "the more life is what it is—ordinary, simple—without pronouncing the word 'God,' the more I see the presence of God in that. ... I don't want to shoot something in which God would be too transparent." In his work, "there is a presence of something which I call God, but I don't want to show it too much. I prefer to make people feel it."

Legacy

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: and by formulating his ascetic style, Bresson gained a high reputation with the founders of the French New Wave. He is often listed (along with Alexandre Astruc and André Bazin) as one of the main figures who influenced them. New Wave pioneers praised Bresson and posited him as a prototype for or precursor to the movement. However, Bresson was neither as overtly experimental nor as outwardly political as the New Wave filmmakers, and his religious views (Catholicism and Jansenism) were not attractive to most of the filmmakers associated with the movement. Jean-Luc Godard also looked upon Bresson with high admiration ("Robert Bresson is French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is the German music.") Screenwriter and director Alain Cavalier describes Bresson's role as pivotal not only in the New Wave movement, but for French cinema in general, writing, "In French cinema you have a father and a mother: the father is Bresson and the mother is Renoir, with Bresson representing the strictness of the law and Renoir warmth and generosity. All the better French cinema has and will have to connect to Bresson in some way." Jean Eustache, Philippe Garrel, Louis Malle, Michael Haneke, Olivier Assayas, Atom Egoyan, the Dardenne brothers, Aki Kaurismäki, The French filmmaker Jean Cocteau held Bresson in high regard. The French filmmaker Alain Resnais was a strong admirer of Bresson and his work. The French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville was also fond of Bresson and his work. The French filmmaker Jacques Rivette has acknowledged Bresson’s influence on his own films and called Bresson’s Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne one of "the key French film[s] for our generation." The French director Jacques Demy was inspired by Bresson’s film Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne and he even paid tribute to it in his own film Lola, which also starred Élina Labourdette. The Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski was also influenced by him and ranked Bresson's film, A Man Escaped as one of the top ten films that "affected" him the most. The Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni was influenced by Bresson's film Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne. The German filmmaker Werner Herzog praised Bresson's films such as Pickpocket and Au hasard Balthazar. The American film director John Waters praised Bresson's film Lancelot du Lac. The Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr was influenced by Bresson and listed Bresson film Au hasard Balthazar on his top ten films of all time. The Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami was highly influenced by Bresson and mentioned the personal importance of Bresson's book, Notes on the Cinematographer. The Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos listed Bresson's film Pickpocket on his top ten films of all time. The German director Wim Wenders praised and admired Bresson's films such as Au Hasard Balthazar and Mouchette, which were influential to his film career. The American director Stan Brakhage admired, analyzed, and gave lectures on Bresson's films, such as Pickpocket, Diary of a Country Priest, and Au hasard Balthazar.

The German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder was influenced by Bresson and championed and paid homage to Bresson's film The Devil Probably with his film The Third Generation. The Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci greatly admired Bresson's work and personally told him that he adored his film Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne. The Dardenne brothers's film L'Enfant was influenced by Bresson's film Pickpocket. The German director Margarethe von Trotta lists Bresson as one of her favorite directors. The American filmmaker Wes Anderson listed Au hasard Balthazar as one of his favorite films in the Criterion Collection library and called Bresson's film Mouchette, "terrific". The American filmmaker Richard Linklater was influenced by Bresson's work and listed Au hasard Balthazar and Pickpocket in his top 10 film list from the Criterion Collection. The British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan was influenced by Bresson's films (specifically Pickpocket and A Man Escaped) for his film, Dunkirk. The Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos listed Bresson as one of his favorite filmmakers and picked Pickpocket as "the most moving film I've ever seen". Benny Safdie named the Bresson's film A Man Escaped as his favorite film of all time. Martin Scorsese praised Bresson as "one of the cinema's greatest artists" and an influence on his films such as Taxi Driver. Andrei Tarkovsky held Bresson in very high regard, noting him and Ingmar Bergman as his two favourite filmmakers, and stating: "I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman." In his book Sculpting in Time, Tarkovsky describes Bresson as "perhaps the only artist in cinema, who achieved the perfect fusion of the finished work with a concept theoretically formulated beforehand."

Rankings over time

Although the number of films listed in the decennial Sight and Sound poll has changed over time, Bresson has normally been well-represented in these polls. The following table represents the critics' poll, not the related directors' poll. Only rankings above #250 are listed.

{| class="wikitable sortable"

!Film (English title)

!1952

!1962

!1972

!1982

!1992

!2002

!2012

!2022

|The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne

|21

|47

|87

|80

|217

|131

|Balthazar, at Random

|32

|131

|62

|20

|16

|25

|Pickpocket

|26

|155

|217

|31

|131

|63

|136

|A Man Escaped

|155

|131

|217

|131

|69

|95

|Mouchette

|18

|80

|118

|243

|Money

|217

|62

|109

|169

|Diary of a Country Priest

|47

|87

|80

|131

|227

|144

|The Devil Probably

|201

|A Gentle Woman

|217

Works

Filmography

{| class="wikitable" style="width: 800px;"

! scope="row" style="width: 6%;" |Year

! scope="row" style="width: 30%;" |Film

! scope="row" style="width: 40%;" |English Title

! scope="row" style="width: 7%;" |Director

! scope="row" style="width: 7%;" |Writer

! scope="row" style="width: 10%;" |Notes

|1933

| C'était un musicien

| He Was a Musician

|1934

| Les Affaires publiques

| Public Affairs

| Short film; also editor

|1936

| Les Jumeaux de Brighton

| The Brighton Twins

|1937

| Courier sud

| Southern Mail

|1938

| La Vierge folle

| The Foolish Virgin

| Assistant director

|1943

| Les Anges du péché

| Angels of Sin

|1945

| Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne

| The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne

|1951

| Journal d'un curé de campagne

| Diary of a Country Priest

|1956

| Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut

|A Man Escaped<br />a literal translation is, "a man condemned to death has escaped, or, the wind blows where it will"

|1959

| Pickpocket

| –

|1962

| Procès de Jeanne d'Arc

| The Trial of Joan of Arc

|1966

| Au hasard Balthazar

| Balthazar, at random

|1967

| Mouchette

| –

|1969

| Une femme douce

| A Gentle Woman

|1971

| Quatre Nuits d'un rêveur

| Four Nights of a Dreamer

|1974

| Lancelot du Lac

| Lancelot of the Lake

|1977

| Le Diable probablement

| The Devil Probably

|1983

| L'Argent

| Money

Bibliography

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.

Awards and nominations

Cannes Film Festival

{| class="wikitable"

! Year

! Category

! Nominated work

! Result

! Ref.

|rowspan=2|1957 || || rowspan=2|A Man Escaped || || rowspan=11|

|Best Director ||

|rowspan=3|1962 || || rowspan=3|The Trial of Joan of Arc ||

|Jury Special Prize ||

|OCIC Award ||

|rowspan=3|1967 || || rowspan=3|Mouchette ||

|OCIC Award ||

|Special Distinction ||

|1974 || FIPRESCI Prize || Lancelot du Lac ||

|rowspan=2|1983 || || rowspan=2| ||

|Best Director ||

Berlin Film Festival

{| class="wikitable"

! Year

! Category

! Nominated work

! Result

! Ref.

|1960 || rowspan=2|Golden Bear || Pickpocket || || rowspan=7|