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Bresson par Bresson : Entretiens 1943-1983
Pendant quarante ans, Robert Bresson a accordé nombre d'entretiens à la presse française et étrangère, à la radio et à la télévision. Ses réponses aux multiples questions, de toutes sortes, apportent d'importantes précisions sur ses films, son art et l'évolution de sa pensée. Et elles accompagnent, devancent, prolongent ses Notes sur le cinématographe. Interrogé par Yvonne Baby, François-Régis Bastide, Michel Ciment, Serge Daney, Pierre Desgraupes, Jean Douchet, Jean-Luc Godard, André Parinaud, Georges Sadoul, Roger Stéphane ou Serge Toubiana, entre autres, Robert Bresson parle avec passion, simplicité, détermination et humour de tous les éléments d'un film qui, savamment combinés, font du cinématographe un art à part entière. L'ouvrage est illustré de photos dont beaucoup sont inédites.
338 pages, Paperback
First published April 19, 2013
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About the author
Robert Bresson
19 books136 followersRobert Bresson (French: [ʁɔbɛʁ bʁɛsɔ̃]; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director known for his spiritual, ascetic and aesthetic style. He contributed notably to the art of film and influenced the rise of French New Wave cinema. He is often referred to as the most highly regarded French filmmaker since Jean Renoir. Bresson's influence on French cinema was once described by Jean-Luc Godard, quoting "Robert Bresson is French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is the German music.
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February 10, 2017
Jean-Luc Godard and RB in 1966:
J-LG: Why were you so committed to sunlight?
RB: It's very simple, really. I have seen too many films where it's gray or dark outside — which can create a very beautiful effect, of course — but then the next shot suddenly shifts into a sunny room. I've always found that unacceptable. But it happens so often when we move between interiors and exteriors because there's always additional lighting inside, artificial light, and when we go outside this disappears. Which causes a completely false disconnect. Now, you are aware — and surely you're like me in this respect — that I'm obsessed with the real. Down to the smallest detail. Fake lighting is as treacherous as fake dialogue, fake gestures. Which is where my concern for an equilibrium of light comes from, so that when we enter a house there will be less sunlight than there was outside. Am I being clear?
J-LG: Yes, yes. Very clear.
RB: There's another reason that may be more correct, more profound. You know that I lean toward the side — not intentionally, mind you — of simplification. And let me clarify right away: I believe that simplification is something one must never seek. If you've worked hard enough, simplification should arrive of its own accord. But you must not look for simplification, or simplicity, too soon, for that's what leads to bad painting, bad literature, bad poetry. . . . So I lean toward simplification — and I barely realize it — but this simplification requires, from the point of view of the photographic shot, a certain force, a certain vigor. If I simplify my plot and at the same time my image fails (because the contours aren't well enough defined, the contrast isn't strong enough), I risk falling into mere sequence. I, like you, believe that the camera is a dangerous thing; meaning it's too easy, too convenient, we have to almost forgive ourselves for it: but we have to know how to use it.
J-LG: Yes, you have to, if I can say it like this, desecrate the technology of the camera, push it to its . . . But for me, I do that differently as I'm more, let's say, impulsive. In any case, you can't take it for what it is. Like the fact that you wanted sunshine so that the shot wouldn't collapse. You forced it that way, to keep its dignity, its rigor . . . which three-quarters of the rest don't do.
RB: That's to say that you have to know exactly what you want in terms of aesthetics, and do what you need to do to realize it. The image you have in your mind, you have to see it in advance, literally see it on the screen (understanding that there will be a distinction, even a total difference between what you see and what you end up with), and this image. You have to make it exactly the way you desire it, the way you see it when you close your eyes.
J-LG: You've been called the cineaste of ellipses. I imagine that for people who watch your films with this idea in mind, you've outdone yourself with Balthazar. I'll give you an example: In the scene with the two car accidents (if we can say two, since we see only one of them), do you feel as if you're creating an ellipsis by showing just the first one? I don't think you thought of this as withholding a shot, but as placing one shot after another shot. Is this true?
RB: Concerning the two skidding cars, I think because we've already seen the first, it's pointless to show the second. I prefer to let people imagine it. If I had made people imagine the first one, then there would have been something lacking. And I like seeing it: I find it pretty, a car spinning around on the road. But after that, I'd rather make the next image out of sound. Any chance I can replace an image with a sound, I do. And I do it more and more.
J-LG: And if you were able to replace all of the images with sounds? I mean . . . I'm thinking about a kind of inversion of the functions of image and sound. We could have images, sure, but it would be the sound that would be the important element.
RB: As far as that goes, it's true that the ear is much more creative than the eye. The eye is lazy. The ear, on the contrary, is inventive: it's much more attentive, whereas the eye is content to receive, other than in exceptional cases when it, too, invents, but through fantasy. The ear is, in some sense, far more evocative and profound. The whistle of a train, for example, can call to mind the image of an entire station: sometimes of a precise station you know, sometimes of the atmosphere of a station, or of tracks with a stopped train. The possible evocations are innumerable. What's good about this, this function of sound, is that it leaves the viewer free. And that's what we must strive toward: leaving viewers as free as possible. And at the same time, you have to make them learn to love this freedom. You have to make them love the way you render things. That is, show them things in the order and in the way in which you want them seen and felt; make others see those things, by presenting them in the way you see them and feel them yourself; and do all of this while leaving them great liberty, while making them free. Now, sound evokes this freedom in greater measure than does imagery.
...
RB: Yes, but I should first tell you how I see myself in relation to what's being made. Just yesterday someone asked me (it's a reproach that's made of me sometimes, perhaps without meaning to be one but nevertheless . . .): "Why don't you ever go see films?" And it's true: I don't go to see them. It's because they frighten me. That's the only reason. Because I sense I'm moving away from them, from contemporary films, more and more each day. And this frightens me because I see that these films are being embraced by the public, and I don't foresee that happening with my films. So I'm afraid. Afraid to propose something to a public with a sensibility for another thing, a public that will be insensitive to what I'm doing. But also, it's good for me see a contemporary film from time to time. To see just how big the difference is. So I'm realizing that without meaning to, I've distanced myself more and more from a kind of cinema I feel is moving in the wrong direction — that's settling deeper into music-hall, into filmed theater, that's losing its interest (not only its interest, but its power) — and heading for catastrophe. It isn't that the films are too expensive, or that television poses a threat, but simply that that kind of cinema isn't an art, though it pretends to be one; it's a false art, trying to express itself using the form of another art. There's nothing worse or more ineffectual than that kind of art. As for what I'm trying to do myself, with these images and sounds, of course I feel I'm right and they're wrong. But I also get the sense that I have access to too many means, which I try to pare down, reduce (for what also kills cinema is the profusion of means, the abundance; abundance can never bring anything to art). That moreover, I'm in possession of extraordinary means all my own.
J-LG: You were speaking a moment ago of actors . . .
RB: There's an unbridgeable gap between an actor — even one who is trying to forget himself, to not control himself — and a person who has no experience being on film, no experience with the theater, a person used as brute material, who doesn't know what he is and who ends up giving what he never intended to give to anyone.
The way you capture emotion is through practicing scales, through playing in the most regular, mechanical way. Not by trying to force emotion, the way a virtuoso does. That's what I'm trying to say: an actor is a virtuoso. Instead of giving you the exact thing that you can feel, actors force their emotion on top of it, as if to tell you, "Here's how you should feel things!"
J-LG: It's as if a painter hired an actor instead of a model. As if he said to himself: instead of using this washerwoman, let's hire a great actress who will pose much better than this woman. It that sense, I completely understand you.
J-LG: Why were you so committed to sunlight?
RB: It's very simple, really. I have seen too many films where it's gray or dark outside — which can create a very beautiful effect, of course — but then the next shot suddenly shifts into a sunny room. I've always found that unacceptable. But it happens so often when we move between interiors and exteriors because there's always additional lighting inside, artificial light, and when we go outside this disappears. Which causes a completely false disconnect. Now, you are aware — and surely you're like me in this respect — that I'm obsessed with the real. Down to the smallest detail. Fake lighting is as treacherous as fake dialogue, fake gestures. Which is where my concern for an equilibrium of light comes from, so that when we enter a house there will be less sunlight than there was outside. Am I being clear?
J-LG: Yes, yes. Very clear.
RB: There's another reason that may be more correct, more profound. You know that I lean toward the side — not intentionally, mind you — of simplification. And let me clarify right away: I believe that simplification is something one must never seek. If you've worked hard enough, simplification should arrive of its own accord. But you must not look for simplification, or simplicity, too soon, for that's what leads to bad painting, bad literature, bad poetry. . . . So I lean toward simplification — and I barely realize it — but this simplification requires, from the point of view of the photographic shot, a certain force, a certain vigor. If I simplify my plot and at the same time my image fails (because the contours aren't well enough defined, the contrast isn't strong enough), I risk falling into mere sequence. I, like you, believe that the camera is a dangerous thing; meaning it's too easy, too convenient, we have to almost forgive ourselves for it: but we have to know how to use it.
J-LG: Yes, you have to, if I can say it like this, desecrate the technology of the camera, push it to its . . . But for me, I do that differently as I'm more, let's say, impulsive. In any case, you can't take it for what it is. Like the fact that you wanted sunshine so that the shot wouldn't collapse. You forced it that way, to keep its dignity, its rigor . . . which three-quarters of the rest don't do.
RB: That's to say that you have to know exactly what you want in terms of aesthetics, and do what you need to do to realize it. The image you have in your mind, you have to see it in advance, literally see it on the screen (understanding that there will be a distinction, even a total difference between what you see and what you end up with), and this image. You have to make it exactly the way you desire it, the way you see it when you close your eyes.
J-LG: You've been called the cineaste of ellipses. I imagine that for people who watch your films with this idea in mind, you've outdone yourself with Balthazar. I'll give you an example: In the scene with the two car accidents (if we can say two, since we see only one of them), do you feel as if you're creating an ellipsis by showing just the first one? I don't think you thought of this as withholding a shot, but as placing one shot after another shot. Is this true?
RB: Concerning the two skidding cars, I think because we've already seen the first, it's pointless to show the second. I prefer to let people imagine it. If I had made people imagine the first one, then there would have been something lacking. And I like seeing it: I find it pretty, a car spinning around on the road. But after that, I'd rather make the next image out of sound. Any chance I can replace an image with a sound, I do. And I do it more and more.
J-LG: And if you were able to replace all of the images with sounds? I mean . . . I'm thinking about a kind of inversion of the functions of image and sound. We could have images, sure, but it would be the sound that would be the important element.
RB: As far as that goes, it's true that the ear is much more creative than the eye. The eye is lazy. The ear, on the contrary, is inventive: it's much more attentive, whereas the eye is content to receive, other than in exceptional cases when it, too, invents, but through fantasy. The ear is, in some sense, far more evocative and profound. The whistle of a train, for example, can call to mind the image of an entire station: sometimes of a precise station you know, sometimes of the atmosphere of a station, or of tracks with a stopped train. The possible evocations are innumerable. What's good about this, this function of sound, is that it leaves the viewer free. And that's what we must strive toward: leaving viewers as free as possible. And at the same time, you have to make them learn to love this freedom. You have to make them love the way you render things. That is, show them things in the order and in the way in which you want them seen and felt; make others see those things, by presenting them in the way you see them and feel them yourself; and do all of this while leaving them great liberty, while making them free. Now, sound evokes this freedom in greater measure than does imagery.
...
RB: Yes, but I should first tell you how I see myself in relation to what's being made. Just yesterday someone asked me (it's a reproach that's made of me sometimes, perhaps without meaning to be one but nevertheless . . .): "Why don't you ever go see films?" And it's true: I don't go to see them. It's because they frighten me. That's the only reason. Because I sense I'm moving away from them, from contemporary films, more and more each day. And this frightens me because I see that these films are being embraced by the public, and I don't foresee that happening with my films. So I'm afraid. Afraid to propose something to a public with a sensibility for another thing, a public that will be insensitive to what I'm doing. But also, it's good for me see a contemporary film from time to time. To see just how big the difference is. So I'm realizing that without meaning to, I've distanced myself more and more from a kind of cinema I feel is moving in the wrong direction — that's settling deeper into music-hall, into filmed theater, that's losing its interest (not only its interest, but its power) — and heading for catastrophe. It isn't that the films are too expensive, or that television poses a threat, but simply that that kind of cinema isn't an art, though it pretends to be one; it's a false art, trying to express itself using the form of another art. There's nothing worse or more ineffectual than that kind of art. As for what I'm trying to do myself, with these images and sounds, of course I feel I'm right and they're wrong. But I also get the sense that I have access to too many means, which I try to pare down, reduce (for what also kills cinema is the profusion of means, the abundance; abundance can never bring anything to art). That moreover, I'm in possession of extraordinary means all my own.
J-LG: You were speaking a moment ago of actors . . .
RB: There's an unbridgeable gap between an actor — even one who is trying to forget himself, to not control himself — and a person who has no experience being on film, no experience with the theater, a person used as brute material, who doesn't know what he is and who ends up giving what he never intended to give to anyone.
The way you capture emotion is through practicing scales, through playing in the most regular, mechanical way. Not by trying to force emotion, the way a virtuoso does. That's what I'm trying to say: an actor is a virtuoso. Instead of giving you the exact thing that you can feel, actors force their emotion on top of it, as if to tell you, "Here's how you should feel things!"
J-LG: It's as if a painter hired an actor instead of a model. As if he said to himself: instead of using this washerwoman, let's hire a great actress who will pose much better than this woman. It that sense, I completely understand you.
February 9, 2017
Once you see a film by Robert Bresson, you will never forget it. It seems nothing is happening, but the truth is everything is happening. The emotions are usually muted, and the actions of the models (not actors, will get to that later) are choreographed to a certain degree. My first Bresson film was “Pickpocket, ” a story about a pickpocket artist who works his way in various train stations and public places, including buses/subways. It’s nerve wracking watching close up of hands doing their magic, by appearing in stranger’s pockets, or in a woman’s bag or purse. The film goes on a relaxing pace, but the intensity is severe. It’s a strange mixture, where scenes are slowed down, to heighten the emotion of that scene. Bresson didn’t make that many films in his long life, but each one is a remarkable work.
“Bresson on Bresson: Interviews 1943-1983, chapter-by-chapter, cover each of his 13 films. This is not something like the Hitchcock/Truffeult book, where each film is exposed by the second. No, this basically a series of interviews with Bresson and his methods in working. What’s unusual about him is that Bresson mostly used amateur actors in his productions. He didn’t like actors, at least in his films. A big concern for him is that cinematography (his term for the cinema) is a separate art from the theater - and he felt that the theater had too much of a presence in the cinema. He comments that a painting (he was a painter) on a canvas is totally different from seeing a photograph of that painting - and therefore the acting profession comes from the theater - and that is not the right procedure for the cinema. In his opinion most films are a reflection of the theater arts - and he feels that film is an art by itself. An even greater art than theater. It’s an interesting argument or position. It is also what makes his films so unique to this very day.
Bresson had a very rigid point of view with respect to art making - and the specifics of making cinema. He preferred to use the term ‘model’ instead of actor - and he didn’t want anything theatrical coming of the model’s mouth or their gestures. Also the same with the theory of not changing the lens on the movie camera, because in his thinking, people don’t change their glasses on a consistent basis. So there must be a consistency of some sort. Still, Bresson's films are overwhelming with feeling. “Bresson on Bresson” is a classic book and anyone who even has the slightest interest in being a filmmaker or even artist - must read and learn. An excellent companion piece to his book of writings “Notes on the Cinematograph. ”
“Bresson on Bresson: Interviews 1943-1983, chapter-by-chapter, cover each of his 13 films. This is not something like the Hitchcock/Truffeult book, where each film is exposed by the second. No, this basically a series of interviews with Bresson and his methods in working. What’s unusual about him is that Bresson mostly used amateur actors in his productions. He didn’t like actors, at least in his films. A big concern for him is that cinematography (his term for the cinema) is a separate art from the theater - and he felt that the theater had too much of a presence in the cinema. He comments that a painting (he was a painter) on a canvas is totally different from seeing a photograph of that painting - and therefore the acting profession comes from the theater - and that is not the right procedure for the cinema. In his opinion most films are a reflection of the theater arts - and he feels that film is an art by itself. An even greater art than theater. It’s an interesting argument or position. It is also what makes his films so unique to this very day.
Bresson had a very rigid point of view with respect to art making - and the specifics of making cinema. He preferred to use the term ‘model’ instead of actor - and he didn’t want anything theatrical coming of the model’s mouth or their gestures. Also the same with the theory of not changing the lens on the movie camera, because in his thinking, people don’t change their glasses on a consistent basis. So there must be a consistency of some sort. Still, Bresson's films are overwhelming with feeling. “Bresson on Bresson” is a classic book and anyone who even has the slightest interest in being a filmmaker or even artist - must read and learn. An excellent companion piece to his book of writings “Notes on the Cinematograph. ”
August 2, 2017
****1/2 M. Bresson comes across in these pages of career-spanning interviews as stubborn and critical, yes, but also self-deprecating, at least in the sense of being as hard on himself as he is on others. This is a filmmaker who must be respected for his integrity, whatever one thinks of his work (I love it, but I guess my selection of this book pretty well gives that away), and it's a provocative pleasure to read his carefully considered articulations as he remains incredibly consistent, over almost 50 years, in his single-minded idea of what a film should be, while at the same time ceaselessly honing his thoughts on how best to arrive at it.
August 5, 2024
An insightful introduction to a director I’m almost intimidated by. Hopefully his words on cinema offer something to cling onto when I eventually get round to watching one of his films.
February 6, 2017
L'idée de base de l'ouvrage est louable : compiler tous les entretiens donnés par Robert Bresson. Là où le bât blesse c'est que peu de journalistes posent des questions réellement originales, et comme on demanderait pour la centième fois à Béla Tarr pourquoi diable il fait des films lents, les questions sur les fameux "modèles", le théâtre, et parfois la peinture, sont monnaie courante ici. Alors Robert de se répéter inlassablement, souvent dans les mêmes termes. Et à nous de nous ennuyer assez rapidement. Probablement pas à lire d'une traite mais à picorer (j'ai moi-même fini par ne conserver que les interviews faites par des institutions solides, à partir d'Au Hasard Balthazar), un livre à envisager en complétement au petit Notes on the Cinematographer, pour les fans du bonhomme.
February 1, 2024
surprised i just got around to this but as with the recent focus on akerman it feels like the right time.
dismayed at the small amount of coverage of the first three films but logic is clear ; the recognizing of film as an art form and of bresson as an auteur to be studied occurred gradually and simultaneously.
the interviews emphasize just how succinct bresson's thinking and methods were even early on and you recognize the kernels that go into "notes" just about everywhere.
notes and quotes :
"interiority leads the way... i've noticed that the rhythm of images is not capable of fully correcting a slowness that's interior. It's the knots that tie and unravel inside the characters that give a film its movement, its real movement. It's this movement I attempt to manifest by way of something, or some combination of things, not to be found in dialogue alone."
"We have to make films the way we write-that is, with our feelings. What's so difficult in cinema is to find a way to express oneself, to make felt what one feels, instead of creating a story, a spectacle if you will, whether finely or poorly composed."
avoid pleonasm. avoid dialogue if an image is already conveying the same thing. "You have to drastically condense, to risk saying too little, both with the image and with the words."
"So, the way people look at each other is, for me-I was going to say the only important thing in a film. Because, after all, to succeed in making these shadows on a screen come to life, these beings that are not alive but that have a certain kind of life, they must exist in relation to each other, and each of them in relation to objects in the world. This interdependence is, I believe, created by the act of looking. There has to be an interdependence. Not to depend on anything is not to live." Further on this idea is connected to editing, how it's only in images and sounds being put next to each other that either element acquire any force. The camera as machine like recorder, editing as creator.
"I work first, I think after...I force myself to invent in the moment. I am against any system based on preparing things in advance...I await the unexpected, I look for surprises." Again and again the idea of reducing action to automatism and awaiting surprises, extracting things in the moment the actors didn't know were there that he didn't set out to find. "A painter never knows in advance what his canvas will become, or a sculptor his sculpture, or a poet his poem."
"What I ask of my interpreters...is that they stay inside themselves, that they lock themselves in and give nothing away. But then I come along to take from them whatever they're hiding." Further on mentions telling actors to speak as if they are talking to themselves.
"I would say to you that in this art form, which puts pressure on the image, the viewer must abandon his idea of the image. He has to abandon the idea completely and instead get caught in the rhythm that is capable of transporting him. Never, in no other art has rhythm been so important. Something that would have been forgotten right away becomes unforgettable when it's encountered inside of a rhythm."
Later on connects to "Not beautiful images, but necessary ones"
"Any chance I can replace an image with a sound, I do." Again and again brings up the idea that sound will provoke more in the brain than an image. The eye is more passive to just receive whereas the ear more often has to do guesswork.
Came to use only one lens : a 50 mm. The one closest to normal vision. Sought to not show camera movement. Hide techniques and seek unity.
dismayed at the small amount of coverage of the first three films but logic is clear ; the recognizing of film as an art form and of bresson as an auteur to be studied occurred gradually and simultaneously.
the interviews emphasize just how succinct bresson's thinking and methods were even early on and you recognize the kernels that go into "notes" just about everywhere.
notes and quotes :
"interiority leads the way... i've noticed that the rhythm of images is not capable of fully correcting a slowness that's interior. It's the knots that tie and unravel inside the characters that give a film its movement, its real movement. It's this movement I attempt to manifest by way of something, or some combination of things, not to be found in dialogue alone."
"We have to make films the way we write-that is, with our feelings. What's so difficult in cinema is to find a way to express oneself, to make felt what one feels, instead of creating a story, a spectacle if you will, whether finely or poorly composed."
avoid pleonasm. avoid dialogue if an image is already conveying the same thing. "You have to drastically condense, to risk saying too little, both with the image and with the words."
"So, the way people look at each other is, for me-I was going to say the only important thing in a film. Because, after all, to succeed in making these shadows on a screen come to life, these beings that are not alive but that have a certain kind of life, they must exist in relation to each other, and each of them in relation to objects in the world. This interdependence is, I believe, created by the act of looking. There has to be an interdependence. Not to depend on anything is not to live." Further on this idea is connected to editing, how it's only in images and sounds being put next to each other that either element acquire any force. The camera as machine like recorder, editing as creator.
"I work first, I think after...I force myself to invent in the moment. I am against any system based on preparing things in advance...I await the unexpected, I look for surprises." Again and again the idea of reducing action to automatism and awaiting surprises, extracting things in the moment the actors didn't know were there that he didn't set out to find. "A painter never knows in advance what his canvas will become, or a sculptor his sculpture, or a poet his poem."
"What I ask of my interpreters...is that they stay inside themselves, that they lock themselves in and give nothing away. But then I come along to take from them whatever they're hiding." Further on mentions telling actors to speak as if they are talking to themselves.
"I would say to you that in this art form, which puts pressure on the image, the viewer must abandon his idea of the image. He has to abandon the idea completely and instead get caught in the rhythm that is capable of transporting him. Never, in no other art has rhythm been so important. Something that would have been forgotten right away becomes unforgettable when it's encountered inside of a rhythm."
Later on connects to "Not beautiful images, but necessary ones"
"Any chance I can replace an image with a sound, I do." Again and again brings up the idea that sound will provoke more in the brain than an image. The eye is more passive to just receive whereas the ear more often has to do guesswork.
Came to use only one lens : a 50 mm. The one closest to normal vision. Sought to not show camera movement. Hide techniques and seek unity.
August 18, 2021
The cinema must express itself not with images, but with relationships between images, which is not at all the same thing. In the same way a painter doesn’t express himself through color, but through the relationships between colors. A blue is a blue in and of itself, but if it is next to a green, or to a red, or to a yellow, it’s no longer the same blue: it changes. There is an image, then another, and they have relative values: so the first image is neutral, but if put in the presence of another, it vibrates, life erupts from it. And it isn’t just the life of the story, of the characters—it’s the life of the film. Beginning with the moment when the image vibrates, we are making cinema.
It isn’t so hard to understand . . . It’s useless to think that the way to arrive at truth is by way of truth. I try to arrive at truth by way of something mechanical, if you will.
“Every movement discovers us,” said Montaigne. For me, gestures and words aren’t essential to a film. What’s essential is the thing, or the things, that provoke them.
If I’m accused of abstraction, of being abstract, I will say that it’s not a reproach: it’s exactly what the cinema must do, that is to not show things in their ordinary relationships, in their ordinary relation to life, but to take the parts of a whole, isolate them, and put them back together in a certain order. So if I am abstract, if someone has noticed that I am abstract, I congratulate myself, because it’s precisely what I am after: not to take a person whole, but to see what relation his hand has to his face, his hand to an object on the table—and to recreate these relations which are also my own relations, which form my personal life, my inner life. That is: in the end, not to show the audience what I see, but to make the audience feel what I feel, which is not at all the same thing.
People are not aware that to create is first of all to prune, to eliminate. Also: to choose. The worst pitfalls for a film are impurity, profusion, disorder. Too many incompatible things presented at the same time. Dramatic art (which is a completely different creature) is then introduced, and it ruins everything. I force myself to capture reality—pieces of reality, as pure as possible— which I then arrange in a certain order. This might give an uninitiated viewer the impression of an asceticism or even a dryness that he wouldn’t find in ordinary films, and that might surprise him by comparison.
What I do resembles what a gardener does, or a horticulturist: transplanting and propagation. I take seeds from reality and plant them in the film.
I believe very strongly in working intuitively. But only after a long period of reflection. Specifically, reflection regarding composition. It seems to me that composition is very important, that perhaps composition is even the point of origin of a film. That said, the composition can be spontaneous, can spring from improvisation. In any case: it’s the composition that makes the film. Because we’re taking elements that already exist: what matters is the connections between things, their proximity, and in the end, their composition. Sometimes it’s precisely in the relations—which can be very intuitive—that we establish between things that we are able to find ourselves. And I’m thinking of another fact: It’s also by way of intuition that we discover another person. In any case, more so by intuition than by reflection.
I’m convinced that we’re surrounded by people with talent and genius, I’m certain of it, but the chances that life give us . . . it takes so many coincidences for a man to be able to make use of his genius.
I have a feeling that people are much more intelligent, much more gifted—but that life crushes them. Immediately. They get crushed because nothing is more frightening than talent or genius. It makes us uneasy. Parents fear it. So they squash it. And in animals, there must be some very smart ones that we destroy with training, by beating them. . . .
In essence, all art is abstract and, at the same time, suggestive. You can’t show everything. When you show everything, it isn’t art. Art proceeds by way of suggestion. The great challenge for cinematography is, precisely, not to show. The ideal would be to show nothing at all, but that isn’t possible. So we have to show things at an angle, a single angle that is capable of evoking all the other angles, without revealing them. You have to allow the viewer to guess, to want to guess, to be transfixed in a state of attention and expectation . . . You have to preserve the mystery. We live in a state of mystery; that mystery has to manifest on the screen. Effects must always appear before their cause, as happens in life. The great majority of events that we witness are due to unknown causes. We watch their effects, and perhaps we discover their causes much later.
The field of cinematography is immeasurable and full of shadows. I find my way like a blind man in a kingdom of the involuntarily (or, perhaps, voluntarily?) sightless. To capture the real in flight.
If it’s possible to replace an image by one or more sounds, you should do it without hesitation. In essence: aim for the audience’s ear more than for its eye. The ear is far more creative than the eye.
That’s another basic principle, one that very few understand besides the true greats like Chaplin: economy. Make a grand gesture with nothing—that’s the goal. But the habit is to do the opposite and show absolutely everything, whatever it is: everything’s good. Result? No emotion because there’s no economy. Economy in anything. In gestures, for example. A gesture, when one is made, should communicate a lot.
Many people think that the fantastical has to do with unusual characters and exceptional situations. The fantastic is everywhere around us, it’s the face seen from close up—there is nothing more fantastical than the real. For Dostoevsky, the fantastical arose from the husband’s monologue that evoked the past. It’s the same reason I don’t think of what I’ve done as a mixing of present with past. For me, there are no flashbacks, there is no rupture in tone, everything happens in the same temporality.
I don’t think it’s possible to work (on anything) without a method. The absence of a method leads to chaos—in other words, mediocrity.
Adaptations save me a lot of time by bringing me to terms with a producer right away. Why Dostoevsky? Because he’s the greatest.
To be authentic is to be “yourself,” and to make everything pass through “you.”
So as to transform the literary magic of the story into a different type of magic, the magic of feelings. For that to happen, one must resist the picturesque. The only “fairy” is the screen itself.
The adversary is frivolous optimism; it’s the money that’s supposed to make everything ok; it’s the crowd clamoring for things with no value; it’s the primacy of force.
You have to put yourself into a frame of mind where you can discover things without looking for them.
My heroes are like castaways, setting off for an unknown island, like in the days following Adam’s creation.
Many animals have an exquisite sensitivity that we don’t work hard enough to understand. I would like to take better advantage of it. It’s as if our own sensitivity were split in half: our joy and our pain both extended.
It isn’t so hard to understand . . . It’s useless to think that the way to arrive at truth is by way of truth. I try to arrive at truth by way of something mechanical, if you will.
“Every movement discovers us,” said Montaigne. For me, gestures and words aren’t essential to a film. What’s essential is the thing, or the things, that provoke them.
If I’m accused of abstraction, of being abstract, I will say that it’s not a reproach: it’s exactly what the cinema must do, that is to not show things in their ordinary relationships, in their ordinary relation to life, but to take the parts of a whole, isolate them, and put them back together in a certain order. So if I am abstract, if someone has noticed that I am abstract, I congratulate myself, because it’s precisely what I am after: not to take a person whole, but to see what relation his hand has to his face, his hand to an object on the table—and to recreate these relations which are also my own relations, which form my personal life, my inner life. That is: in the end, not to show the audience what I see, but to make the audience feel what I feel, which is not at all the same thing.
People are not aware that to create is first of all to prune, to eliminate. Also: to choose. The worst pitfalls for a film are impurity, profusion, disorder. Too many incompatible things presented at the same time. Dramatic art (which is a completely different creature) is then introduced, and it ruins everything. I force myself to capture reality—pieces of reality, as pure as possible— which I then arrange in a certain order. This might give an uninitiated viewer the impression of an asceticism or even a dryness that he wouldn’t find in ordinary films, and that might surprise him by comparison.
What I do resembles what a gardener does, or a horticulturist: transplanting and propagation. I take seeds from reality and plant them in the film.
I believe very strongly in working intuitively. But only after a long period of reflection. Specifically, reflection regarding composition. It seems to me that composition is very important, that perhaps composition is even the point of origin of a film. That said, the composition can be spontaneous, can spring from improvisation. In any case: it’s the composition that makes the film. Because we’re taking elements that already exist: what matters is the connections between things, their proximity, and in the end, their composition. Sometimes it’s precisely in the relations—which can be very intuitive—that we establish between things that we are able to find ourselves. And I’m thinking of another fact: It’s also by way of intuition that we discover another person. In any case, more so by intuition than by reflection.
I’m convinced that we’re surrounded by people with talent and genius, I’m certain of it, but the chances that life give us . . . it takes so many coincidences for a man to be able to make use of his genius.
I have a feeling that people are much more intelligent, much more gifted—but that life crushes them. Immediately. They get crushed because nothing is more frightening than talent or genius. It makes us uneasy. Parents fear it. So they squash it. And in animals, there must be some very smart ones that we destroy with training, by beating them. . . .
In essence, all art is abstract and, at the same time, suggestive. You can’t show everything. When you show everything, it isn’t art. Art proceeds by way of suggestion. The great challenge for cinematography is, precisely, not to show. The ideal would be to show nothing at all, but that isn’t possible. So we have to show things at an angle, a single angle that is capable of evoking all the other angles, without revealing them. You have to allow the viewer to guess, to want to guess, to be transfixed in a state of attention and expectation . . . You have to preserve the mystery. We live in a state of mystery; that mystery has to manifest on the screen. Effects must always appear before their cause, as happens in life. The great majority of events that we witness are due to unknown causes. We watch their effects, and perhaps we discover their causes much later.
The field of cinematography is immeasurable and full of shadows. I find my way like a blind man in a kingdom of the involuntarily (or, perhaps, voluntarily?) sightless. To capture the real in flight.
If it’s possible to replace an image by one or more sounds, you should do it without hesitation. In essence: aim for the audience’s ear more than for its eye. The ear is far more creative than the eye.
That’s another basic principle, one that very few understand besides the true greats like Chaplin: economy. Make a grand gesture with nothing—that’s the goal. But the habit is to do the opposite and show absolutely everything, whatever it is: everything’s good. Result? No emotion because there’s no economy. Economy in anything. In gestures, for example. A gesture, when one is made, should communicate a lot.
Many people think that the fantastical has to do with unusual characters and exceptional situations. The fantastic is everywhere around us, it’s the face seen from close up—there is nothing more fantastical than the real. For Dostoevsky, the fantastical arose from the husband’s monologue that evoked the past. It’s the same reason I don’t think of what I’ve done as a mixing of present with past. For me, there are no flashbacks, there is no rupture in tone, everything happens in the same temporality.
I don’t think it’s possible to work (on anything) without a method. The absence of a method leads to chaos—in other words, mediocrity.
Adaptations save me a lot of time by bringing me to terms with a producer right away. Why Dostoevsky? Because he’s the greatest.
To be authentic is to be “yourself,” and to make everything pass through “you.”
So as to transform the literary magic of the story into a different type of magic, the magic of feelings. For that to happen, one must resist the picturesque. The only “fairy” is the screen itself.
The adversary is frivolous optimism; it’s the money that’s supposed to make everything ok; it’s the crowd clamoring for things with no value; it’s the primacy of force.
You have to put yourself into a frame of mind where you can discover things without looking for them.
My heroes are like castaways, setting off for an unknown island, like in the days following Adam’s creation.
Many animals have an exquisite sensitivity that we don’t work hard enough to understand. I would like to take better advantage of it. It’s as if our own sensitivity were split in half: our joy and our pain both extended.
December 28, 2023
"Kvikmyndaformið er snilld. En áhorfendur geta ekki haldið áfram að fara í bíó einungis með þær vonir að sjá enn einn leikara "brillera," eða hlusta á hann breyta rödd sinni. Einhver sagði eitt sinn við mig: "Við erum nú búin að gera allt sem hægt er að gera með kvikmyndir" En kvikmyndaformið er víðáttumikið, við höfum ekki gert stakan hlut."
- Robert Bresson
- Robert Bresson
February 19, 2019
"- ¿Cuanto dura su película?
- Creo que una hora y diez minutos aproximadamente, una hora y cuarto.
- ¿Así lo quiso usted?
- Así lo quiso la película."
- Creo que una hora y diez minutos aproximadamente, una hora y cuarto.
- ¿Así lo quiso usted?
- Así lo quiso la película."
June 4, 2017
Inspiration for artists of all fields.
January 21, 2021
This is a tough read.
Tough, first and foremost, because the book is only a compilation of Bresson’s sparse interviews over the year. Secondly, it is due to his deep and radical thinking. He is one of those few makers that discovers, contemplates, and articulate very carefully. The consistency and strong foundation in his ideology about art/cinema and film theory causes the issue of repetition in this book. People weren’t coming to term with his idea, and he made the same statements over and over again in many interviews. And finally, the tough work of reading this book, as a cineaste, is for the reader to conceive his idea of cinema. A true formalist, his vision still feels advanced today. To understand his vision is to reject a lot of cinema as we knew it up until now (he dared to reject even Dreyer’s magnum opus Joan of Arc, calling it filmed theater). As a reader, we have to think deep too, to reckon with his idea in opposition, or harmony, with other cinematic expressions.
One of my other favorite filmmakers is John Cassavetes, and his oeuvre is, at first glance, almost the antithesis to Bresson’s idea. It took me a while to think, rationally and deeply, and to accept both schools of thought. The book is tough, but it is worth reading.
Tough, first and foremost, because the book is only a compilation of Bresson’s sparse interviews over the year. Secondly, it is due to his deep and radical thinking. He is one of those few makers that discovers, contemplates, and articulate very carefully. The consistency and strong foundation in his ideology about art/cinema and film theory causes the issue of repetition in this book. People weren’t coming to term with his idea, and he made the same statements over and over again in many interviews. And finally, the tough work of reading this book, as a cineaste, is for the reader to conceive his idea of cinema. A true formalist, his vision still feels advanced today. To understand his vision is to reject a lot of cinema as we knew it up until now (he dared to reject even Dreyer’s magnum opus Joan of Arc, calling it filmed theater). As a reader, we have to think deep too, to reckon with his idea in opposition, or harmony, with other cinematic expressions.
One of my other favorite filmmakers is John Cassavetes, and his oeuvre is, at first glance, almost the antithesis to Bresson’s idea. It took me a while to think, rationally and deeply, and to accept both schools of thought. The book is tough, but it is worth reading.
March 25, 2025
“I await the unexpected. I look for surprises”
“I wonder if my films are worth the effort they require”
Having previously read “Notes on the cinematograph” this was a beautiful, more intimate display of Bresson and his philosophies on Cinematography and the arts in general. I found this incredibly inspiring and although due to the lack of interviews there was quite a bit of repetition, I will be coming back to this constantly I’m sure. The way that Bresson created his own manifesto and world that he truly believed in and lived, is such an amazing aspect of his practice to get to read about and I am but nothing grateful that this book exists.
Long live Bresson.
“I wonder if my films are worth the effort they require”
Having previously read “Notes on the cinematograph” this was a beautiful, more intimate display of Bresson and his philosophies on Cinematography and the arts in general. I found this incredibly inspiring and although due to the lack of interviews there was quite a bit of repetition, I will be coming back to this constantly I’m sure. The way that Bresson created his own manifesto and world that he truly believed in and lived, is such an amazing aspect of his practice to get to read about and I am but nothing grateful that this book exists.
Long live Bresson.
December 22, 2022
A lo largo de cuarenta años, Robert Bresson, uno de los más grandes cineastas de todos los tiempos, tuvo tiempo para expresar, a través de numerosas entrevistas, sus puntos de vista sobre su propia obra y sobre la naturaleza del cine: este es su testamento y un documento que permite comprender más cabalmente su cinematografía.
September 15, 2022
His work ethics, his organized life and thoughts greatly inspire me. So much I can quote from this man, one that best describes his stance is this one: "at a respectful distance from order and disorder". This is the man that welcomed and bent chaos gently.
March 26, 2018
Essential reading by one of cinema's true philosophers.
March 23, 2020
Insightful. Honest. A complete look into Bresson's philosophy throughout his filmography.
May 4, 2020
Invaluable.
February 25, 2025
聽一個很知道自己在幹嘛的人說話真的非常暢快。
August 5, 2025
whether you like his films or not... or his ideas... is there any other director with such an extreme clarity of his opinion on films and how they should be made.
January 14, 2024
fascinating way of feeling, experiencing, seeing and hearing
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews