Robert Bresson REACTIONS TO ROBERT BRESSON Outside his

Robert Bresson

REACTIONS TO ROBERT BRESSON

‘Outside his film-making, [Bresson’s] life appears to have been uneventful. The films, however, are all incontestably events in the history of French cinema’ - Keith Reader, Robert Bresson, p. 10

‘la sortie de Pickpocket est une des quatre ou cinq grandes dates de l’histoire du cinéma’ - Louis Malle, in Michel Estève, Robert Bresson: La Passion du cinématographe, p. 97

‘[Bresson] semblait parfois aussi gauche qu’un débutant en 16 mm qui a embauché sa tante et le notaire de la famille. ’ - André Bazin, in Michel Estève, Robert Bresson: La Passion du cinématographe, p. 110

‘To some of Bresson’s critics, both admirers and detractors, he is not only the consummate stylist but also the consummate oddball: morbid, hermetic, eccentric, obsessed with theological dilemmas in an age of social action. ’ - Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, p. 87

‘Bresson’s work seems […] perverse to the uninitiated viewer: Bresson despises what the moviegoer likes best. His films are “cold” and “dull”; they lack the vicarious excitement usually associated with the movies. ’ - Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, p. 64

‘Débarrassés presque totalement de leur chair, les protagonistes se meuvent dans un univers exsangue. ’ - Gilbert Salachas, in Michel Estève, Robert Bresson: La Passion du cinématographe, p. 92

BRESSON’S UNIQUENESS

‘Bresson est “à part” dans ce métier terrible. ’ - Jean Cocteau, in Keith Reader, Robert Bresson, p. 1

‘Bresson himself passes for the archetypally uninfluenced film-maker, a myth reinforced by his insistence that he never goes to the cinema. ’ - Keith Reader, Robert Bresson, p. 1

‘Cette œuvre appelle le commentaire, par sa radicalité, sa solitude, et la densité obsédée de ses figures […], par le solipscisme qui la fonde –, et simultanément en souligne la vanité. ’ - Philippe Arnaud, Robert Bresson, p. 12

‘In a medium which has been primarily intuitive, individualized and humanistic, Bresson’s work is anachronistically nonintuitive, impersonal, and iconographic. ’ - Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film, p. 59

‘The comparative meagreness of his output, his refusal of actors and thus of the star system, theological or at least transcendental underpinnings that are a constant of his work along with its insistent materiality, all help to make him one of the very few unquestioned auteurs of his time. ’ - Reader, Robert Bresson, p. 28

‘This individualism articulates itself through an instantly recognisable visual style’ - Reader, Robert Bresson, p. 2

‘Bresson from Le Journal d’un curé de campagne (1951) onwards works to all intents and purposes outside genre’ - Reader, p. 16

‘Ce film n’est pas du style policier’ - opening disclaimer of Pickpocket (1959)

BRESSON’S AESTHETIC

‘C’est avec du net et du précis que tu forceras l’attention des inattentifs d’œil et d’oreille. ’ - Robert Bresson, Notes sur le cinématographe, p. 100

‘c’est dans les films de Bresson qu’on peut faire l’expérience de ce qu’on pourrait appeler une compression du réel […] dans un film de Bresson, ça ne nous lache plus, chaque plan chute avec la précision irréversible d’une assignation. ’ - Arnaud, Robert Bresson, p. 12

‘Bresson’s everyday stylization consists of elimination rather than addition or assimilation. Bresson ruthlessly strips action of its significance; he regards a scene in terms of its fewest possibilities. ’ - Schrader, Transcendental Style, p. 63

‘With Bresson we enter the realm of the hyper-empty. ’ - Roger Tailleur, in T. Jefferson Kline, ‘Picking Dostoevsky’s Pocket: Bresson’s Sl(e)ight of Screen’, p. 253.

‘Bresson applies the same ascetic style to such “appropriate” subjects as the suffering priest in Diary of a Country Priest as he does to such “inappropriate” subjects as the ballroom sequences in Les Dames du bois de Boulogne and the lovemaking sequence in Une femme douce. ’ - Schrader, Transcendental Style, p. 61

‘Deux sortes de films: ceux qui emploient les moyens du théâtre (acteurs, mise en scène, etc. ) et se servent de la caméra afin de reproduire; ceux qui emploient les moyens du cinématographe et se servent de la caméra afin de créer. ’ - Robert Bresson, Notes sur le cinématographe, pp. 17 -18

‘Bresson has often said that he regards himself as less a metteur en scène than a metteur en ordre. ’ - Reader, p. 55

‘According to Bresson, it is through the creation of a system of relationships among the projected images that the filmic world comes to have meaning. ’ - Allen Thiher, ‘Bresson’s Un condamné à mort: The semiotics of grace’, p. 223

‘Il faut qu’une image se transforme au contact d’autres images comme une couleur au contact d’autres couleurs. Un bleu n’est pas le même bleu à côté d’un vert, d’un jaune, d’un rouge. Pas d’art sans transformation. ’ - Bresson, Notes sur le cinématographe, p. 22

‘Émouvoir non pas avec des images émouvantes, mais avec des rapports d’images qui les rendent à la fois vivantes et émouvantes. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 89

‘[Un condamné à mort s’est échappé] is made up of innumerable quick-moving, chronologically ordered fragments. ’ - Joseph Cunneen, Robert Bresson: A Spiritual Syle in Film, p. 62

‘les films de Bresson se déroulent sans coupure […] nette, comme en une seule longue séquence, riche d’instants aussi discontinus qu’essentiels à la trame du récit. ’ - Estève, Robert Bresson, p. 99

‘C’est de la contrainte à une régularité mécanique, c’est d’une mécanique naîtra l’émotion. Penser à certains grands pianistes pour le comprendre. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 125

‘un film ne se réduit pas à la somme de ses plans […] tout grand film produit quelque chose qui excède l’addition mécanique de ses parties’ - Arnaud, p. 13

BRESSON AND SOUND

‘Lorsqu’un son peut remplacer une image, supprimer l’image ou la neutraliser. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 62

‘L’œil (en général) superficiel, l’oreille profonde et inventive. Le sifflement d’une locomotive imprime en nous la vision de toute une gare. ’ - Bresson, Notes, pp. 81 -2

‘Économie. Faire savoir qu’on est dans le même lieu par la répétition des mêmes bruits et de la même sonorité. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 85

‘Il faut que les bruits deviennent musique. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 32

‘Sois sûr d’avoir épuisé tout ce qui se communique par l’immobilité et le silence. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 33

‘In spare films such as Pickpocket and L’Argent (1983) […], Bresson achieves an uncanny presence of select sounds while refusing realistic indicators of space […] Without the use of room tone or other techniques to give spatial cues or to make sounds warmer, the minimalist sounds in his films become very concrete’ - Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience, p. 205.

‘Quand un violon suffit ne pas en employer deux. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 28

‘l’art de travailler les bruits et de les mettre en valeur est cohérent avec une certaine façon de retenir les voix’ - Michel Chion, in Reader, p. 138

‘Text is neither a simple commentary on the image, nor is image a simple illustration of the text. Disjunction, independence, interrogation, and even negation of the image, by the sense of the text, is as much a feature as illustration or duplication. ’ - Nick Browne, quoted in Kline, ‘Picking Dostoevsky’s Pocket’, p. 237.

‘I have “watched” the end of Mouchette with my eyes closed from the point at which she speaks the film’s final words and found its impact barely less than with them open’ - Reader, p. 91

ACTING AND CHARACTERISATION

‘The intense focus on key sounds […] is complemented by a vocal delivery which often makes it sound as if the characters were quoting their lines rather than speaking them. ’ - Reader, p. 2

‘le personnage parle comme s’il écoutait ses propres paroles rapportées par un autre’ - Gilles Deleuze, in Reader, p. 33

‘[Bresson] goes so far as to refuse the very word ‘acteur’, preferring to speak of ‘modèles’, a term whose overtones of automatism and malleability are significant’ - Reader, pp. 3 -4

‘Le théâtre photographié ou CINÉMA veut qu’un metteur en scène ou director fasse jouer la comédie à des acteurs et photographie ces acteurs jouant la comédie; ensuite il aligne les images. Théâtre bâtard auquel manque ce qui fait le théâtre: présence matérielle d’acteurs vivants, action directe du public sur les acteurs. ’ - Bresson, Notes, pp. 19 -20

‘Trouver plus naturel qu’un geste soit fait, qu’une phrase soit dite comme ceci plutôt que comme cela est absurde, n’a pas de sens dans le cinématographe. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 20

‘Il ne s’agit pas de jouer “simple”, ou de jouer “intérieur”, mais de ne pas jouer du tout. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 99

‘L’acteur qui étudie son rôle suppose un “soi” connu d’avance (qui n’existe pas). ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 93

‘Even in their most extreme confidences, [Bresson’s characters] never reveal anything but their mystery’ - Amédée Ayfre, in Schrader, Transcendental Style, p. 85

‘An actor is primarily concerned with the character of the man he portrays. Bresson is concerned with how he can use that actor to convey a reality which is not limited to any one character. ’ - Schrader, Transcendental Style, p. 65

‘Supprime radicalement les intentions chez tes modèles. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 27

‘Les 9/10 e de nos mouvements obéissent à l’habitude et à l’automatisme. Il est antinature de les subordonner à la volonté et à la pensée. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 34

‘we reveal who we truly are when our gestures are automatic’ - Cunneen, Robert Bresson, p. 60

STORY AND SPACE

‘In nearly all of his works […], Bresson’s narrative turns in one way or another on isolation and humiliation, on estrangement and the impossibility of a desired community. ’ - Thiher, ‘Bresson’s Un condamné à mort’, p. 228

‘I try more and more in my films to suppress what people call plot. Plot is a novelist’s trick. ’ - Bresson, in Schrader, p. 64

‘Bresson has been called the most elliptical director in film history’ - Thiher, p. 231

‘According to René Prédal, the commonest Bressonian rhetorical figures are litotes, ellipsis and metonymy’ - Reader, p. 3

‘Ne cours pas après la poésie. Elle pénètre toute seule par les jointures. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 39

‘[Pickpocket], shot on location in Paris, gives us no sense of neighbourhood (…), nor of chronological time. ’ - Reader, p. 54

‘on se tromperait en prenant cette volonté d’écarter ces coordonnées géographiques par exemple, pour un désir d’abstraction. Elle est au contraire le moyen de nous donner ces lieux avec leur plus grande force originelle, par le seul pouvoir de leur enregistrement. Sans le soutien d’un savoir extérieur à cette seule présentation, c’est la singularité native de ces lieux fragmentés qu’il propose. ’ - Arnaud, p. 21

‘En réalité, ce sont les opérations techniques – durée des plans, cadrages, angles de prises de vues, etc. – auxquelles Bresson a recours qui peuvent revêtir pour le spectateur un caractère d’abstraction; c’est la façon dont il joue avec l’espace réel pour créer un espace autonome, original qui peut apparaître abstraite. ’ - Estève, p. 94

- ‘Michel [in Pickpocket] is in the most literal sense feeling his way towards redemption, and our inability to see as a whole the spaces […] in which he operates, correspond to his inability to see the wider space […] in which his destiny is playing (or working) itself out. ’ - Reader, p. 59

BRESSON AND RELIGION

‘Bresson has the reputation of being the cinema’s greatest Catholic director’ - Reader, p. 5

‘Bresson’s realism had a different goal, to convey the reality of the transcendent. ’ - Cunneen, pp. 58 -9

‘The viewer finds himself in a dilemma: the environment suggests documentary realism, yet the central character suggests spiritual passion. ’ - Schrader, p. 77

‘La vie ne doit pas être rendue par le recopiage photographique de la vie, mais par les lois secrètes au milieu desquelles on sent se mouvoir tes modèles. ’ - Bresson, Notes, p. 77

‘c’est l’ouverture de la part visible, ou sonore, du film, à ce qui ne peut pas être présenté. Au lieu que l’image soit conçue comme sa propre complétude, chez Bresson, elle témoigne de ce qui n’est pas figurable. ’ - Arnaud, p. 13

‘I would like in my films to be able to render perceptible to an audience a feeling of a man’s soul and also the presence of something superior to man which can be called God. ’ - Bresson, in Schrader, p. 84

‘Bresson est le cinéaste qui, par intuition, se tient au plus près de ce lieu, ce centre vide du monde, avec un sens exact de son échelle, qui advient à travers les machinations du réel. Ce centre est nulle part, et partout où cette déshiscence se manifeste. Ce lieu, certains y mettent le nom de Dieu’ - Arnaud, p. 20

‘The decisive action forces the viewer into the confrontation with the Wholly Other he would normally avoid. He is faced with an explicably spiritual act within a cold environment, an act which now requests his participation and approval. Irony can no longer postpone his decision. It is a “miracle” which must be accepted or rejected. ’ - Schrader, p. 81

‘Despite the religious orientation of Bresson criticism, the films themselves are more concerned with crime than they are religion. ’ - Brian Price, Neither God nor Master: Robert Bresson and Radical Politics, p. 15.

‘five of his feature films are set at least in part in prisons’ - Reader, p. 14

PICKPOCKET

‘Pickpocket is a work of profound inspiration, instinctive, burning, imperfect, and overwhelming. It resolves all misunderstandings: if you reject this film, it is as if you are doubting the possibility of cinema as an autonomous art. ’ Louis Malle, quoted in Cunneen, p. 71

‘Pickpocket is Bresson’s first completely personal film – that is, one for which he composed the screenplay himself instead of adapting it from an existing text. ’ - Cunneen, p. 71

‘although Pickpocket is not a thorough rendering of Dostoevsky, its theme, principal characters, specific interactions, and much of its dialogue are lifted directly from his novel [Crime and Punishment]. ’ - Tony Pipolo, Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film, p. 127

‘Pickpocket constitutes a perfect emblem of Bresson’s entire project: its very title is a foreign word, isolated from definite or indefinite article, ambiguous. That ambiguity is to remain in force throughout the film. ’ - Kline, p. 236.

‘I didn’t understand what he was trying to say. As a matter of fact I don’t think anybody has ever understood, really. Who is this pickpocket, why does he steal and so on? ’ - Léonce-Henry Burel, cameraman on Pickpocket, quoted in Kline, p. 236.

‘The four films of the prison cycle deal with the questions of freedom and imprisonment, or, in theological terms, of free will and predestination. ’ - Schrader, p. 59

‘All of Bresson’s films have a common theme: the meaning of confinement and liberty. The imagery of the religious vocation and of crime are used jointly. Both lead to “the cell”. ’ - Susan Sontag, in Schrader, pp. 59 -60

‘The surprising brevity of Pickpocket – seventy minutes – makes it clear that Bresson is deliberately leaving out the links between different stages of the action and is indifferent to standard movie realism. ’ - Cunneen, p. 72

‘Discounting moments when he is with others, we see Michel walking solo in more than thirty-five shots and negotiating staircases in more than a dozen […] Given Bresson’s tendency to concision and ellipsis, as well as the seventy-five minute running time of this film, it is extraordinary how much footage is devoted to these activities. ’ - Pipolo, p. 136

‘Repeated viewings of [the opening] sequence [of Pickpocket] lead to the impression that what Bresson has included in his film are those images that are normally consigned to the cutting-room floor […] It is almost as though we were reading a sentence from which all of the adjectives and most of the substantives had been removed, leaving only prepositions and conjunctions. ’ - Kline, p. 238

‘The look of A Man Escaped and Pickpocket reflects a concern for clarity and simplicity, an avoidance of theatrical of painterly effects; the same minimalist aesthetic governs the use of the model. This look draws attention not to itself but to the action that is central. ’ - Pipolo, p. 100

‘the conflicted nature of the protagonist in Pickpocket was an acid test of whether Bresson’s style was strong enough to minimize psychology. The challenge was to reconcile the reduction of means, in which every shot, every image, every cut, and every sound counts, with the need to reveal the conflict and register the change within his protagonist in credible terms. Could the style, in other words, displace the psychological onto the cinematographic? ’ - Pipolo, p. 125

‘Pickpocket seems to demand [a psychoanalytic] approach, since every aspect of its narrative and visual design can be viewed as forms of cinematic acting-out, which is to say that much of what we see Michel doing is about something else. ’ - Pipolo, p. 126

‘There is no longer any anecdote, that is, any pretext foreign to the real subject of the film […] We find only symbols of a luminous simplicity which together make up an allegory, or more precisely what the Gospel calls a parable. ’ - Malle, in Cunneen, p. 73

Bibliography • • • Arnaud, Philippe, Robert Bresson, Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 1986. Bresson, Robert, Notes sur le cinématographe, Paris: Gallimard, 1988. Corrigan, Timothy and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction, Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2015. Cunneen, Joseph, Robert Bresson: A Spiritual Style in Film, New York/London: Continuum, 2003. Estève, Michel, Robert Bresson: La passon du cinématographe, Paris: Albatros, 1983. Kline, T. Jefferson, ‘Picking Dostoevsky’s Pocket: Bresson’s Sl(e)ight of Screen’, in James Quandt (ed. ), Robert Bresson, Toronto: Cinémathèque Ontario, 1998, pp. 23573. Pipolo, Tony, Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Price, Brian, Neither God nor Master: Robert Bresson and Radical Politics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Reader, Keith, Robert Bresson, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000. Schrader, Paul, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, New York: Da Capo, 1972. Thiher, Allen, ‘Bresson’s Un condamné à mort: The semiotics of grace’, in James Quandt (ed. ), Robert Bresson, Toronto: Cinémathèque Ontario, 1998, pp. 223 -33.