Bresson on Bresson
Subtitle: interviews, 1943-1983
By: Robert Bresson ; edited by Mylène Bresson ; translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis ; preface by Pascale Mérigeau
Contributors: Bresson, Mylène, editor; Moschovakis, Anna, translator; Mérigeau, Pascal, writer of added commentary
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 285
ISBN-13: 9781681370446
Subjects: Interviews; Motion picture producers and directors
Work titles: Bresson par Bresson
Description: Publisher Description (unedited publisher data) Robert Bresson, the director of such cinematic master-pieces as Pickpocket, A Man Escaped Mouchette, and L'Argent, was one of the most influential directors in the history of French film, as well as one of the most stubbornly individual: He insisted on the use of nonprofessional actors; he shunned the "advances" of Cinerama and Cinema-Scope (and the work of most of his predecessors and peers); and he minced no words about the damaging influence of capitalism and the studio system on the still-developing-in his view-art of film. Bresson on Bresson collects the most significant interviews that Bresson gave (carefully editing them before they were released) over the course of his forty-year career to reveal both the internal consistency and the consistently exploratory character of his body of work. Successive chapters are dedicated to each of his fourteen films, as well as to the question of literary adaptation, the nature of the sound track, and to Bresson's one book, the great aphoristic treatise Notes on the Cinematograph. Throughout, his close and careful consideration of his own films and of the art of film is punctuated by such telling mantras as "Sound ... invented silence in cinema," "It's the film that ... gives life to the characters-not the characters that give life to the film," and (echoing the Bible) "Every idle word shall be counted." Bresson's integrity and originality earned him the admiration of younger directors from Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette to Olivier Assayas. And though Bresson's movies are marked everywhere by an air of intense deliberation, these interviews show that they were no less inspired by a near-religious belief in the value of intuition, not only that of the creator but that of the audience, which he claims to deeply respect: "It's always ready to feel before it understands. And that's how it should be.
Notes: Pascale Mérigeau should be spelled Pascal.

Includes bibliographical references.

Translated from French.
Table of contents: title: Preface; title: Public affairs, 1934 : Prelude; title: Angels of sin, 1943 : It takes an auteur ; Jean Giraudoux; title: Les dames du Bois de Boulogne, 1945 : Scandals and shocks ; Interiority leads the way ; Jean Cocteau ; The Festival du Film Maudit; title: Diary of a country priest, 1951 : Between these two worlds ; It's the impossibility that attracts me ; To see and to hear ; As I would write a poem; title: A man escaped, 1956 : The wind blows where it wants to ; A new means of expression; title: Pickpocket, 1959 : A film made of hands, objects, and glances ; A film's rhythm should be like the beating of a heart ; To capture only what is real ; To get to the mystery ; Poetry and truth are sisters; title: The trial of Joan of Arc, 1962 : This familiarity with the palpably supernatural ; I know of nothing more atrocious or more poignant ; It's what the film wanted ; Emotion should be our only guide ; Joan of Arc was beautiful, elegant, approachable, modern ; To make her real, to bring her close ; If you want the current to flow, you have to strip the wires; title: Adaptation : Aspects of dramatic creation; title: Au hasard Balthazar, 1966 : A donkey in all its purity, its tranquility, its serenity, its sanctity ; The freest film I've made, the one to which I've given the most of myself ; To create life without copying it ; The beaten path; title: Mouchette, 1967 : More in the manner of portraitists ; Something else I like in Bernanos: his supernatural is constructed from the real ; Looks that kill; title: The sound track : The ear is far more creative than the eye; title: A gentle woman, 1969 : The confrontation between death and life ; I am here, the other is elsewhere, and the silence is terrible; title: Four nights of a dreamer, 1972 : Art is not a luxury, but a vital need ; Between blue and brown ; I look for surprises; title: Lancelot of the Lake, 1974 : To bring the past into the present ; It was Lancelot's very particular inner adventure that I found striking ; Torn between fidelity and felony ; The sound of iron ; The Grail; title: Notes on the cinematograph, 1975 : You strip your art naked; title: The devil, probably, 1977 : The adversary ; The gaps are where the poetry slips in; title: L'argent, 1983 : O money, visible god! ; The cinema is immense. We haven't done a thing.