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 models' actions (not actors, I 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 strangers’ pockets or 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 is a remarkable work.
“Bresson on Bresson: Interviews 1943-1983, chapter-by-chapter, cover each of his 13 films. This is unlike the Hitchcock/Truffaut book, where each film is exposed by the second. No, this is a series of interviews with Bresson and his working methods. 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 different from seeing a photograph of that painting - and therefore, the acting profession comes from the theater - and that is not the correct procedure for the cinema. In his opinion, most films reflect 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 concerning 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 from 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 consistently. 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 interested in being a filmmaker or even an artist - must read and learn. An excellent companion piece to his book of writings “Notes on the Cinematograph.”
Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983 (New York Review of Books: NYRB)
Each one of his 13 films is a masterpiece in my view, so that you have to distinguish between his greater and lesser masterpieces. I took a poet friend to see what turned out to be Bresson's last picture, L'argent. She was a big admirer of Paul Schrader's movies (when Schrader was to Bresson what Brian de Palma was to Hitchcock) and had never seen a Bresson movie. Afterward she said it was like having only read imitation Ginsberg poems and then reading the real Ginsberg.
Superfine artist.