The Films of Robert Bresson

I butter both halves, personally.

The Donkey is overrated. I also rewatched Mouchette recently, and was a bit disappointed, remembered it better. I think his fifties films are the best, of course, but after that I prefer his 70's films like Four Nights of the Dreamer and The Devil, Probably. But they're advanced work, they definitely only work if you accept the style completely. Lancelot is a bridge too far, even for me.

Lancelot and Country Priest are my two favourites. I wouldn't say The Donkey is overrated but it's the closest to that bridge too far for me.

Lancelot is just too silly... I mean, the skeleton hanging from a tree with his armor still on... Every Bresson film has a minimalist feel, but Lancelot just feels too wrong to me. And it's not just because it's a historical film, Jeanne d'Arc is much better. Agreed on Country Priest, that one is fantastic, though.

Balthazar is the best - the scene where the donkey encounters the other caged animals in particular is a transcendent bit of filmmaking. I don't understand what this 'bridge too far' business means in this context, but Lancelot is great as well, even if the echoes with Monty Python and the Holy Grail (especially the way violence is treated in both of them) is a bit disconcerting.

The only Bresson I've seen that comes close to being a disappointment is A Gentle Woman (haven't watched Four Nights of a Dreamer).

“I began writing these notes 20 years ago. At that time, I still went to see films. Now I don’t go any more. I’ll tell you why: I don’t go, as I say in the book, because I can’t abide these actors who—in close-ups that reveal every detail—are there only to provide mimicry and theatrical gestures. And this feeling has grown even stronger—something has changed and I simply can’t do it, I can’t bear to see it or hear it.”

http://lithub.com/robert-bresson-im-not-a-director-i-am-a-filmmaker/

Another link which I saw shared on Facebook. There was some chat that Bresson was a bit of a big fibber sometimes, that he was in fact a frequent moviegoer, and that he continued to work with 'professional' actors throughout his career.

http://www.publicbooks.org/artmedia/the-intrusion-artist

notes on the cinematographer is good to dip into

A Man Escaped is such an amazing movie. It maintains the doomy tautness to the death and has really brilliant use of off camera events and truncated faceless nazis to create atmosphere of indifferent evil. Brilliant use of Mozart as well.

L'Argent creates the same effects with the so-called villains.

RB is Dennis Cooper's fave artist

http://denniscooperblog.com/happy-birthday-to-me-robert-bresson-day-restored/

A Facebook friend asked just the other day if there was any 'good' anti-Bresson criticism; as with Ozu, it seems thin on the ground.

Lancelot is just too silly... I mean, the skeleton hanging from a tree with his armor still on... Every Bresson film has a minimalist feel, but Lancelot just feels too wrong to me. And it's not just because it's a historical film, Jeanne d'Arc is much better. Agreed on Country Priest, that one is fantastic, though.

― Frederik B, Wednesday, 16 November 2016 23:25 (nine months ago)

Oh man the skeletons with their armour still is so grimly effective and surreal that John Boorman re-used it for Excalibur, where knights dying from the plague were hung on trees. Im halfway throguh Lancelot, but I just wanted to reguister how unique the tone is, how great it looks, how Brittanic Arthurian it feels in an uninhibited, unabandoned way.

I want to agree with yuo about Diary of a Country Priest though. I haven't watched Jean D'Arc yet.

L'Argent is one of his best, isn't it? I was heistant after Le diable probablement, but this is much more enjoyable.

Yep. I bought the Criterion last year, a rarity these days.

Saw this image on Facebook today - Tarkovsky, Welles, Bresson at Cannes in 1983

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjK9cD_2JHZAhVM6aQKHbOoCCAQjRx6BAgAEAY&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.com%2Fpin%2F790663278303356930%2F&psig=AOvVaw0x-SOHD5705p6ADOBKcCom&ust=1518020338204499

Reading Bresson's Notes on the Cinematograph, which is half great advice and half "wow, this guy is a massive asshole"

it's only 88 pages, all brief diary entries, aphorisms, self-reminders, and some veiled criticism. there's a lot of fantastic advice and insights, this is the one I've found most true so far:

What no human eye is capable of catching, no pencil, brush, pen of pinning down, your camera catches without knowing what it is, and pins it down with a machine's scrupulous indifference.

I give that book to a friend as a birthday present and then he proceeded to make a great show of adding his own marginal notes to every page and I was thinking “no, dude, don’t go there.”

Laugh at a bad reputation. Fear a good one that you could not sustain.

donkey film = perfect film

just saw A Man Escaped, it was pretty great!

Gonna assign Pickpocket to my students next week as an example of sound design and editing.

that's my next one

also just noticed that Diary of a Country Priest is on the criterion channel

saw it originally years ago, only remember the feelings of estrangement and loneliness

remember really liking Au Hasard Balthazar, looking forward to seeing that one again

loved Pickpocket as much as A Man Escaped

I Lancelot of the Lake a lot. It’s strange.

I like*

want to see Lancelot du Lac, not sure how at the moment, going to watch Diary of a Country Priest again and looking forward to Mouchette and L'Argent

yeah that one rules

The Devil, Probably escaped me

loved man escaped, thought pickpocket was trash soz

I assigned Pickpocket to my students this week, and they've written well about it.

don't know how my post could be improved on really

though i should have mentioned that the photography is just jawdroppingly gorgeous

just saw Mouchette, it is also great, with perfectly economical storytelling

didn't know Bresson beyond Balthazar before now

all three of the ones I've seen - A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, Mouchette - have a ruthless, closed-off quality

Good description

L'Argent is another incredible film. I really like his style as a director

A Man Escaped is so good. The truncated Gestapo guards in it is something that sticks in the memory, if I'm remembering it right you only see angled/restricted shots of them mostly and that adds to the feeling of de-humanised hopeless dread.

enjoyed reading Ebert's tribute article from when he died in 1999:

https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/robert-bresson-was-master-of-understatement

I like the quote: "If the eye is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear. One cannot be at the same time all eye and all ear."

I went to a screening of Pickpocket once and another random guy who was there followed me afterward trying to get me to admit it was pretentious bullshit.

Good one

don't think his films are pretentious but they are on the surface inscrutable

they seem very modest

My post was an xpost to Dan S, but I guess it works either way.

I like that only the most significant moments mattered to him: “He pared down every scene and shot, every movement and utterance of his performers, to the bare essentials. Each situation, image, and sound had to have a sharpness, a freshness, a novelty. That is why Bresson’s cinema is forever modern” (Adrian Martin, Criterion)