Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983

by Bresson, Robert; Moschovakis, Anna; Bresson, Mylène; Mérigeau, Pascal

• ISBN13: 9781681377803
• ISBN10: 1681377802
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2023-08-22
• Publisher: New York Review Books

Summary

Now in paperback, a collection of interviews with a French cinematic titan—covering subjects such as adaptation, the effects of capitalism on art, and the importance of intuition—selected from a period of four decades.

Robert Bresson, the director of such cinematic masterpieces 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 CinemaScope (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 soundtrack, 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.”

Author Biography

Robert Bresson (1901–1999) directed over a dozen films over his lifetime, many of them regarded as masterpieces, including Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, Mouchette, Au hasard Balthazar, Pickpocket, Lancelot of the Lake, and L’Argent. Throughout his career Bresson eschewed the use of theatrical techniques and employed nonprofessional actors, whom he referred to as models. Raised in the Catholic faith, he worked on and off throughout his career on an adaptation of the book of Genesis, which never saw fruition. New York Review Books also publishes Bresson’s celebrated Notes on the Cinematograph.

Anna Moschovakis is a translator and editor and the author of several books, including, most recently, the poetry collection They and We Will Get into Trouble For This and the novels Eleanor: Or, the Rejection of the Possibility of Love and Participation.

Mylène Bresson is Robert Bresson’s widow and the manager of his estate.

Pascal Mérigeau is a journalist and film critic who has published numerous books, among them biographies of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Maurice Pialat, and Jean Renoir.