Robert Bresson (French: [ʁɔbɛʁ bʁɛsɔ̃]; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French filmmaker. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson made a notable contribution to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have led his works to be regarded as preeminent examples of minimalist film. Much of his work is known for being tragic in story and nature.
Bresson is among the most highly regarded filmmakers of all time. He has the highest number of films (seven) that made the 2012 Sight and Sound critics' poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. His works A Man Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1959) and Au hasard Balthazar (1966) were ranked among the top 100, and other films like Mouchette (1967) and L'Argent (1983) also received many votes. Jean-Luc Godard once wrote, "He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music."
Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth (née Clausels) and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and turned to painting after graduating. Three formative influences in his early life are evident in his films: Catholicism, art, and his experiences as a prisoner of war. Robert Bresson lived in Paris, France, in the Île Saint-Louis.
Initially a photographer, Bresson made his first short film, Les affaires publiques (Public Affairs) in 1934. He enlisted in the French Army on the onset of World War II and was captured by the Germans in 1940 and held as a prisoner of war for more than a year, an experience which informed A Man Escaped. In a career that spanned fifty years, Bresson made only 13 feature-length films. This reflects his painstaking approach to the filmmaking process and his non-commercial preoccupations. Difficulty finding funding for his projects was also a factor.
Bresson was sometimes accused of an uncompromising "ivory tower existence" outside of mainstream cinema. Later in his life, he said that he had stopped watching other filmmakers' movies in theaters, although he later praised the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981), saying that "It filled me with wonder ... if I could have seen it twice in a row and again the next day, I would have." Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, an admirer of Bresson's work, argued that the filmmaker was "a mysterious, aloof figure", and wrote that on the set of Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971), where Rosenbaum was an extra, the director "seemed more isolated from his crew than any other filmmaker I've seen at work; his widow and onetime assistant director, Mylene van der Mersch, often conveyed his instructions."
Bresson died on 18 December 1999, at his home in Droue-sur-Drouette, southwest of Paris. He was 98. He made his last film, L'Argent (Money), in 1983 and had been unwell for some time.
Bresson published a collection of aphorisms and reflections in 1975 titled Notes on the Cinematographer (French: Notes sur le cinématographe), in which he argues for a unique sense of the term "cinematography". For him, cinematography is the higher function of cinema. While a movie is in essence "only" filmed theatre, Bresson defines cinematography as an attempt to create a new language of moving images and sounds. His early artistic focus was to separate the language of cinema from that of the theater, which often relies heavily upon the actor's performance to drive the work. Film scholar Tony Pipolo writes that "Bresson opposed not just professional actors, but acting itself," preferring to think of his actors as 'models'. In Notes on the Cinematographer, Bresson succinctly defines the difference between the two:
HUMAN MODELS: movement from the exterior to the interior. [...]
ACTORS: movement from the interior to the exterior.
Bresson further elaborates on his disdain for acting by appropriating a remark Chateaubriand had made about 19th century poets and applying it to actors: "what they lack is not naturalness, but Nature." For Bresson, "to think it's more natural for a movement to be made or a phrase to be said like this than like that" is "absurd", and "nothing rings more false in film [...] than the overstudied sentiments" of theater.
With his 'model' technique, Bresson's actors were required to repeat multiple takes of each scene until all semblances of 'performance' were stripped away, leaving a stark effect that registers as both subtle and raw. This, as well as Bresson's restraint in musical scoring, would have a significant influence on minimalist cinema. In the academic journal CrossCurrents, Shmuel Ben-gad wrote:
There is a credibility in Bresson's models: They are like people we meet in life, more or less opaque creatures who speak, move, and gesture [...] Acting, on the other hand, no matter how naturalistic, actively deforms or invents by putting an overlay or filter over the person, presenting a simplification of a human being and not allowing the camera to capture the actor's human depths. Thus what Bresson sees as the essence of filmic art, the achievement of the creative transformation involved in all art through the interplay of images of real things, is destroyed by the artifice of acting. For Bresson, then, acting is, like mood music and expressive camera work, just one more way of deforming reality or inventing that has to be avoided.
Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Bresson's directorial style resulted in films "of great passion: Because the actors didn't act out the emotions, the audience could internalize them." In Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag wrote that "Some art aims directly at arousing the feelings; some art appeals to the feelings through the route of the intelligence ... art that detaches, that provokes reflection. In the film, the master of the reflective mode is Robert Bresson." Sontag said that "the form of Bresson's films is designed (like Ozu's) to discipline the emotions at the same time that it arouses them: to induce a certain tranquility in the spectator, a state of spiritual balance that is itself the subject of the film."
Bresson was a Catholic, although he disagreed with some points of Catholic theology, explaining that he was not sure of the resurrection of the body and "would rather be a Jansenist than Jesuit" due to his belief in predestination. In his later life he stopped attending church services due to his dissatisfaction with the Second Vatican Council's transition to the Mass of Paul VI, explaining that while he still felt a sense of transcendence sitting in a cathedral, Vatican II's changes to the Mass made it harder for him to feel the presence of God. Although several writers claim that Bresson described himself as a "Christian atheist", it is not known in what context he made that statement (if he ever did).
There is the feeling that God is everywhere, and the more I live, the more I see that in nature, in the country. When I see a tree, I see that God exists. I try to catch and to convey the idea that we have a soul and that the soul is in contact with God. That's the first thing I want to get in my films.
In a 1976 interview with Paul Schrader, Bresson said that he was concerned by what he saw as "the collapse of the Catholic religion" in France. He did not believe the post-Vatican II Church was capable of responding to this challenge. The Devil Probably incorporates some of his criticisms of the post-Vatican II Church. Bresson explained that his youthful protagonist "is looking for something on top of life, but he doesn't find it. He goes to Church to seek it, and he doesn't find it." In addition, an early scene in the film shows a young Catholic complaining that the post-Vatican II Church "run[s] after Protestants."
Some feel that Bresson's Catholic upbringing and belief system lie behind the thematic structures of most of his films. Recurring themes under this interpretation include salvation, redemption, defining and revealing the human soul, and metaphysical transcendence of a limiting and materialistic world. An example is A Man Escaped (1956), where a seemingly simple plot of a prisoner of war's escape can be read as a metaphor for the mysterious process of salvation. However, Bresson's films are also critiques of French society and the wider world, with each revealing the director's sympathetic, if unsentimental, view of society's victims. That the main characters of Bresson's most contemporary films, The Devil, Probably (1977) and L'Argent (1983), reach similarly unsettling conclusions about life indicates the director's feelings towards the culpability of modern society in the dissolution of individuals. Of an earlier protagonist, he said, "Mouchette offers evidence of misery and cruelty. She is found everywhere: wars, concentration camps, tortures, assassinations." Film historian Mark Cousins argues that "If Bergman and Fellini filmed life as if it was a theatre and a circus, respectively, Bresson's microcosm was that of a prison", describing Bresson's characters as "psychologically imprisoned".