Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983

Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983

Robert Bresson, the director of such cinematic master-pieces asÂ Pickpocket,Â A Man EscapedÂ Mouchette, andÂ Lâ€™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 â€œadvancesâ€ 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-developingâ€”in his viewâ€”art of film.Â Bresson on BressonÂ 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 Bressonâ€™s one book, the great aphoristic treatiseÂ 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 mantrasÂ as â€œSound...invented silence in cinema,â€ â€œItâ€™s the film that...gives life to the charactersâ€”not the characters that give life to the film,â€ and (echoing the Bible) â€œEvery idle word shall be counted.â€ Bressonâ€™s integrity and originality earned him the admiration of younger directors from Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette to Olivier Assayas. And though Bressonâ€™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: â€œItâ€™s always ready to feel before it understands. And thatâ€™s how it should be.
Country USA
Manufacturer New York Review Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2016-11-15
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	New York Review Books
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2016-11-15
Format	Kindle eBook

Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983

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