Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983 by Robert Bresson

Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983 by Robert Bresson

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 asPickpocket,A Man Escaped,Mouchette, andL'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 Bressoncollects 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 treatiseNotes 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."

Robert Bresson (1901-1999) was born in Bromont-Lamothe, France. He attended the Lyc�e Lakanal in Sceaux, and moved to Paris after graduation, hoping to become a painter. He directed a short comedy, Affaires publiques, in 1934, but his work was curtailed by the outbreak of World War II. He enlisted in the French army in 1939 and was captured in 1940, spending a year in a labor camp as a prisoner of war. After his release he returned to Paris and directed Angels of Sin (1943), his first full-length film, under the German occupation. Les dames du Bois de Boulogne followed in 1945, and in 1951 Diary of a Country Priest was met with widespread acclaim. His next film, A Man Escaped (1956), which follows the memoirs of Andr� Devigny, a French Resistance leader incarcerated during World War II, became a hit. He made eleven more films over the next three decades, including Mouchette (adapted from the Georges Bernanos novel of the same name, published as an NYRB Classic); 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. He died in Droue-sur-Drouette at the age of ninety-eight.

Robert Bresson's interviews, edited by Myl�ne Bresson, are collected in Bresson on Bresson, published by New York Review Books.

Jonathan Griffin (1906-1990) served as the director of BBC European Intelligence during World War II. Among the authors he has translated are Jean Giono, Fernando Pessoa, and Nikos Kazantzakis. A collection of Griffin's poetry, In Earthlight, was published in 1995.

J.M.G. Le Cl�zio was born in Nice in 1940. He has written more than forty books, including works of fiction and memoir as well as collections of essays and books for children. In 2008 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781681377803
ISBN 10	1681377802
Title	Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983
Author	Robert Bresson
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The New York Review of Books, Inc
Year published	2023-09-26
Number of pages	304
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.