Robert Bresson (1901-1999) director of L'Argent, A Man Escaped, Diary of a Country Priest, Pickpocket, Une Femme Douce, Four Nights of a Dreamer, Au Hasard Balthazar, Lancelot of the Lake, The Devil Probably, Mouchette, etc.

C/NC?

I am not familiar w/ this person. I will read up, and check out a film. What's good?

i have only seen _pickpocket_, which is awesome

i've wanted to see _a.h.b._ and _country priest_ badly

but i missed the former when it came thru chicago, and i haven't gotten it up to rent them

anyway, pickpocket, not crap. i have to think bresson is probably totally not crap based on it.

Thanks, Tim.

And hey, this was the first Google hit... the site looks pretty together.

http://www.mastersofcinema.org/bresson/

See:

http://www.electrical.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4748

for my tuppence worth.

One of the greats w/out question.

A year or two ago the Pacific Film Archive showed, if not all his films, a huge amount of them. I did a full immersion at that time.

Great artist.

N/C

i'd say Pickpocket or A Man Escaped would be the best introduction to Bresson. many of his subsequent films may seem a little cold and unredemptive in comparison. (though truth be told the apparent fatalism of L'Argent appeals to a lot of people. it's based on Tolstoy's The Forged Coupon -- a good read -- which deals with the contagious nature of negativity and ill will. it's a singular moment in film history, and New Yorker's DVD actually does it justice!)

perhaps what i liek most about Bresson's films is that they always reward closer scutiny and repeat viewings and yet from the onset everything's right there on the surface. there are no "hidden meanings" (something i generally detest in art).

Bresson was so ahead of his time it's ridiculous. it's been said his influence in europe is so pervasive now that it's almost transparent, but he remains largely unknown in US. fortunately that's changing, slowly but surely.

Diary of a Country Priest rules. the Criterion DVD of it looks perfect. i like Balthazar, but it somehow lacks the graceful edits and rhythms that make films like Pickpocket and Une Femme Douce so visually arresting. (the best examples of what i'm talkign about here would be the robbery sequence at the train station in Pickpocket, and the trailer for L'Argent -- easily the best trailer i've ever seen for a film.) but i'm just nitpicking.

lastly, if you ever get really caught up in Bresson's art, i heartily recommend the book Robert Bresson, edited by James Quandt. it's got his interviews with Godard and Paul Schrader, plus a lot of great essays, and a section of tributes from other filmmakers that reads like a who's who of world cinema.

http://product.half.ebay.com/Robert-Bre ... 7QQtgZinfo

Eksvplot wrote:i'd say Pickpocket or A Man Escaped would be the best introduction to Bresson. many of his subsequent films may seem a little cold and unredemptive in comparison. (though truth be told the apparent fatalism of L'Argent appeals to a lot of people. it's based on Tolstoy's The Forged Coupon -- a good read -- which deals with the contagious nature of negativity and ill will. it's a singular moment in film history, and New Yorker's DVD actually does it justice!)

perhaps what i liek most about Bresson's films is that they always reward closer scutiny and repeat viewings and yet from the onset everything's right there on the surface. there are no "hidden meanings" (something i generally detest in art).

Bresson was so ahead of his time it's ridiculous. it's been said his influence in europe is so pervasive now that it's almost transparent, but he remains largely unknown in US. fortunately that's changing, slowly but surely.

Diary of a Country Priest rules. the Criterion DVD of it looks perfect. i like Balthazar, but it somehow lacks the graceful edits and rhythms that make films like Pickpocket and Une Femme Douce so visually arresting. (the best examples of what i'm talkign about here would be the robbery sequence at the train station in Pickpocket, and the trailer for L'Argent -- easily the best trailer i've ever seen for a film.) but i'm just nitpicking.

lastly, if you ever get really caught up in Bresson's art, i heartily recommend the book Robert Bresson, edited by James Quandt. it's got his interviews with Godard and Paul Schrader, plus a lot of great essays, and a section of tributes from other filmmakers that reads like a who's who of world cinema.

http://product.half.ebay.com/Robert-Bre ... 7QQtgZinfo

Balthazar is his masterpiece; it's the purest distillation of what he was all about. It's the film to make all others seem redundant.

I don't know about his influence...I don't see much of him in European cinema, or anywhere else. He's one of those guys that remains distinct from every other fimmaker (his closest peers being Tarkovsky and Ozu, probably).

While we're on it, I would also urge newcomers to his stuff to see Lancelot Du Lac. You will love it or hate it, but it's a good in-at-the-deep-end one, and isn't too cold, as some of Bresson's work can seem (as my friend here pointed out).

My already massive respect for Bresson deepened when I saw an interview with him. Because of the nature of his films, I expected some monotone, dour, stoical figure. Instead - to my great surprise - he was a chatty, excitable, and very animated man! It really struck me then that his chosen cinematic style (ascetic, austere, flat) really was a choice, and did not necessarily come naturally to him.

What a great man.

Thanks for the book recommendation, I shall get it. I've already got Air Bud 2, though (that's the basketball one, right?).

i would definitely say Balthazar is the closest Bresson came to making an epic. it has a very wide scope. as Godard said it's all the world in two hours. but i prefer his even-more distilled films (A Man Escaped, Four Nights of a Dreamer, Une Femme Douce, Diary of a Country Priest).

and while it's true that Bresson is inimitable, i catch references to him all the time, in all sorts of movies (vagabond, stranger than paradise, cyclo, the holy girl, the piano teacher, certain stuff by catherine breillat, taxi driver, air bud 2... to name a few). and i'm pretty sure the "just a scratch" skit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail was inspired by the hilariously bloody sword fights in Lacelot (which came out the year prior).

anyway, he's definitely one of the most important artists of the Twentieth Century. no doubt about it. much like Cassavetes, just about anyone who's makign good narrative films right now is aware of him.

that book is the fucking bomb. you'll love it. whereas Notes on the Cinematographer is most useful to actual filmmakers, the Cinemateque Ontario compedium is very diverse. it's made my "top five film books of all time" list.

cheers.

hell yea!!!

a pur genius,
watching a bresson's movie is to be puch in compassion and other humain feeling that is so amazing, one of the most important filmaker never existed,"mouchette", "les dames du bois de boulogne",'au hazard baltazard"....etc..

bresson's rules