Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983

Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983 PDF Author: Robert Bresson
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 168137045X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Robert Bresson, the director of such cinematic master-pieces 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 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-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 sound track, 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.

Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983

Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983 PDF Author: Robert Bresson
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 168137045X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Robert Bresson, the director of such cinematic master-pieces 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 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-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 sound track, 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.

Notes on the Cinematographer

Notes on the Cinematographer PDF Author: Robert Bresson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781557133656
Category : Cine
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The only published writing by the great French flimmaker, Robert Bresson.

Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson PDF Author: Joseph Cunneen
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780826416056
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Although Robert Bresson is widely regarded by movie critics and students of the cinema as one of the greatest directors of the twentieth century, his films are largely unknown and are rarely shown in the English-speaking world. Nonetheless, Susan Sontag has called Bresson "the master of the reflective mode in film."Martin Scorsese suggested that a young filmmaker should ask: "Is it as tough as Bresson?... Is Ýmeaning ̈ as ruthlessly pared down, as direct, as unflinching in its gaze at aspects of life I might feel more comfortable ignoring?" Questions that every reader of this book and every viewer of Bresson's films will also ask.Joseph Cunneen's book, now in paperback, introduces Bresson's movies to a broader audience, assesses thirteen of his most significant films in the context of detailed plot summaries, vivid descriptions of characters and settings, and perceptive, jargon-free insights into the director's execution, intention, and technique. Each of these films in its own way illustrates what Joseph Cunneen calls Bresson's "spiritual style." Though not necessarily focused on the explicitly religious, they illustrate two complementary principles: on the negative side, the rejection of what the director called "photographed theater" with its artificiality and dependence on celebrity performers. On the more positive side, as Bresson himself expressed it, the conviction that, "The supernatural is only the real rendered more precise; real things seen close up."

Neither God Nor Master

Neither God Nor Master PDF Author: Brian Price
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816654611
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Based on the author's doctoral dissertation--New York University.

The Invention of Robert Bresson

The Invention of Robert Bresson PDF Author: Colin Burnett
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025302501X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Challenging the prevailing notion among cinephiles that the auteur is an isolated genius interested primarily in individualism, Colin Burnett positions Robert Bresson as one whose life's work confronts the cultural forces that helped shape it. Regarded as one of film history's most elusive figures, Bresson (1901–1999) carried himself as an auteur long before cultural magazines, like the famed Cahiers du cinéma, advanced the term to describe such directors as Jacques Tati, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jean-Luc Godard. In this groundbreaking study, Burnett combines biography with cultural history to uncover the roots of the auteur in the alternative cultural marketplace of midcentury France.

Transcendental Style in Film

Transcendental Style in Film PDF Author: Paul Schrader
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520969146
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
With a new introduction, acclaimed director and screenwriter Paul Schrader revisits and updates his contemplation of slow cinema over the past fifty years. Unlike the style of psychological realism, which dominates film, the transcendental style expresses a spiritual state by means of austere camerawork, acting devoid of self-consciousness, and editing that avoids editorial comment. This seminal text analyzes the film style of three great directors—Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Carl Dreyer—and posits a common dramatic language used by these artists from divergent cultures. The new edition updates Schrader’s theoretical framework and extends his theory to the works of Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia), Béla Tarr (Hungary), Theo Angelopoulos (Greece), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey), among others. This key work by one of our most searching directors and writers is widely cited and used in film and art classes. With evocative prose and nimble associations, Schrader consistently urges readers and viewers alike to keep exploring the world of the art film.

Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson PDF Author: Keith Reader
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526141760
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the work of Robert Bresson, one of the most respected and acclaimed directors in the history of cinema.. The first monograph on his work to appear in English for many years dealing not only with his thirteen feature-length films but also his little-seen early short Affaires publiques and his short treatise Notes on cinematography.. The films are considered in chronological order, using a perspective that draws variously on spectator theory, Catholic mysticism, gender theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis.. The major critical responses to his work, from the adulatory to the dismissive, are summarized and analyzed.. The work includes a full filmography and a critical bibliography.

The Face of Asia

The Face of Asia PDF Author: Henri Cartier-Bresson
Publisher: Penguin Putnam
ISBN:
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description


Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson PDF Author: James Quandt
Publisher: Toronto International Film Festival
ISBN: 9780968296950
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 784

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Book Description
Robert Bresson, published in 1998, remains one of the most acclaimed and thorough examinations of the French director’s vision and style. Robert Bresson (Revised) reproduces essential contributions from the original edition, including essays by Susan Sontag, André Bazin, P. Adams Sitney, and Kristin Thompson, and features new or original material by David Bordwell, Mark Rappaport, Shigehiko Hasumi, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Serge Daney, Jean-Michel Frodon, Colin Burnett, Richard Suchenski, and filmmakers Jean-Pierre Gorin and the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc. With more than thirty key articles by leading critics and scholars, interviews, commentaries by important contemporary filmmakers, and an illuminating symposium on the director’s current stature, Robert Bresson (Revised) is an invaluable volume for anyone seeking to understand the director’s austere perfectionism and the beauty of his singular body of work. Published by the Toronto International Film Festival and distributed in Canada by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Distributed outside Canada by Indiana University Press.

The Bond of the Furthest Apart

The Bond of the Furthest Apart PDF Author: Sharon Cameron
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022641406X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
In the French filmmaker Robert Bresson’s cinematography, the linkage of fragmented, dissimilar images challenges our assumption that we know either what things are in themselves or the infinite ways in which they are entangled. The “bond” of Sharon Cameron’s title refers to the astonishing connections found both within Bresson’s films and across literary works by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Kafka, whose visionary rethinkings of experience are akin to Bresson’s in their resistance to all forms of abstraction and classification that segregate aspects of reality. Whether exploring Bresson’s efforts to reassess the limits of human reason and will, Dostoevsky’s subversions of Christian conventions, Tolstoy’s incompatible beliefs about death, or Kafka’s focus on creatures neither human nor animal, Cameron illuminates how the repeated juxtaposition of disparate, even antithetical, phenomena carves out new approaches to defining the essence of being, one where the very nature of fixed categories is brought into question. An innovative look at a classic French auteur and three giants of European literature, The Bond of the Furthest Apart will interest scholars of literature, film, ethics, aesthetics, and anyone drawn to an experimental venture in critical thought.