"Robert Bresson", James Quandt

Edited by James Quandt (senior programmer at Toronto International Film Festival Cinematheque), Robert Bresson gathers academic essays, interviews and opinions from worldwide filmmakers (such as Scorsese or Michael Haneke) about one of the most acclaimed and influential film directors in history. The adaptation of Journal d'un curé de campagne discussed by André Bazin, the spirituality of his body of work seen by Susan Sontag, the impressive use of sound in Mouchette (1967) studied by Lindley Hanlon, an interview conducted by Godard that reveals much of Bresson’s aesthetic intentions, among many other relevant texts, all this makes this book the most important on the French filmmaker.

Excerpts:
"Bresson's aesthetic is, therefore, based essentially on the linguistic system called asyndeton, which consists of eliminating the links between terms or groups of terms that are closely related. More precisely, understatement, ellipsis, and metonymy are the figures used most often. (...) with Bresson, understatement is integral to all descriptions of love relations: one look in Pickpocket, a gesture in Lancelot du Lac, the furtive image of a part of naked body in Quatre nuits d'un rêveur express desire with a tottaly drastic economy of means.
As for the ellipses that purely and simply omit many elements of the thing or the idea to be transmitted, they completely cut out the return from the carnival in Pickpocket: Michel has gone there with Jeanne and Jacques, but he suddenly leaves them. Next shot: he is home, his clothing soiled, and blood on his hands, commenting via voice-over: "I had run, I had fallen." (...)
Finnaly, Bresson excels in metonymy, often providing one element instead of another whose meaning he wishes to convey (...). In the final scene of L'Argent, the lamp that falls and breaks represents the death of the old woman. Then the axe is thrown in the water. It as the instrument of the murderer, and the blood that stains it is the metonymic figure of the murder (...)." René Prédal, Robert Bresson: L'Aventure intérieure

"Godard: And if you could replace all the images by sounds? I mean... I am thinking of a kind of inversion of the functions of the image and of the sound. One could have the images, of course, but it would be the sound that would be the significant element.
Bresson: As to that, it is true that the ear is much more creative than the eye. The eye is lazy; the ear, on the contraty, invents. (...) The whistle of a locomotive, for example, can evoke, imprint in you the vision of an entire railroad sation, sometimes of a specific station that you know, sometimes of the atmosphere of a station, or of a railroad track, with a train stopped. (...) What is good, too, with sound is that it leaves the spectator free. And it is towards that that we should tend - to leave the spectator as free as possible." The Question: Interview by Jean-Luc Godard and Michel Delahaye

"Here is what I thought, walking home from Une femme douce. Une femme douce is a film about diagonals. Diagonal angles, diagonal glances. About eyes that never really meet. A film without a single frontal shot. A film about three-quarter spaces. About the sound of closing doors. About the sound of footsteps. About the sound of things. About the sound of water. About shy glances. About unfinished glances. About the sound of glass. About death in our midst. About light falling on faces. About lights in the dark, falling on faces. About blood on the forehead. About unfinished playing records. About a white crêpe blouse. About blue. About flowers picked and never taken home. About the roaring of cars. About the roaring of animals. About the roaring of motorcycles. About green. About how life and death intercut with each other. About hands giving and taking. About hands. About bourgeois pride. About pride. About lights on the door. About lights behind the door. About doors opening and closing. About bourgeois jealousy. About jealousy. About lamps turned out. About brown and yellow. About yellow. About indirect glances. About glances. About one peaceful glance (in the gallery, Schaeffer?). About unfinished records. About doors opening and closing. About doors opening very gently. About a half-opened door. About people standing behind glass doors and looking in. About fool's hope. About hopes. About a window which doesn't lead into life. About a red car seat. About a red shop window. About standing behind a door, looking in. About a green bed and green curtains. About a happy smile in the mirror, at oneself. About eyes which do not look even when asked. About the sound of metal. About sleep. About two diagonal lives." Jonas Mekas, On Bresson and Une femme douce

Link to the complete book in PDF:

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