French film director (1901-1999)
What is beautiful in a film, what I look for, in essence, is a journey toward the unknown. The audience has to sense that I'm heading toward the unknown, that I don't know in advance what will happen.
ROBERT BRESSON
Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983
My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
Be the first to see what you see as you see it.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
Build your film on white, on silence and on stillness.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
A film is born in my head. I try to make it, but I never succeed. What I want to do is impossible. It's beyond my capacity.
ROBERT BRESSON
interview with Dominique Rabourdin, 1974
A film is not a story told with pictures, it's a succession of experiences.
ROBERT BRESSON
interview with Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinéma, 1957
Provoke the unexpected. Expect it.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
Authentic expression is something you can't invent. When you capture it, it's worthy of admiration.
ROBERT BRESSON
Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983
In cinema, words are a virus.
ROBERT BRESSON
interview with Michel Ciment, 1970
In the nude, all that is not beautiful is obscene.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
Prefer what intuition whispers in your ear to what you have done and redone ten times in your head.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
It's marvelous to discover someone little by little as you move through a film, instead of knowing in advance what that person will be.
ROBERT BRESSON
Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983
The greater the success, the closer it verges on failure.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
Ideas gathered from reading will always be bookish ideas. Go to the persons and objects directly. Have a painter's eye.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
Cinema, like music, should wash away the dust of everyday life.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on Cinematography
When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best--that is inspiration.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
Hide the ideas, but so that people find them. The most important will be the most hidden.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
Bring together things that have not yet been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer
The greatest films are those that never end.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on Cinematography
Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.
ROBERT BRESSON
Notes on the Cinematographer