Bressonian Quote #29 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"Flatten my images (as if ironing them), without attenuating them" 

- Robert Bresson

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

Bressonian Quote #28 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"Apply myself to insignificant (nonsignificant) images." 

- Robert Bresson

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

Bressonian Quote #27 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"If an image, looked at by itself, expresses something sharply, if it involves an interpretation, it will not be transformed on contact with other images.  The other images will have no power over it, and it will have no power over the other images.  Neither action, nor reaction.  It is definitive and unusable in the cinematographer's system. (A system does not regulate everything.  It is a bait for something.)" - Robert Bresson

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

Bressonian Quote #26 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"Cinematographer's film where the images, like the words in a dictionary, have no power and value except through their position and relation. " - Robert Bresson

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

Bressonian Quote #25 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"The truth of cinematography [filmmaking] cannot be the truth of theatre, not the truth of the novel, nor the truth of painting. (What the cinematographer [filmmaker] captures with his or her own resources cannot be what the theatre, the novel, painting capture with theirs). " - Robert Bresson

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

Bressonian Quote #24 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"An image must be transformed by contact with other images as is a color by contact with other colors.  A blue is not the same blue beside a green, a yellow, a red.  No art without transformation" - Robert Bresson 

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

Bressonian Quote #23 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

  

"Cinematographer's film where expression is obtained by relations of images and of sounds, and not by a mimicry done with gestures and intonations of voice (whether actors' or non-actors').  One that does not analyze or explain.  That recomposes."  - Robert Bresson

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

Bressonian Quote #22 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"No possible relations between an actor and a tree.  The two belong to diferent worlds. (A stage tree simulates a real tree.)"  - Robert Bresson

Bressonian Quote #21 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"To think it more natural for a movement to be made or a phrase said like this than like that is absurd, is meaningless in cinematography." - Robert Bresson 

From:  Notes sur le Cinematographe/Notes on the Cinematographer (1975)

Bressonian Quote #20 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"Nothing rings more false in a film than that natural tone of the theatre copying life and traced over studied sentiments."  - Robert Bresson

Bressonian Quote #19 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

'... sans manquer de naturel, manquent de nature.'
['... without lacking naturalness, they lack nature.']
- CHAUTEAUBRIAND


"Nature: what the dramatic art suppresses in favor of a naturalness that is learned and maintained by exercises."  - Robert Bresson

Bressonian Quote #18 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"The photographed theatre or CINEMA requires a metteur-en-scene or director to make some actors perform a play and to photograph these actors performing the play; afterwards he lines up the images. Bastard theatre lacking what makes theatre: material presence of living actors, direct action of the audience on the actors." 
 - Robert Bresson

Bressonian Quote #17 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"An actor (theatre actor) in cinematography might as well be in a foreign country. He/She does not speak its language." - Robert Bresson

Bressonian Quote #16 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"CINEMA films (theatrical) are historical documents whose place is in the archives: how a play was acted in 19. . by Mr X, Miss Y."

- Robert Bresson

Bressonian Quote #15 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"A film cannot be a stage show, because a stage show requires flesh-and-blood presence. But it can be, as photographed theatre or CINEMA is, the photographic reproduction of a stage show. The photographic reproduction of a stage show is comparable to the photographic reproduction of a painting or of a sculpture. But a photographic reproduction of Donatello's Saint John the Baptist or of Vermeer's Young Woman with Necklace has not the power, the value or the price of that sculpture or that painting. It does not create it. Does not create anything." - Robert Bresson

Bressonian Quote #14 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

- The next few Bressonian quotes posted will all address his rigorous and innovative concept of 'human models' as an alternative to the classic actor - which accounts for much of the unique, raw, minimalist performance style that has become a signature of Bresson's films.

"Human Models:

Movement from the exterior to the interior. (Actors: movement from the interior to the exterior.)"

"The thing that matters is not what they show me but what they hide from me and, above all, what they do not suspect is in them."

"Between them and me: telepathic exchanges, divination."

- Robert Bresson

Bressonian Quote #13 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"The terrible habit of theatre." - Robert Bresson

Bressonian Quote #12 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"Two types of film: those that employ the resources of the theatre (actors. direction, etc.) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create." - Robert Bresson

Bressonian Quote #11 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"(1925?) The TALKIE opens its doors to theatre which occupies the place and surrounds it with barbed wire." - Robert Bresson

Bresson's negative sentiments toward theatre will be clarified in upcoming Bressonian Quotes. His qualm was not with theatre per se, but with the detrimental marriage of theatre and film, and the artistic restrictions it imposes - particularly in defining commercial narrative expectations.

Bressonian Quote #10 - Notes from a Master Filmmaker

"No marriage of theatre and cinematography without both being exterminated." - Robert Bresson

Note: "Cinematography," to Bresson, was a term for filmmaking with a specific connotation of artistic and realist integrity.