"It's the internal that commands."
"Bresson is the French cinema as Dostoyevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is music," Godard said. But the works of Robert Bresson-thirteen exquisite gems in a career that spans five decades-are as rare as they are revered. So it is with great pleasure that we offer this long-awaited retrospective of his films, most of them presented in newly struck prints.
With his first feature-made after he had been a prisoner of war-Robert Bresson was recognized as an original and authentic voice in cinema. Over the years, this authenticity would rework itself in film after rigorous film, gaining him awe and more than a few imitators, but never a true heir. Even now, the power of Bresson's style-austere, yet deeply affecting; controlled, yet replete with compassion, almost unbearably so-remains one of cinema's pure mysteries.
"As far as I could," Bresson commented, "I have eliminated anything which might distract from the interior drama. For me, the cinema is an exploration within. Within the mind, the camera can grasp anything." Preferring to use untrained actors whose natural impassivity he harnesses to his own ends, the epiphany of Bresson's improvised technique is Pickpocket, which, in a watershed year in French cinema, 1959, was merely the most contemporary film ever made. Similarly, while Bresson frequently bases his films on literature-on Dostoyevsky, on Bernanos-he distills the original, paradoxically remaining true to both ecriture and image. "The images must exclude the idea of image," he wrote. The part speaks for the whole, and absence often signifies a larger presence.
The Catholic Bresson evinces an unsparing eye toward French society-in the countryside, in the city, in convent or prison-and unsparing compassion for its victims. But while other directors are concerned with sentiment, Bresson's concern is at once more real and more otherworldly: his subject is suffering and redemption. For his many admirers, his films attain the grace his characters seek.
The Bresson Project was organized by James Quandt of Cinematheque Ontario, Toronto, and has been made possible by the exceptional generosity, efforts, and support of many individuals and organizations, particularly Robert and Mylène Bresson; the Bureau du Cinéma, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Paris (Pierre Triapkine, Laurent Burin des Roziers, Janine Deunf); and le Service Culturel du Consulat Général de France à Toronto (Fabyène Mansencal) and San Francisco.
We also express our gratitude to: Alliance Française, Toronto; New Yorker Films (José Lopez); La Cinémathèque Française (Dominique Païni, Alain Marchand, Jacques Aumont); Canal + International (Michel Schmidt, Ron Halpern); Paramount Pictures, Paris; Gallimard (Prune Berge, Julien Laffon); Gian Vittorio Baldi; Lara Fitzgerald; Catherine Yolles; Dorina Furgiuele.
A Major New Publication
Central to the Cinematheque Ontario's Bresson Project is the publication of a major new volume on Bresson, edited by James Quandt. The first collection in English on the director in almost thirty years, it features essays on Bresson's work by no fewer than twenty-three major critics and scholars; interviews with Bresson by Paul Schrader, Jean-Luc Godard, and others; a section dedicated to exploring his influence in statements by two dozen filmmakers ranging from Jean Cocteau to Hal Hartley, Mani Kaul to Aki Kaurismäki; plus a filmography and selected bibliography. The book is sold in our Museum Store and PFA Box Office for $35.
