The Films of Robert Bresson: A

Casebook

Edited by
Bert Cardullo

ALL CORRESPONDENCE:
Bert Cardullo
Faculty of Communication
Department of Media and Communication
Izmir University of Economics
35330 Balova
Izmir, TURKEY
011-90-538-591-4353 (cell); 011-232-488-8138 (desk phone)
011-232-279-2626 (fax)
robertcardullo@yahoo.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Films of Robert Bresson: A Casebook, edited by Bert
Cardullo
Introduction: Aesthetic Asceticism: The Films of Robert Bresson, by Bert Cardullo.
1. Essay: Robert Bresson, by Kent Jones. Film Comment, May/June 1999.
2. Bresson on Location: Interview with Jean Douchet. Sequence, 13 (1951), pp. 68.
3. Essay: Diary of a Country Priest and the Stylistics of Robert Bresson, by Andr
Bazin, in What Is Cinema?, Vol. 1 (1967).
4. Interview with Robert Bresson, by Ian Cameron. Movie, Feb. 1963, pp. 28-29.
5. Essay: Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson, by Susan Sontag. Seventh Art
(Summer 1964).
6. The Question: Interview with Robert Bresson, by Jean-Luc Godard and Michel
Delahaye. Cahiers du cinma in English, #8 (Feb. 1967), pp. 5-27.
7. Essay: On Au hasard, Balthazar, by James Quandt.
8. Encountering Robert Bresson. In Encountering Directors, by Charles
Thomas Samuels (1972).
9. Essay: Bressons Gentleness, by Charles Thomas Samuels. In Mastering the Film
and Other Essays (1977).
10. Dostoyevsky Adapted: An Interview with Robert Bresson, by Carlos Clarens. Sight
and Sound, #40-41 (Winter 1971-1972), p. 4.
11. Essay: On Four Nights of a Dreamer, by Carlos Clarens, Sight and Sound, #4041 (Winter 1971-1972), p. 3.
12. Robert Bresson in Conversation with Ronald Hayman. The Transatlantic
Review, #46-47 (Summer 1973), pp. 16-23.
13. Essay: Bresson, by Paul Schrader. In Transcendental Style in Film (1972).
14. Robert Bresson, Possibly: Interview with Paul Schrader. Film Comment, 13, #5
(Sept.-Oct. 1977), pp. 26-30.
15. Essay: Consuming Passion: Bresson and The Devil, Probably, by Richard Hell.
Mojo Collection magazine (U.K.), 2001.
16. The Poetry of Paucity, the Art of Elision: Robert Bresson in Conversation, by Bert
Cardullo (June 1983). Part I.
17. Essay: On A Man Escaped, by Franois Truffaut.
18. Bresson et Lumire, by David Thomson. Time Out (London), Sept. 2, 1987.
19. Essay: The Earrings of Robert Bresson, by David Thomson.
20. Spirituality as Style: Robert Bresson in Conversation, by Bert Cardullo (June
1983). Part II.
21. Essay: Dostoyevskyan Surge, Bressonian Spirit: LArgent, Une Femme douce, and
the Cinematic World of Robert Bresson, by Bert Cardullo.
Chronology of Bressons Life
Filmography: The Films of Robert Bresson
Bibliography
Index

INTRODUCTION: Aesthetic Asceticism: The Films of Robert

Bresson, by Bert Cardullo.

There arent many art forms where commercial success is

relentlessly equated with aesthetic worth. In painting, the idea that
Walter Keane is a greater artist than Robert Rauschenberg because many
a 1960s tract house had a Walter Keane painting in it would be
laughingly dismissed. And anyone claiming that Rod McKuens
poetry outranks the work of Ezra Pound because it sold more might
invite censure, even arrest. Among the major arts, its only in film that
popular directorsSteven Spielberg and George Lucas spring
immediately to mindmerit innumerable awards, miles of media
exposure, and armies of imitators trying to re-create both their artistic
standing and their financial success. This distressing cultural trend has
resulted in some serious cinematic casualties, whose work is largely
unseen because there is no sense of critical proportion in the film world,
no reasonable critical standard. And the most notable victim in this
instance may be the French director Robert Bresson.

Its my view, however, that Robert Bresson was one of the great
film artists of the twentieth century, one of the great artists of that
century. The viewer who surrenders himself or herself to Bressons
work is not likely to remain unaffected by the extreme intensity of the
emotions conveyed, the formal rigor of the style, the utter seriousness of
the subjects, or the deep commitment of the filmmaker to his own artistic
conceptions. Still, Bresson remains little known or appreciated beyond
the most discerning of filmgoers. While the retrospective of his work
that traveled throughout the United States and elsewhere in 1998
organized by the redoubtable James Quandt, senior programmer of the
Cinmathque Ontariohelped to change that situation, many viewers
still resist Bresson for the very qualities that define his uniqueness.
Focusing less on what he offers than on what he withholds, even foreignfilm aficionados preferred (and prefer) his flashier contemporaries
Fellini, Antonioni, Bergmanwho embodied their existential angst in
the emotive performances of star personalities (by European standards,
anyway). Bresson not only renounced the star, he banished professional
actors altogether from his increasingly detheatricalized, spartanly
cinematic universe.

For many, a Bresson film is a punishing experience thanks to the

alleged severity of his style and the bleakness of his narratives. Yet
the frugality of that stylethe exactness of its framing and montage, the
elimination of excesshas undeniably influenced a slew of
contemporary European filmmakers, including Chantal Akerman, Olivier
Assayas, Laurent Cantet, Alain Cavalier, Claire Denis, Jacques Doillon,
Bruno Dumont, Eugene Green, Michael Haneke, Benot Jacquot, JeanPierre and Luc Dardenne, and Maurice Pialat, although none of these
artists reject actors and expressive performances. Still, the adjective
Bressonian is misused and overused; and, in the end, this filmmaker is
inimitable because his style is inseparable from a stern moral vision.
Bresson, as uncompromising as his filmic style, offered it straight up: no
ice and no water on the side, which is to say without humor, stars, or
entertainment in any conventional sense.
Bresson, then, is a true anomaly even by the exacting standards of
intransigent auteurs like Carl Dreyer or Josef von Sternberg. He
supposedly was born on September 25, 1907, but, following his death on
December 18, 1999, obituaries in the press reported that he was born, in
fact, on that day six years earlier, in 1901. If this is indeed the case, then

Bresson lived for all but twenty-one months or so of the twentieth

century. His filmmaking career itself spanned forty years, from 1943 to
1983, during which time he directed thirteen films. (Bresson disowned
his first film, a medium-length comedy with nods to Ren Clair and Jean
Vigo, called Les Affaires publiques [Public Affairs, 1934], which was
rediscovered in the late 1980s after long being thought lost.) That he
deserves the title of the most thoroughly twentieth-century artist, simply
by virtue of his birth and death dates if not his filmic production, will
strike some as ironic at first glance. A deeply devout manone who
paradoxically described himself as a Christian atheistBresson, in his
attempt in a relatively timeless manner to address good and evil,
redemption, the power of love and self-sacrifice, and other such subjects,
may seem to us, and perhaps was, something of a retrogression.
Analysis, however, might show that he establishes his modernity as an
artist precisely by retrogressing in the manner, and under the particular
historical circumstances, that he did.
The details of Bressons personal life are not well-documented, for
he was not given to self-promotion or self-revelation. According to the
New York Times obituary, he challenged a potential interviewer in 1983

by asking, Have you seen my film? When the journalist replied that he
had, Bresson continued, Then you know as much as I do. What do we
have to talk about? Nonetheless, we know some of the details of Robert
Bressons biography. He was born in the small town of BromontLamothe in central France, and first turned to painting after graduating
from a Parisian secondary school, where he excelled in Greek, Latin, and
philosophy. Marrying at age nineteen (and later remarrying after the
death of his first wife), Bresson began in film as a script consultant and
collaborated on several scenarios (Ctait un musicien, Jumeaux de
Brighton, Air pur) before the start of World War II. Soon after joining
the French army, he was captured by the Germans and imprisoned for
almost two years (1940-1941)which turned out to be a signal event in
his artistic, as well as his personal, life.
This formative influence and two others undoubtedly mark
Bressons films: in addition to Bressons experiences as a prisoner of
war, his Catholicismwhich took the form of the predestinarian French
strain known as Jansenismand his early years as a painter. These
influences manifest themselves respectively in the recurrent theme of
free will-versus-determinism, in the extreme, austere precision with

which Bresson composes each shot, and in the frequent use of the prison
motif. Two films of his are located almost entirely inside prisons: Un
Condamn mort sest chapp (A Man Escaped, 1956) and Le Procs
de Jeanne dArc (The Trial of Joan of Arc, 1962); and Bresson otherwise
often used prison as a metaphor for spiritual imprisonment as well as
release. A classic case of the latter is Pickpocket (1959), where Michel
finds redemption from his criminal career only by intentionally being
caught, as he tells Jeanne from his prison cell in the famous final scene,
What a strange road I had to take to find you.
Three of Bressons films take place in a wholly Catholic context:
Les Anges du pch (Angels of the Streets, 1943), a metaphysical thriller
set in a convent; Journal dun cur de campagne (Diary of a Country
Priest, 1951), a rare instance of a great novel (by Georges Bernanos)
being turned into an even greater film; and Le Procs de Jeanne dArc.
His Jansenism manifests itself in the way the leading characters are acted
upon and simply surrender themselves to their fate. In Au hasard,
Balthazar (By Chance, Balthazar, 1966), for example, both the donkey
Balthazar and his on-and-off owner Marie passively accept the illtreatment they both experience, as opposed to the evil Grard, who

initiates much of what causes others to suffer. Indeed, Bresson seemed

to become increasingly pessimistic about human nature during his career:
his penultimate two films even suggest that he had more concern for
animals and the environment than for people, while the characters in his
astonishing swansong LArgent (Money, 1983) are simply the victims of
a chain of circumstances undergirded by the maxim that the love of
money is the root of all evil.
One effect of the Jansenist influence is Bressons total mistrust of
psychological motives for a characters actions. The conventional
narrative filmactually, the conventional story of any kindinsists that
people have to have reasons for what they do. A motiveless murder in a
detective story would be unacceptable, for instance. In Bresson,
however, people act for no obvious reason, behave out of character,
and in general simply follow the destiny that has been mapped out for
them. Often a character will state an intention, and in the very next scene
do the opposite. Characters who appear to be out-and-out rogues will
unaccountably do something good, an example being the sacked camerashop assistant in LArgent, who gives his ill-gotten gains to charity. At
the same time, Bresson did not predetermine how his films would finally

10

emerge; instead, it was a process of discovery for him to see what would
finally be revealed, or experienced, by his non-professional actors (or
models, as he designated them) after he had trained them for their
parts.
Bressons second influence, his early experience as a painter, is
manifested in the austerity of his compositions. A painter has to decide
what to put in, a filmmaker what to leave out. And with Bresson nothing
unnecessary is shown; indeed, he goes further, often leaving the viewer
to infer what is happening outside the frame. Thus we often see shots of
hands, doorknobs, even parts of things in instances where any other
filmmaker would show the whole. A Bresson film consequently requires
unbroken concentration on the viewers part, and I myself have
occasionally felt literally breathless after watching one because of the
concentration required. It is in fact on account of their economy that
many of Bressons films are exceptionally fast-moving in their narrative.
(One exception is the almost contemplative Quatre nuits dun rveur
[Four Nights of a Dreamer, 1971], where little actually happens in this
story of unrequited love, whose central character, interestingly, is a
painter.) If LArgent, for one, were remade as a Hollywood thriller, it

11

would have at least double the running time and would dwell at length on
the brutal violence in the last section, which is merely elliptically hinted
at by Bresson. The running time of LArgent is eighty-five minutes, and
the running time of each of Bressons other films similarly averages
under ninety minutes, yet the viewer can be surprised at the amount that
happens in that time.
Un Condamn mort sest chapp and Pickpocket, for example,
may be first-person narratives of impeccable integrity, yet neither film
wastes time establishing character in a conventionalor convenient
novelistic way. Instead, each relies on economical actions to reveal the
psychology of its protagonist. Thus as we watch Fontaine, condemned
prisoner of the Vichy government, convert the objects of his cell into the
means of escape, we discern the qualities of his character
determination, discipline, patience, perseverance, and resourcefulness.
We are told at the beginning of Pickpocket, by contrast, that Michel has
embarked upon an adventure to which he is not suited, but the internal
conflict this implies is expressed less in complex dialogue or voice-over
narration than in the increasingly detached, de-dramatized manner in
which his thefts are filmed. In both pictures, then, it is the physical

12

action, meticulously composed and edited, that consumes most of the

screen time, in the process giving the audience adventures in audiovisual perception as acutely tuned as those of the protagonists.
Having achieved in Pickpocket and Un Condamn mort sest
chapp what he believed was a truly cinematographic (more on this
term soon) art, Bresson turned to Le Procs de Jeanne dArc, at sixtyfive minutes his shortest work, in which the dominating principle
ironically for this artistis language. Still inadequately appreciated, it is
perhaps the most extraordinary rationale for his style, perfectly suited to
the sober business of presenting the texts of Joans two trialsthe one
that condemned her and the one that rehabilitated her years after her
deathwithout drama, excess, or theatrical flair. Next to Carl Theodor
Dreyers eloquent, expressionist meditation on the same subject (La
Passion de Jeanne dArc, 1928), Bressons film, an exercise in control
and reserve, seems as committed to a terse, documentary-like approach
to history as Pontecorvos The Battle of Algiers (1966).
Along with Bressons painterly eye for what should and should not
be shown, he made exquisite use of sound: off-screen sound itself is of

13

key importance. The raking of leaves during the intense confrontation

between the priest and the countess in Journal dun cur de campagne;
the scraping of the guards keys along the metal railings and the far-off
sound of trains in Un Condamn mort sest chapp; the whinnying of
horses in Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake, 1974)all these sounds
serve to heighten the sense that a time of crisis has arrived for the central
characters. Voice-over narration is also used, in combination with
dialoguein Journal dun cur de campagne and Un Condamn mort
sest chapp as well as Pickpocketto underline the impression of an
interior world constantly impinged on, and being impinged upon, by
reality. Music, for its part, is used increasingly sparingly as Bressons
career progresses: a specially composed score can be heard in the early
films, but in Un Condamn mort sest chapp there are only
occasional snatches of Mozart, in Pickpocket of Lully, in Au hasard,
Balthazar of Schubert; and in late Bresson, non-diegetic music is
dispensed with altogether.
A key ingredient of Bressons methodindeed, of his ellipticism
is his view of actors, his models. From Journal dun cur de
campagne on he used only non-professionals, and was even reported to

14

be upset when two of his actors (Anne Wiazemsky from Au hasard,

Balthazar and Dominique Sanda from Une Femme douce [A Gentle
Creature, 1969]) went on to have professional acting careers. Only one
actor ever appeared in two of his films: Jean-Claude Guilbert in Au
hasard, Balthazar and Mouchette (1967). Actors were chosen by
Bresson not for their ability but for their appearance, often for an intense
facial asceticism, like Claude Laydu as the cur dAmbricourt or Martin
Lasalle as Michel the pickpocket. He then trained them to speak with a
fast, monotonic delivery and to remove all traces of theatricality.
It is for this reason that Bresson rejected the word cinema, which
he regarded as merely filmed theater, and instead used the word
cinematography (not to be confused with the art of camerawork). As
an integral part of this cinematography, all the movements of the actors
were strictly controlled by the director: when they walked they had to
take a precise number of steps; and eye movements became extremely
importantthe lowering of the eyes toward the ground almost becoming
a Bresson trademark. The result of this approach is that the viewer
connects not with a characters surface appearance but with the core of
his being, his soul. Bressons first two featuresLes Anges du pch

15

and Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Ladies of the Park, 1945)do use
professionals, even stars (in addition to featuring literary scripts, a
certain artificiality in the lighting, and even a baroque quality to some
dramatic sequences), and though they are both excellent films that
anticipate the directors later thematic concerns, each would probably
have been even more satisfying if models had been used in the major
roles.
As for their scripts, all of Bressons features after Les Anges du
pch have literary antecedents of one form or another, albeit updated.
Two are from Dostoyevsky (Une Femme douce and Quatre nuits dun
rveur), two from Bernanos (Mouchette in addition to Journal dun cur
de campagne), one from Tolstoy (LArgent), one from Diderot (Les
Dames du Bois de Boulogne), while Un Condamn mort sest chapp
and Le Procs de Jeanne dArc are based on written accounts of true
events. In addition, Pickpocket is clearly influenced by Dostoyevskys
Crime and Punishment and Au hasard, Balthazar has a premise similar
to the same authors The Idiot. Lancelot du Lac, for its part, is derived
from Sir Thomas Malorys Arthurian legends, while Le Diable
probablement (The Devil, Probably, 1977) was inspired by a newspaper

16

report, as stated at the start of the film. Even a longstanding, unrealized

film project of Bressons was to come from a literary sourcein this
case, the Book of Genesis (Gense)but Bresson reportedly said that,
unlike his human models, animals could not be trained to do as they
were told!
Bressons radical reinterpretation of literary material, however,
frequently made it unrecognizable. A superb manipulator of narrative
incident (though he called himself, not a metteur en scne, the ordinary
French term for director, but metteur en ordre, or one who puts
things in order), he focused increasingly on slight, seemingly irrelevant
details in a story, often obscuring or hiding major narrative
developments. Bressons films are difficult at first (and at last) precisely
because they lack such familiar and reassuring elements as plot twists
and establishing shots. One does not create by adding, but by taking
away, he asserted. Just so, his films are composed of hundreds of
relatively brief shots, each one fairly flat, with the opening shot as
likely to be of a foot or an object as it is of a face or an entire body.
Camera movement is kept to a minimum, forto repeatthe camera
shows only what is important and nothing more. Painting taught me

17

that one should not make beautiful images, but rather necessary images,
Bresson told one interviewer. Necessary words, as well, for dialogue in
his films is extremely limited, and the performers, though they may bear
features of a mesmerizing intensity, speak undramatically or (as I
described earlier) monotonically, as if they were talking to themselves;
even their movements are subdued as well as stiff.
Thus, to describe the thirteen films of Robert Bresson and delineate
their themes would probably do little to convey their overall impact. For
Bresson worked at the emotional truth of his films with an almost
unbearable, even ineffable, intensity, out of a deep feeling of
responsibility toward his audience. It was not the aim of his filmmaking
to impress viewers with his brilliance or the brilliance of his performers,
but to make his audience share something of his own simultaneously
tragic and ecstatic vision. Make visible what, without you, might
perhaps never have been seen, he wrote. Accordingly, the dramatic
elements in Bressons films are built up painstakingly, often through a
pattern of repetition-cum-variation. There are no grand finales, since the
truth of any of his works lies in every single frame. At the conclusion of
a Bresson film one feels, above all else, that one has been brought face to

18

face with an essential problem or condition, and that whatever the

specific nature of this directors world-view, the overall effect has been a
deeply human, finally humane oneutterly free of condescension and
utterly full of seriousness.
Bressons subject, despite the lack of reference in his work to
contemporary events, was clearly life in the twentieth century. Yet, in
answer to a question about his attitude toward the realistic treatment of
that subject, he responded: I wish and make myself as realistic as
possible, using only raw material taken from real life. But I aim at a
final realism that is not realism. And who is to say that his holy trinity
of humanity, nature, and the object world did not attain a higher truth
than the one attained through the pragmatic, empirical approach adopted
by most of his contemporaries? Where they saw the operation of
freedom of choice as inevitably joined to the necessity for action,
Bresson saw free will operating in tandem with divine grace. Where his
contemporaries in the film world saw the material interconnection of all
things, he saw the mystical unity of the spiritual and the material. Where
they saw mans intuition into the fathomable workings of nature, Robert

19

Bresson saw mans communion with supernatural forces that are

ultimately beyond our ken.
Indeed, his work seems to play out the sentiment once voiced by
Leon Bloy, the turn-of-the-twentieth-century writer who helped bring
about the Catholic renaissance in France that certainly marked Bressons
life and thinking: The only tragedy is not to be a saint. On the other
hand, the force for Bresson of such a sentiment may have been the
product of his reaction against the Sartrean existentialism that dominated
postwar French cultural lifethe very period of Bressons emergence as
a major filmmaker. However, although spiritual essence clearly precedes
material existence in his films of that period, it could be argued that the
films after Au hasard, Balthazar incline toward the reverse, that
Mouchette, Une Femme douce, Lancelot du Lac, Le Diable
probablement, and LArgent go beyond existentialism in their
chronicling of a total collapse of moral and ethical values in a world
gone madly materialistic. LArgent, in fact, appears to be an
endorsement of Bloys own early attack on the corruptibility of money.

20

Au hasard, Balthazar itself was a radical departure in many ways,

not least because as an allegory of the Christian story, its use of a donkey
was the first indication that Bresson had left behind narratives with noble
figures in the mold of the country priest, Fontaine of Un Condamn
mort sest chapp, and Joan of Arc. In addition, as a passive creature
beaten and broken in, nearly worked to death, then hailed as a saint, only
to be shot to death by an officer of the lawBalthazar prefigured the
protagonists of much of the later work, who, out of indifference or
weakness, fail to significantly affect the world around them. Lancelot du
Lac, for example, is an account of the ineluctable collapse of the age of
chivalry, a theme that seems to prefigure the la ronde-like study of the
nefarious effects of capitalism in LArgent as well as the dissolution of
Western values in Le Diable probablement (where the mockery of all
solutions to personal and social illswhether religious, political, or
psychologicalaffirms a global, apocalyptic pessimism, symbolized by
the youthful protagonists hiring of someone to kill him as a gesture of
protest against humanity as well as society).
For her part, Mouchette, the loveless, abused, humiliated young
daughter of an alcoholic father and a dying mother, leads so relentlessly

21

oppressive a life (one that includes rape by the village poacher she has
befriended) that, rather than resist it, she drowns herself in shame and
misery. The femme douce also commits suicideat the start of the
film. Having thereby drained the drama from Une Femme douce (as well
as the color, in this his first color film, which is composed almost
entirely of blue and green tones) by beginning it at the end, Bresson then
proceeds to reconstruct the woman and her husbands impossible
relationship through a series of flashbacks that show the unbridgeable
gulf between them.
Yet this issue of dark versus light Bresson warrants further
examination. For while we continue to divide the corpus of his work
into the early films that end in redemption and the later ones of
increasing pessimism (even as I earlier did the same), the force of the
latter should inspire us to examine the former more closely. Can we
dismiss the possibility, for instance, that however deeply spiritual the
country priest is, his consumption of bad wine and his poor diet
constitute an unconscious death wish that allows him to feel closer to the
sufferings of Christ with which he identifies? Bresson himself was no
less seized by, and passionate about, his art, every facet of which was

22

infused by his personal and religious convictions, down to the very

shaping and cutting of the world in his own imagean enactment of the
artist as God that exhibits more control over the filmic universe than the
God of most religions exerts over the actual one.
What closer examination reveals is that, however assured and clear
Bressons narratives (early or late) seemand their lean, uncluttered
style certainly contributes to such an impressionthey are never as
simple as critical judgment has often made them appear. The darkness
that characterizes almost every Bresson film from Au hasard, Balthazar
to LArgent is already discernible, I would argue, in the image of human
nature to be found in Les Anges du pch, where the corruptions of the
world outside can barely be contained within the convent. From the
beginning, careful viewing reveals, Bressons characters are consumed
by an arrogance and pride that have the capacity to destroy. It is
precisely these flaws or sins that the novice Anne-Marie must overcome
in Les Anges du pch before she can die and redeem the convict
Thrse. By contrast, Hlne, the femme fatale of Les Dames du Bois de
Boulogne, unrepentantly believes that she has taken revenge on her
former lover by luring him into marriage to a woman who (she later tells

23

him) is a prostitute, only because, in her all-consuming narcissism, she

cannot fathom the possibility of genuine, all-transcendent love between
two human beings.
Ironically, it was American champions of Bresson who, taking their
cues from the subject matter of the first half of his career, christened his
style spiritual (Susan Sontag, among others) or transcendental, a
term first used by the critic-turned-filmmaker Paul Schrader. (The great
French Catholic film critic Andr Bazin, who did not live to see most of
Bressons films, himself championed Journal dun cur de campagne
in an essay hailed by his English translator as the most perfectly
wrought piece of film criticism he had ever readas a film in which
the only genuine incidents, the only perceptible movements, are those of
the life of the spirit . . . [offering] us a new dramatic form that is
specifically religious, or better still, specifically theological.) These
terms continue to haunt anyone writing on Bresson, be it in light of the
nascently cynical tone of the earlier films or the decidedly more cynical
one of the later pictures. For Bresson, in fact, was out of sync with the
ecumenical spirit that seized the Catholic Church in the 1960s, and while
many of his films employ Catholic imagery, they are almost allearly as

24

well as latecharacterized by a particularly harsh strain of religious

thinking closer to that of one of the novelist Georges Bernanos, one of
whose novels, as previously indicated, inspired perhaps Bressons bestknown film, Journal dun cur de campagne. In it, the gray gloom of the
French provinces is matched by an unrelieved focus on bleakness and
cruelty. For Bressons priest is no cheery, uplifting humanist but instead
a man whose youth belies an uncanny ability to penetrate the troubled
hearts of parishioners who hardly acknowledge his existence, and whose
fierce dedication parallels his own slow death from cancer.
Tone, theme, and point of view aside, Bressons films, from first to
last, trace one of the most disciplined, intricate, and satisfying artistic
achievements in the history of the medium. No less than D. W. Griffith
and Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Bresson sought to advance the art of the
cinema, to create a purely filmic narrative form through a progressive
refinement of this young arts tools and strategiesthrough the mastery,
in his words, of cinematography over the cinema. Like a dutiful
student of Rudolf Arnheim and the theory that called for film to free
itself from the established arts and discover its inherent nature,
Bresson discarded, film by film, the inherited conventionsnot only the

25

actor but the dramatic structure of scenes in favor of a series of neutral

sequences, often using sound to avoid visual redundancy. This meant
not only later renouncing such memorable performances as those of
Rene Faure and Sylvie (Louise Sylvain) in Les Anges du pch and
Marie Casars in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, but even L. H.
Burels atmospheric cinematography in Journal dun cur de campagne,
which he came to think was too picturesque. Moreover, the emphasis on
precise framing and editing in the films that followed Un Condamn
mort sest chapp, Pickpocket, and Le Procs de Jeanne dArcwas a
move toward an increasingly minimal filmmaking style in which every
gesture, every image, every word counted.
For Bresson, getting to the essence of each narrative was
synonymous with getting to the essence of the medium. As he himself
declared, My films are not made for a stroll with the eyes, but for going
right into, for being totally absorbed in. So much is this the case that
Susan Sontag was moved to characterize the very watching of Bressons
films as an experience requiring a discipline and reflection on the
viewers part as demanding as the tests of will his protagonists had to
endure. The reward for such discipline and reflection is the feeling, as

26

Gilbert Adair once wrote of the Japanese director Kenzi Mizoguchi, that
his films are among those for whose sake the cinema exists (Flickers
[1995], p. 121). Amen.

A few words now about the organization and contents of this

collection of interviews with, and essays about, Robert Bresson. The
book spans his entire career and includes a previously unpublished, twopart interview with the editor, as well as a detailed filmography, a
chronology of Bressons life, and a bibliography of critical sources on
his work. There is no such comprehensive collection of Bressons
interviews in print in any language. James Quandts 1998 book on
Bresson contains only three interviews, as most of Quandts Robert
Bresson is taken up with twenty essays by film scholars and thirty-five
statements about Bressons work by film directors. Two of those essays
(by Andr Bazin and Susan Sontag) and two of those interviews (by
Jean-Luc Godard and Paul Schrader) are reprinted here, since it would be
difficult to imagine a comprehensive work on Bresson without the
inclusion of such significant texts by Frances most important film

27

theorist and critic, one of its most important filmmakers, the American
critic who wrote the first serious treatment in English of Bressons work,
and an American screenwriter-director who in 1972 also happened to
write the seminal book Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson,
Dreyer.
As I note above, Schrader called Bressons films transcendental,
while Sontag described them as spiritual. In this sense, both these
critics extend in anglicized form a tendency that had early been dominant
in Bresson criticism in France: the attempt, made by such Catholic
writers as Bazin, Henri Agel, Roger Leenhardt, and Amde Ayfre, to
understand this filmmakers work in religious terms. That attempt, in
Sontags essay, led to the introduction of Bresson to the New York-based
avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s, whose filmssuch as Richard
Serras Hand Catching Lead (1968), for oneshow the influence of the
French directors severe, reductivist style. Godard, of course, needed no
such critical introduction to Robert Bresson, for, in his iconoclasm and
integrity, in his rejection of the Gallic Cinma du Papa as well as in his
embrace of film as an independent art, Bresson was one of the heroes of
the young directors who constituted the French New Wave in the early

28

1960s. So much so that Godard was moved to say that Bresson is

French cinema, as Dostoyevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is
German music (Cahiers du cinma [May 1957], p. 50).
Hence the significance of The Films of Robert Bresson: A
Casebook should be self-evident, given the importance of Bressons
oeuvre in the history of both French and world cinema, and given the fact
that, in the interviews themselves, Bresson and his interlocutors talk
about his films, as well as filmmaking in general, from every artistic
angleincluding but not limited to interpretation. The result, in my
viewat least in the hands of the right intervieweris something that
may be as good as criticism itself: enlightened authorial comment.
The interviews included here were chosen precisely because they
elicited such authorial comment from an auteur not known for his
garrulousness, and because they are either as aesthetically inclusive or as
journalistically pointed as possible. That is, they focus on practical
matters related to filmmaking (which, lest we forget, is variously known
as a technology, an industry, a business, an entertainment, and an art) as
much as they do on historical, aesthetic, political, philosophical,

29

religious, and theoretical issues raised by the films themselves. Among

those practical matters, furthermore, some of the interviews give as much
attention to acting, design, and cinematography as to directing, writing,
and editing (with attention paid to finance and audience-reception, as
well). Needless to say, this is because film is the most total of the arts,
containing or embracing all the others: literature, painting, sculpture,
architecture, photography, music, theater, and dance.
To the two interviews in The Films of Robert Bresson: A Casebook
re-published from Quandts 1998 collection, I have added eight
spanning the years 1951 to 1987that are not otherwise readily
available. The one by Jean Douchet may be brief but it has its own
documentary value, coming as it does when Bresson was filming the
great Diary of a Country Priest. Similarly, such shorter, journalistic
pieces as the one from 1972 by Carlos Clarens, as well as Ian Camerons
1962 conversation with Bresson, are interesting for the interviewers
engaged approacheswhich, in the case of Clarens, led to his having to
cut (at the directors insistence) parts of his interview. The longer
interviews by Charles Thomas Samuels and Ronald Hayman are notable
for the depth of the reflections they elicit from the filmmaker at a time in

30

his career, the early 1970s, when Bresson had just made the switch to
color and, in some critics view, had simultaneously begun his artistic
decline. For its part, my own interview with Bresson in 1983 took place
at a moment when world cinema showed few signs of any rejuvenation
and therefore was anything but willing to experiment. This may be one
of the reasons Bressons final picture, the uncompromising LArgent,
received such a poor reception from audiences and critics alike at the 83
Cannes Festival, as well as why the director was never able to raise the
money to film his next project, Genesis.
As for the essays themselves, in addition to the Bazin and Sontag
articles reprinted from Quandts book, fourby Quandt, David
Thomson, Richard Hell, and myselfare previously unpublished;
several, like some of the interviews, are not readily available; and two
are by noted filmmakers (Schrader and Franois Truffaut) who were
writing before they became directors in their own right. All of these
authors attempt to capture Bressons style as well as his substance with
such terms as minimalist, austere, elliptical, autonomous,
pure, even gentle, in addition to the more standard descriptions of
spiritual, transcendental, and divine. None strikes a negative note,

31

even though Bresson didand doeshave his dissenters, certainly

among members of the popular press but also among serious critics like
Vernon Young and John Simon (who, unfortunately, would not allow
any of his reviews of Bressons films to be reprinted in this volume).
One can understand the dissent against Bresson when one considers
Kent Joness comparison of Bressons style to that of such modernist
atonal composers as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, or Olivier
Messiaen, at the same time as this critic points out that Bresson was
working in an intellectual, reflective form rather than an immediately
produced, unreflective, visceral one. Similarly, Jones pairs Bresson and
Mark Rothko, whose paintings, with their large canvases of strong color
and minimum of variation, are known for the spareness if not poverty of
their expressionlike Bressons films. To fully understand the dissent
against Bresson, however, it is also important to remember that his
Catholicism, nay, his religiosity itself, was as out of step in the
existentialist-dominated intellectual climate of 1950s France as it was
unfashionable in the materialist-obsessed, know-nothing culture of 1980s
America.

32

The Films of Robert Bresson: A Casebook is organized around

pairings of its essays and interviews. Each interview is followed either
by an essay on the film discussed in the interview (e.g., Bazin on Diary
of a Country Priest), an essay on Bressons work by the interviewer
himself (e.g., Thomson), or an essayistic overview of Bressons career
when the preceding interview itself is survey-like (as in the pairing of
Schraders essay with Haymans interview). In this way of course, I
hope to bounce the essays and interviews off one another, so as to
stimulate a kind of semi-continuous critical conversation about the films,
their maker, and the interlocutors themselves, as assertions or arguments
made in some articles or interviews are echoed, implicitly or explicitly,
in others.
This bounce occurs in the case of Bazins essay because
somewhat oddly for the devoutly Catholic Bazinhe addresses the
spiritual component in Bressons style far less than the other essayists
and interviewers, particularly the Calvinist-influenced Schrader; it occurs
in the case of my own, concluding view of Une femme douce, because
that view differs from, and directly addresses, the view earlier expressed
by Samuels in his essay on the film; and one feels the bounce as well

33

from Godard and Michel Delahayes stellar conversation with Bresson,

the tone of whichadmiring at the same time that it is probing and even
challenging, at once languorously expansive and intensely
concentratedindeed sets the tone for a number of interviews to follow
(especially those by Schrader and Samuels). One feels the bounce,
finally, in the sense that in the interviews, especially, the same subjects
recur, even if each time they are handled somewhat differently: the use
of non-actors; the invocation of God or the spirit; the idea of adaptation;
the relationship between sound and image, between color and black and
white, between spectacle or action and interiority, between auteurism
and collaboration.

In the case of an author as well known as David Thomson,

moreover, I even hope to bounce his contributions off what he wrote
about Bresson in his Biographical Dictionary of Film (3rd edition, 1994):
To see his films is to marvel that other directors have had the
ingenuity to evolve such elaborate styles and yet restrict them
to superficial messages. It might be said that watching
Bresson is to risk conversion away from the cinema. His

34

meaning is so clearly inspirational, and his treatment so

remorselessly interior, that he shames the extrinsic glamour
and extravagance of movies. For that reason alone he is not
an easy director to digest.
Not on film or in writing, I would add. But the meal is nonetheless
worth it. Welcome, then, to this banquet of wordsoutstanding among
them, the directors ownabout the cinematic achievement of Robert
Bresson.

Robert Bresson, by Kent Jones, from Film Comment, May/June 1999.

35

The precise coordination of every element of filmmakingcamera

distance, sound, theme, narrative, motion, color, human actionso that it
functions with a perfect rhythmic clarity: that is the cinema of Robert
Bresson. Bressons aim was to sound out the profound mysteries that
lurk within the spaces between objects, actions, and emotions, and the
fact that he was so uncommonly good at it for so long is attributable to
his profound sense of the harmony between images and sounds.
No one ever made films at once so concentrated and so expansive,
so precise in their mapping of action and so careful to allow for a
resonance beyond the imagination of almost anyone else who has ever
worked in the medium. No other filmmaker has followed everyday
existence with such patience, care, and love. The tension between what
is seen and what is felt, what is understood and what is undefinable yet
present, lies at the core of Bressons work. . . . Oerstep not the
modesty of nature, Hamlet demanded of the Players. The balance
between an object and its filmic representation feels absolutely just in
Bresson. He worked painstakingly so that his films appeared to register
and acknowledge all things equally: a bouquet of daisies thrown on an

36

asphalt road becomes just as moving as the face of a man behind bars at
long last acknowledging his love for the woman on the other side.
And arent human beings the most elusive objects of all? Here is
an artist who understands the difference between how we present
ourselves and what we give away about ourselves without knowing it.
Many people imagined Bresson as some kind of infallible, divinely
inspired artist, who struck fear in the hearts of critics and fellow
filmmakers. His reclusive nature and the oracular tone of his
pronouncements on the cinema only added to the severity of the image.
His filmmaking, so far outside the norm, encouraged nothing but
extremes. How often have the words transcendental and austere
been used to describe his work? Do they help us to appreciate and
understand Au hasard, Balthazar or Lancelot du Lac? Its important to
remember that the section on Bresson in Paul Schraders brilliant and
enormously influential Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson,
Dreyer deals with only four films, and Schrader makes it clear that the
films before and after the prison quartet fall beyond the limits of his
inquiry.

37

In general discussions of Bressons work, I think that the word

austere tells us more about what his films arent and what they deny
themselves than what they are and what they actually consist of. The
word transcendental is even more problematic. Through overuse, its
meaning has evolved from something highly specific, in Schraders
book, to something irredeemably vague. Bresson was probably more
deserving of extravagant praise than almost any other filmmaker, living
or dead, but is it proper to say that every film he ever made falls under
the heading of transcendental? This sidesteps the question of artistic
evolution (the journey from Les Affaires Publiques to LArgent is much
richer and more varied than has often been imagined) and strips the films
of their individuality. And it also shortchanges the later work in
particular, where the question of belief becomes profoundly problematic.
I think that the very unusual tools and constraints that Bresson
allowed himself as a filmmakershallow space (he always used a 50mm
lens), non-acting, an emphatic use of soundhave riveted the attention
at the expense of the films themselves, thus making his body of work
appear more uniformly ascetic than it actually is. Perhaps we have
finally arrived at the moment when we can get beyond the physical shock

38

of his filmmaking, and forget the fact that his models are not acting in
order to concentrate on their individual self-revelations. (This was an
artist who truly understood the difference between how we present
ourselves and what we give away about ourselves without knowing it.)
Perhaps we can stop measuring his idiosyncrasies and start seeing the
evolution in his work. In the 60s, Bresson became less fixated on
dramas of individual regeneration and redemption and increasingly
interested in the particulars of the modern world. By the 70s he had
become a full-fledged, bona fide chronicler of the present.
There is a terrific moral urgency to this shift: its as though had
been profoundly affected by the feelings of defeat and lethargy in the
young people around him, and had decided to devote himself to giving
those feelings a voice, and to describing their dimensions and
parameters. In his last two fiercely concentrated films, The Devil,
Probably and LArgent, Bresson drifted to the edge of his Christian
universe and measured the void beyond on behalf of his defeated
protagonists. Those last works are like nothing else in modern cinema,
as horrifying as they are lucid, as sure of the inherent beauty of the world
as they are insistent on the recognition of its manmade horror.

39

For all his complaints about the theatricality that has infected the
cinema, for all his insistence that his own work remain separate from
everyone elses, we have no choice in the end but to see Bresson as a
member of the community of cinema, whose solitude allowed him to
operate at its highest level. What other filmmakers has given us as much
of the world? Who has defined the physical fact of people so carefully,
of the human bodys contracting and shuddering as it comes in contact
with reality? Think of Fontaine and Jost crouching expectantly in A Man
Escaped, of the Pickpocket standing at the racetrack and reaching into a
pocketbook, of the old woman cleaning up the broken wine glass in
LArgent. More than any other filmmaker, Bressons work is tuned to all
facets of experiencechance, the sensual, the moral, the natural, the
psychological, the manmade, the metaphysicaland every film is
carefully aligned so that all of them are sounded. All the time spent
pondering his inaccessibility has been wasted. Just as it is in Rothkos
paintings or Weberns music, the emotion in Bressons small but
magnificent oeuvre is there for those with eyes to see it and ears to hear
it.

40

Bresson on Location, by Jean Douchet, from Sequence (London),

#13 (1951), pp. 6-8.
Of the outstanding talents that have emerged in the French cinema
during the past decade, Robert Bresson is one of the most remarkable;
yet, outside France, his work remains all but unknown.

A former

painter, he made his first contact with films before the war, working for
Ren Clair.

During the war he was held for eighteen months as a

prisoner of war in Germany; on his return to France he prepared a

scenarioLes Anges du pcha story, set in a convent, of spiritual
struggle between a Sister of Bethany and a delinquent girl whom she is
determined to save. After many difficulties this was produced, with
dialogue by Jean Giraudoux, in 1943, and was accepted immediately as a
masterpiece. Bressons second picture, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne,
appeared in 1945, a bitter tragicomedy, adapted from Diderot, with
dialogue by Jean Cocteau. Last year Bresson was engaged in the filming
of his own adaptation of Georges Bernanoss Journal dun cur de
campagne; and this interview was obtained during the course of the
filming.

41

The Journal dun cur de campagne unit is installed in the halfempty chateau of the Due de Reggio. Today they are shooting in an
annex, a little house whose white stone stands out against the red brick of
the village. Inside, all the walls have been knocked downthe rooms
were so small. One of these represents the kitchen of the vicarage; in the
next room are cramped the unit, the camera, the tracks.
Bresson, very calm, superintends the lighting. Of medium height,
distinguished appearance, graying hair, he bears little resemblance to the
director of legend. Ones first impression is of an intellectual, chilly and
self-confident; but soon one notices his inquietude, his dissatisfaction.
We have reached the point where the Countess has just sent the
cur a letter and a locketa souvenir of the dead child. This morning I
am to see the reading of the letter. The set is quickly lit; a simple
emphasis on the priest, seated at his kitchen table, the letter that he holds
in his left hand and the locket in his right, a few objects strewn over the
tablehis notebooks, a missal, some crusts of bread. Behind him the
cook is standing by the fireplace; the walls are white and bare. Bresson
comes up to his actor, Claude Laydu, who has been studying the script.
He makes him read it. He calls for a choke in the voice, a halting

42

delivery, long pauses.

Dont forget that this letter has an intense

emotional effect on you. (Very frequently during the shooting he begs

for this intensity.) He demands such-and-such an intonation; he listens;
he modifies. He works on the actor as the sculptor models his clay.
Then Bresson goes on to the action; seated on the truck, facing the actor,
he demonstrates the gestures he wants. First of all a simple detail: the
letter must be folded in such a way that the camera can see its black
edgesfor the Countess is still in mourning for her son. Laydu must sit
up straight, assume the expression of a man deeply stirred, yet still in
control of himself. In his right hand he is to finger the chain of the
locket. In one of his pauses, he must let it slip through his fingers, then
gather it up again. Here the camera tracks back, shortly and sharply.
When perfect coordination is achieved between the reading of the letter,
the actors gestures, and the camera movement, shooting can begin. The
shot is captured after twenty-four false starts.
Work like this is exhausting for the actor. Last night, apparently, a
female member of the cast fainted during a take; nor was this the first
such incident. And no one can keep count of the crises de nerfes. I
witness a violent altercation between the calm Bresson and the gentle

43

Laydu. T he director tortures his playersnot to force from them all that
they are capable of, but so as to leave nothing to their initiative. Laydu
tells me of his weariness, and I sense acutely his (actors) revulsion from
this method. As for the rest of the unit, apart from the sound engineer,
they are reduced to a semi-inactivity, with the result that their attitude
towards the director has hardened into a sort of ironic hostility
accentuated by the fact that this unit is a homogeneous body,
working together now on their third or fourth film. But Bresson remains
unaffected.
I take advantage of the lunch break to interview Bresson.
What has been your approach to Bernanoss novel?
Respectfulfor its construction, proportions, etc., . . . I have
taken most of the dialogue from the book.
We went on to talk of the films style.
Very plain. The photography is simple: no effects; no
sophistication.
Youre seeking an abstract stylesomething after Dreyer?
I have no theory. As far as I can, I am eliminating anything that
may distract from the interior drama.

44

You are shooting against natural backgrounds: does that mean that
you attach special importance to them?
The natural backgrounds will be very little seen, but their presence
will be known, and that is enough.
On which portion of the novel have you based your adaptation?
It is hardly more than a prolonged meditation. (This made him start, as
I thought it would.)
For me, the cinema is an exploration within. Within the mind, the
camera can grasp anything.
Judging by Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, you regard sound as
of great importance.
Certainly.
Have you had many difficulties in the making of this film?
Oh? (as in How do you mean? ).
I do not venture further, being fairly sure that it was not a question
of material struggles alone.
Do you prefer working in the studio, or on location ?
For convenience, the studio. Otherwise . . .

45

Have you many projects?

Have you abandoned Ignace de

Loyola?
Projects ? Two immediately. No, I have not abandoned Ignace de
Loyola. But the Spanish have made a Captain de Loyola, so I shall have
to wait a year or two.
Other details: the film will be a long one; it will be finished in July;
Bresson hopes that it will not be sent to any of the festivals.
It is difficult for me to form any opinion of Le Journal dun cur de
campagne from the single scene which I saw shot. But seen at work in
this way, Bresson himself appears with a new dignity. People had talked
of him as indecisive, slow, inexperienced; I found him strict, scrupulous,
extremely sensitive to the demands of his art. Perhaps his scorn of
conventional routine is not without its dangers. He is insincere, he lives
in an unreal world of his own, a thing of conventions, of falsity. So
maintained some members of his unit; and doubtless Bresson is not a
good collaborator. Nevertheless those who are careful not to confuse art
with technique, the thing made with the making of it, whose admiration
comes from their heart and their judgment, look to Bresson to produce

46

not merely his best film, but also a work at least as important to the
cinema as Bernanoss great novel has been to our literature.
Post-Script: It is a pleasure to be able to end this article with the
note that Le Journal dun cur de campagne has just been awarded the
Prix Louis Delluc for the most distinguished French film of 1950.

47

Diary of a Country Priest and the Stylistics of Robert Bresson, by

Andr Bazin, from Cahiers du cinma, #3 (1951); translated into
English by Hugh Gray in Bazins What Is Cinema?, Vol. 1 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1967), pp. 125-143.
If The Diary of a Country Priest impresses us as a masterpiece, and
this with an almost physical impact, if it moves the critic and the
uncritical alike, it is primarily because of its power to stir the emotions,
rather than the intelligence, at their highest level of sensitivity. The
temporary eclipse of Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne was for precisely
the opposite reason. This film could not stir us unless we had, if not
exactly analyzed, at least tested its intellectual structure and, so to speak,
understood the rules of the game.
While the instantaneous success of Le Journal is undeniable, the
aesthetic principles on which it is based are nevertheless the most
paradoxical, maybe even the most complex, ever manifest in a sound
film. Hence the refrain of those critics, ill-equipped to understand it.
Paradoxical, they say, incrediblean unprecedented success that can
never be repeated. Thus they renounce any attempt at explanation and

48

take refuge in the perfect alibi of a stroke of genius. On the other hand,
among those whose aesthetic preferences are of a kind with Bressons
and whom one would have unhesitatingly thought to be his allies, there is
a deep sense of disappointment in proportion, as they expected greater
acts of daring from him.

First embarrassed, then irritated by the

realization of what the director did not do, yet too long in accord with
him to be able to change their views on the spot; too caught up in his
style to recapture their intellectual virginity, which would have left the
way open to emotion, they have neither understood nor liked the film.
Thus we find the critical field divided into two extreme groups. At
one end those least equipped to understand Le Journal and who, by the
same token, have loved it all the more without knowing why; at the other
end those happy few who, expecting something different, have not liked
it and have failed to understand it. It is the strangers to the cinema, the
men of letters, amazed that they could so love a film and be capable of
freeing their minds of prejudice, who have understood what Bresson had
in mind more clearly than anyone else.
Admittedly, Bresson has done his best to cover his tracks. His
avowal of fidelity to the original from the first moment that he embarked

49

on the adaptation, his declared intention of following the book word-forword, conditioned us to look for just that and the film only serves to
prove it. Unlike Aurenche and Bost, who were preoccupied with the
optics of the screen and the balance of their drama in its new form,
Bresson, instead of building up the minor characters like the parents in
Le Diable au corps, eliminated them.

He prunes even the very

essentials, giving an impression as he does so of a fidelity unable to

sacrifice one single word without a pucker of concern and a thousand
preliminary twinges of remorse. Again, this pruning is always in the
interest of simplification, never of addition. It is no exaggeration to say
that if Bernanos had written the screenplay he would have taken greater
liberties with his novel. He had, indeed, explicitly recognized the right
of the adaptor to make use of his book according to the requirements of
the cinemahe right, that is, to dream his story over.
However, if we praise Bresson for his fidelity, it is for the most
insidious kind of fidelity, a most pervasive form of creative license. Of
course, one clearly cannot adapt without transposing. In that respect,
Bernanos was on the side of aesthetic common sense. Literal translations
are not the faithful ones. The changes that Aurenche and Bost made to

50

Le Diable au corps are themselves almost all entirely justified in

principle. A character on the screen and the same character as evoked by
the novelist are not identical.
Valry condemned the novel for being obliged to record that the
Marquise had tea at five oclock. On his side, the novelist might in turn
pity the filmmaker for having to show the marquise actually at the table.
It is for this reason that the relatives of the heroes in Radiguet, peripheral
in the novel, appear important on the screen. The adaptor, however,
must be as concerned with the text as with the characters and with the
threat of their physical presence to the balance of the story. Having
transformed the narrative into visuals, the filmmaker must put the rest
into dialogue, including the existing dialogue of the novel although we
expect some modification of the lattersince, if spoken as written, its
effectiveness and even its meaning will normally evaporate.
It is here that we see the paradoxical effect of the textual fidelity of
Le Journal. While the characters in the book are presented to the reader
in high relief, and while their inevitably brief evocation by the pen of
the cur of Ambricourt never gives us a feeling of frustration or of any
limits being put both to their existence and to our knowledge of their

51

existence, Bresson, in the process of showing them to us, is forever

hurrying them out of sight. In place of the powerfully concrete
evocations of the novelist, the film offers us an increasingly
impoverished image that escapes us because it is hidden from us and is
never really developed.
The novel of Bernanos is rich in picturesque evocations, solid,
concrete, strikingly visual. For example: The Count went outhis
excuse the rain. With every step the water oozed from his long boots.
The three or four rabbits he had shot were lumped together in the
bottom of his game-bag in a horrible-looking little pile of bloodstained
mud and gray hair. He had hung the string bag on the wall and as he
talked to me I saw fixed on me, through the intertwining cords, a still
limpid and gentle eye.
Do you feel you have seen all this somewhere before?

Dont

bother to look where. It was probably in a Renoir film. Now compare

this scene with the other in which the count brings the two rabbits to the
presbyteryadmittedly this comes later in the book but the two could
have profitably been combined, thus giving them a style in common
and if you still have any doubts, Bressons own admission will remove

52

them. Forced to throw out a third of his final cut for the exhibitors
copy, he ended, as we know, by declaring with a delicate touch of
cynicism that he was delighted to have had to do so. Actually, the only
visual he really cared about was the blank screen at the finale, which
we will discuss later.
If he had really been faithful to the book, Bresson would have
made quite a different film. Determined though he was to add nothing
to the originalalready a subtle form of betrayal by omissionhe
might at least have chosen to sacrifice the more literary parts for the
many passages of ready-made film material that cried out for
visualization. Yet he systematically took the opposite course. When
you compare the two, it is the film that is literary while the novel teems
with visual material.
The way Bresson handles the text is even more revealing. He
refuses to put into dialogue (I hardly dare to say film dialogue) those
passages from the novel where the cur enters in his diary the report of
such-and-such a conversation.

Here is a first discrepancy, since

Bernanos at no point guarantees that the cur is giving a word-for-word

report of what he heard. The odds are that he is not. In any event,

53

supposing he is, and that Bresson has it in mind to preserve, along with
the objective image, the subjective character of something remembered,
it is still true that the mental and emotional impact of a line that is
merely read is very different from that of a spoken line.
Now, not only does Bresson not adapt the dialogue, however circumspectly, to the demands of a performance, he goes out of his way, on
the contrary, whenever the text of the novel has the rhythm and balance
of true dialogue, to prevent the actor from bringing out these qualities.
Thus a good deal of excellent dramatic dialogue is thrown away because
of the flat monotone in which the director insists that it be delivered.

Many complimentary things have been said about Les Dames du

Bois de Boulogne, very little about the adaptation. The critics have, for
all intents and purposes, treated the film as if it had been made from an
original screenplay. The outstanding quality of the dialogue has been
attributed to Cocteau, whose reputation has little need of such praise.
This is because they have not reread Jacques le fataliste, in which they
would have found if not the entire script, at least the evidence of a subtle
game of hide-and-go-seek, word for word, with the text of Diderot.

54

While it did not make one feel one ought to go back to verify the fact at
close quarters, the modern version left one with the impression that
Bresson had taken liberties with the story and retained simply the
situation and, if you like, a certain eighteenth-century flavor. Since, in
addition, he had killed off two or three writers under him, so to speak, it
was reasonable to suppose that he was that many steps away from the
original.
However, I recommend that fans of Les Dames du Bois de
Boulogne and aspiring scenarists alike take a second look at the film
with these considerations in mind. Without intending in any way to
detract from the decisive part played by the style of the direction in the
success of the film, I think it is important to examine very closely the
foundations of this success, namely a marvelously subtle interplaya
sort of counterpoint between faithfulness and unfaithfulness to the
original.
It has been suggested in criticism of Les Dames du Bois de
Boulogne, with equal proportions of good sense and misunderstanding,
that the psychological make-up of the characters is out of key with the
society in which they are shown as living. True, it is the mores of the

55

time that, in the novel of Diderot, justify the choice of the revenge and
give it its effectiveness. It is true again that this same revenge seems to
the modern spectator to be something out of the blue, something beyond
his experience. It is equally useless, on the other hand, for those who
defend the film to look for any sort of social justification for the
characters. Prostitution and pandering as shown in the novel are facts
with a very clear and solid contemporary social context. In the film of
Les Dames they are all the more mystifying since they have no basic
justification.

The revenge of an injured mistress who forces her

unfaithful lover to marry a luscious cabaret dancer seems to us to be a

ridiculous gesture.
Nor can the fact that the characters appear to be abstractions be explained by deliberate cuts made by the director during the filming. They
are that way in the script. The reason Bresson does not tell us more
about his characters is not that he has no desire to, but because he would
be hard put to do so.

Racine does not describe the color of the

wallpaper in the rooms to which his characters retire. To this one may
answer, of course, that classical tragedy has no need of the alibis of
realism and that this is one of the basic differences between the theater

56

and the cinema. That is true enough. It is also precisely why Bresson
does not derive his cinematographic abstraction simply from the bare
episodes but from the counterpoint that the reality of the situation sets
up with itself. In Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Bresson has taken
the risk of transferring one realistic story into the context of another.
The result is that these two examples of realism cancel each other out,
and the passions displayed emerge out of the characters as if from a
chrysalis, the action from the twists and turns of the plot, the tragedy
from the trappings of the drama.
The sound of a windshield-wiper against a page of Diderot is all it
took to turn that page into Racinian dialogue. Obviously Bresson is not
aiming at absolute realism. On the other hand, his stylized treatment of
it does not have the pure abstract quality of a symbol. It is rather a
structured presentation of the abstract and concrete, that is to say of the
reciprocal interplay of seemingly incompatible elements. The rain, the
murmur of a waterfall, the sound of earth pouring from a broken pot, the
hooves of a horse on cobblestones, are not there just as a contrast to the
simplification of the sets or the convention of the costumes, still less as
a contrast to the literary and anachronistic flavor of the dialogue. They

57

are not needed either for dramatic antithesis or for a contrast in dcor.
They are there deliberately as neutrals, as foreign bodies, like a grain of
sand that gets into and seizes up a piece of machinery.

If the

arbitrariness of their choice resembles an abstraction, it is the

abstraction of the concrete integral. They are like lines drawn across an
image to affirm its transparency, as the dust affirms the transparency of
a diamond; this is impurity at its purest.
This interaction of sound and dcor is repeated in the very midst of
elements that seem at first to be completely stylized. For example, the
two apartments of the women are almost totally unfurnished, but this
calculated bareness has its explanation. That the frames should be on
the walls though the paintings have been sold is undoubtedly a
deliberate touch of realism.

The abstract whiteness of the new

apartment is not intended as part of a pattern of theatrical expressionism.

The apartment is white because it has just been repainted and the smell
of fresh paint still hangs about. Is there any need to add to this list the
elevator or the concierges telephone, or, on the soundtrack, the tumult
of male voices that follows the face-slapping of Agns, the text for

58

which reads totally conventionally while the sound quality of it achieves

absolute perfection?
I have referred to Les Dames in discussing Le Journal because it is
important to point out the profound similarity between the mechanics of
their respective adaptations. The style of Le Journal indicates a more
systematic searching, a rigor that is almost unbearable. It was made
under very different technical conditions. Yet we shall see that the
procedure was in each case basically the same. In both it was a matter
of getting to the heart of a story or of a drama, of achieving the most
rigorous form of aesthetic abstraction while avoiding expressionism, by
way of an interplay of literature and realism, which added to the works
cinematic potential while seeming to negate it. In any case, Bressons
faithfulness to his model is the alibi of liberty in chains. If he is faithful
to the text this is because it serves his purpose better than taking useless
liberties. Furthermore, this respect for the letter is, in the last analysis,
far more than an exquisite embarrassment; it is a dialectical moment in
the creation of a style.
So it is pointless to complain that paradoxically Bresson is at one
and the same time the slave and the master of his text, because it is

59

precisely from this seeming contradiction that he gets his effects. Henri
Agel, for example, describes the film as a page of Victor Hugo rewritten
in the style of de Nerval. But surely one could imagine poetic results
born of this monstrous coupling, of unexpectedly revealing flashes
touched off by a translation made not just from one language into another
(like Mallarms translation of Poe), but from one style and one content
into the style of another artist and from the material of one art transposed
into the material of another.
Let us look a little more closely now at Le Journal and see what
in it has not really come off. While not wishing to praise Bresson for
all his weak spots, for there are weaknesses, rare ones, which work to
his disadvantage, we can say quite definitely that they are all an
integral part of his style. They are simply that kind of awkwardness
to which a high degree of sensibility may lead, and if Bresson has any
reason here for self-congratulation, it is for having had the sense to
see in that awkwardness the price he must pay for something more
important.
So, even if the acting in general seems poor, except for Laydu
all the time and for Nicole Ladmiral some of it, this, provided you

60

like the film, will only appear to be a minor defect. But now we have
to explain why Bresson, who directed his cast so superbly in Les
Anges du pch and Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, seems to
handle them in this film as amateurishly as any tyro with a camera
who has roped in his aunt and the family lawyer. Do people really
imagine that it was easier to get Maria Casars to play down her
talent than to handle a group of docile amateurs? Certainly some
scenes in Le Journal were poorly acted. It is odd, however, that these
were by no means the least moving.
The fact is that this film is not to be measured by ordinary
standards of acting. It is important to remember that the cast were all
either amateurs or simple beginners. In this respect, Le Journal no more
approximates Ladri di biciclette than it does LEntre des artistes.
Actually, the only film it can be likened to is Carl Dreyers Jeanne
dArc. The cast is not being asked to act out a text, not even to live it
outjust to speak it. It is because of this that the passages spoken offscreen so perfectly match the passages spoken by the characters onscreen. There is no fundamental difference either in tone or style.

61

This plan of attack not only rules out any dramatic interpretation by
the actors but also any psychological touches, either. What we are asked
to look for on their faces is not for some fleeting reflection of the words
but for an uninterrupted condition of soul, the outward revelation of an
interior destiny. Thus this so-called badly acted film leaves us with the
feeling of having seen a gallery of portraits whose expressions could not
be other than they were. In this respect the most characteristic of all is
de Chantal in the confessional. Dressed in black, withdrawn into the
shadows, Nicole Ladmiral allows us only a glimpse of a mask, half lit,
half in shadowlike a seal stamped on wax, all blurred at the edges.
Naturally Bresson, like Dreyer, is only concerned with the
countenance as flesh, which, when not involved in playing a role, is a
mans true imprint, the most visible mark of his soul. It is then that the
countenance takes on the dignity of a sign.

He would have us be

concerned here not with the psychology but with the physiology of
existence. Hence the hieratic tempo of the acting, the slow and ambiguous gestures, the obstinate recurrence of certain behavioral patterns,
the unforgettable dream-like slow motion. Nothing purely accidental
could happen to these peopleconfirmed as each is in his own way of

62

life, essentially concerned either to deny the influence of grace and

continue as is, or, responding to grace, to throw off the deadly Nessusmantle of the old Adam.
There is no development of character in Le Journal. The characters
inner conflicts, the various phases of their struggle as they wrestle with
the Angel of the Lord, are never outwardly revealed. What we see is
rather a concentration of suffering, the recurrent spasms of childbirth or of
a snake sloughing off its skin. We can truly say that Bresson strips his
characters bare.

Eschewing psychological analysis, the film in

consequence lies outside the usual dramatic categories. The succession

of events is not constructed according to the usual laws of dramaturgy,
under which the passions work toward a soul-satisfying climax. Events
do indeed follow one another according to a necessary order, yet within a
framework of accidental happenings. Free acts and coincidences are
interwoven. Each moment in the film, each set-up, has its own due
measure, alike, of freedom and of necessity. They all move in the same
direction but separately, like iron filings drawn to the overall surface of a
magnet.

63

If the word tragedy comes to ones pen, it is in the opposite sense

since we can only be dealing here with a tragedy freely willed. The
transcendence of the Bernanos-Bresson universe is not the transcendence
of destiny as the ancients understood it, nor yet the transcendence of
Racinian passion, but the transcendence of grace, which is something
each of us is free to refuse. If, nevertheless, the concatenation of events
and the causal efficiency of the characters involved appear to operate
just as rigidly as in a traditional dramatic structure, it is because they are
responding to an order, of prophecy (or perhaps one should say of
Kirkegaardian repetition, whichunlike Platonic recollectionis
oriented toward the future), that is as different from fatality as causality
is from analogy.
The pattern of the films unfolding is not that of tragedy in the
usual sense, but rather in the sense of the medieval Passion Play, or
better still, of the Way of the Cross, each sequence being a station
along that road. We are given the key to this particular truth by the
dialogue in the hut between the two curs, when the one from
Ambricourt reveals that he is spiritually attracted to the Mount of
Olives. Is it not enough that Our Lord should have granted me the

64

grace of letting me know today, through the words of my old

teacher, that nothing, throughout all eternity, can remove me from
the place chosen by me from all eternity, that I was the prisoner of
His Sacred Passion?
Death is not the preordained end of our final agony, only its
conclusion and deliverance. Henceforth we shall know to what
divine ordinance, to what spiritual rhythm, the sufferings and actions of the cur respond. They are the outward representation of
his agony. At this point we should indicate the analogies with
Christ that abound towards the end of the film, or they may very
well go unnoticed. For example, the two fainting fits during the
night; the fall in the mud; the vomitings of wine and blooda
remarkable synthesis of powerful comparisons with the falls of
Jesus, the Blood of the Passion, the sponge with vinegar on it, and
the defiling spittle. These are not all. For the veil of Veronica we
have the cloth of Seraphita; then, finally, the death in the attica
Golgotha with even a good and a bad thief.
Now let us immediately put aside these comparisons, the very
enumeration of which is necessarily deceptive. Their aesthetic weight

65

derives from their theological value, but both defy explanation. Bresson,
like Bernanos, avoids any sort of symbolic allusion and so none of the
situations, despite their obvious parallel to the Gospel, is created
precisely because of that parallel. Each carries its own biographical and
individual meaning. Its Christlike resemblance comes second, through
being projected onto the higher plane of analogy. In no sense is it true to
say that the life of the cur of Ambricourt is an imitation of its divine
model; rather it is a repetition and a picturing forth of that life. Each
bears his own cross and each cross is different, but all are the Cross of
the Passion. The sweat on the brow of the cur is a bloody sweat. So,
probably for the first time, the cinema gives us a film in which the only
genuine incidents, the only perceptible movements, are those of the life
of the spirit. Not only that, it also offers us a new dramatic form that is
specifically religious, or better still, specifically theological: a
phenomenology of salvation and grace, as it were.
It is worth noting that through playing down the psychological
elements and keeping the dramatics to a minimum, Bresson is left to face
two kinds of pure reality. On the one hand, as we saw, we have the
countenance of the actor denuded of all symbolic expression, sheer

66

epidermis, set in a surrounding devoid of any artifice. On the other hand

there is also what we must call the written reality. Indeed, Bressons
faithfulness to the text of Bernanoshis refusal, that is, not only to adapt
it but also his paradoxical concern to emphasize its literary characteris
part of the same predetermined approach to the direction of his actors
and the selection of his settings. Bresson treats the novel as he does his
characters. The novel is a cold, hard fact, a reality to be accepted as it
stands. One must not attempt to adapt it to the situation at hand, or
manipulate it to fit some passing need for an explanation; on the contrary,
it is something to be taken absolutely as it stands.
Bresson never condenses the text; he cuts it. Thus what is left over
is a part of the original. Like marble from a quarry, the words of the film
continue to be part of the novel. Of course the deliberate emphasis on
their literary character can be interpreted as a search after artistic
stylization, which is the very opposite of realism. The fact is, however,
that in this case the reality is not the descriptive content, moral or
intellectual, of the textit is the very text itself, or more properly, the
style. Clearly, the reality at one stage removed from the novel and the
reality that the camera captures directlythese cannot fit or grow

67

together and become one.

On the contrary, the effect of their

juxtaposition is to reaffirm their differences. Each plays its part, side-byside, using the means at its disposal, in its own setting and after its own
style.
Yet it is doubtless through this separating off of elements, which
because of their resemblance would appear to belong together, that
Bresson manages to eliminate what is accidental.

The ontological

conflict between two orders of events occurring simultaneously, when

confronted on the screen, reveal their single common measure: the soul.
Each actor says the same things and the very disparity between their
expressionsbetween the substance of what each says, their respective
styles, the kind of indifference that seems to govern the relation of actor
to text, of word and visageis the surest guarantee of their close complicity. This language that no lips could speak is, of necessity, from the
soul.
It is unlikely that there exists anywhere in the whole of French
cinema, perhaps even in all French literature, many moments of more
intense beauty than in the medallion scene between the cur and the
countess.

Its beauty does not derive from the acting or from the

68

psychological and dramatic values of the dialogue, nor indeed does it

derive from the scenes intrinsic meaning.

The true dialogue that

punctuates the struggle between the inspired priest and a soul in despair
is, of its very nature, ineffable. The decisive clashes of their spiritual
fencing-match therefore escape us.

Their words announce, or prepare

the way for, the fiery touch of grace.

There is nothing here, then, of the flow of words that usually goes
with a conversion, while the overpowering severity of the dialogue, its
rising tension and its final calm, leave us with the conviction that we
have been the privileged witnesses of a supernatural storm. The words
themselves are so much dead weight, the echo of a silence that is the true
dialogue between these two souls, a hint at their secretthe opposite
side of the coin, if one dare to say so, of the Divine Countenance. When
later the cur refuses to come to his own defense by producing the
countesss letter, it is not out of humility or love of suffering. It is rather
because no tangible evidence is worthy to play a part either in his
defense or his indictment.

By its very nature the evidence of the

countess is no more acceptable than that of de Chantal, and none has the
right to ask God to bear witness.

69

The technique of Bressons direction cannot adequately be judged

except at the level of his aesthetic intention. Inadequately as I may have
so far described the latter, it may yet be that the highly astonishing
paradox of the film is now a little more evident. Actually, the distinction
of having set text over against image for the first time goes to Melville in
his Silence de la mer. It is noteworthy that his reason was likewise a
desire for fidelity. However, the structure of Vercorss book was of
itself unusual.

In his Journal Bresson has done more than justify

Melvilles experiment and shown how well warranted it was. He has

carried it to its final conclusions, as it were.
Is Le Journal just a silent film with spoken titles? The spoken
word, as we have seen, does not enter into the image as a realistic
component.

Even when spoken by one of the characters, it rather

resembles the recitative of an opera. At first sight the film seems to be

somehow made up, on the one hand, of the abbreviated text of the novel
and illustrated, on the other hand, by images that never pretend to
replace it. All that is spoken is not seen, yet nothing is seen that is not
also spoken. At worst, critical good sense can reproach Bresson for

70

having substituted an illustrated radiophonic montage, no less, for

Bernanoss novel.
So it is from this ostensible corruption of the art of cinema that we
begin if we are to grasp fully Bressons originality and boldness. In the
first place, if Bresson returns to the silent film it is certainly not,
despite the abundance of close-ups, because he wants to tie in again with
theatrical expressionismthat fruit of an infirmity. On the contrary, it is
in order to rediscover the dignity of the human countenance as
understood by Stroheim and Dreyer. Now if there is one and only one
quality of the silent film irreconcilable of its very nature with sound, it is
the syntactical subtlety of montage and expression in the acting of the
filmthat is to say, that which proceeds in effect from the weakness of
silent film. But not all silent films want to be such. Nostalgia for a
silence that would be the benign procreator of a visual symbolism unduly
confuses the so-called primacy of the image with the true vocation of the
cinemawhich is the primacy of the object.
Thus the absence of a soundtrack from Greed, Nosferatu, or La
Passion de Jeanne dArc means something quite different from the
silence of Caligari, Die Nibelungen, or Eldorado. It is the frustration,

71

not the foundation, of a form of expression. The former films exist in

spite of their silence, not because of it. In this sense the invention of the
soundtrack is just a fortuitous scientific phenomenon and not the
aesthetic revolution people always say it is. The language of film, like
the language of Aesop, is ambiguous and, in spite of appearances to the
contrary, the history of cinema before as well as after 1928 is an
unbroken continuity.

It is the story of the relations between

expressionism and realism. Sound was to destroy expressionism for a

while before adopting it in its turn. On the other hand, it became an
immediate part of the continued development of realism.
Paradoxically enough it is to the most theatrical, that is to say to the
most talkative, forms of the sound film that we must look today for a
resurgence of the old symbolism, while the pre-talkie realism of a
Stroheim has in fact no following. Yet, it is evident that Bressons
undertaking is somehow related to the work of Stroheim and Renoir.
The separating of sound and of the image to which it relates cannot be
understood without a searching examination of the aesthetics of realismin-sound. It is just as mistaken to see it as an illustration of a text, as a
commentary on an image.

Their parallelism maintains that division

72

which is present to our senses. It continues the Bressonian dialectic

between abstraction and reality thanks to which we are concerned with a
single realitythat of human souls.
In no sense, then, does Bresson return to the expressionism of the
silent film. He does exclude one of the components of reality but only in
order to reproduce it, deliberately stylized on the soundtrack and partially
independent of the image. In other words, it is as if the final rerecording
were composed of sound directly recorded with scrupulous fidelity and a
text postsynchronized in a monotone. But, as I have pointed out, this
text is itself a second reality, a cold aesthetic fact. Its realism is its
style, while the style of the image is primarily its reality, and the style of
the film is precisely the conflict between the two.
Bresson disposes once and for all of that commonplace of criticism
according to which image and sound should never duplicate one another.
The most moving moments in the film are those in which text and image
are saying the same thing, each, however, in its own way. The sound
never serves simply to fill out what we see. It strengthens what we see
and multiplies it, just as the echo chamber of a violin echoes and
multiplies the vibrations of the strings. Yet this metaphor is dialectically

73

inadequate since it is not so much a resonance that the mind perceives as

something which does not match, as when a color is not properly
superimposed on a drawing. It is here at the edge that the event reveals
its true significance.

It is because the film is entirely structured

according to this relationship that, towards the end, the images take on
such emotional power.
It would be futile to look for Le Journals devastating beauty
simply in what is explicit. I doubt if the individual frames in any other
film, taken separately, are so deceptive. Their frequent lack of plastic
composition, combined with the awkward, static quality of the actors,
completely misleads one as to their value in the overall film. Moreover,
this accretion of effectiveness is not due to the editing. The value of an
image does not depend on what precedes or follows it. The images
accumulate, rather, a static energy, like the parallel leaves of a
condenser.

Between the visuals and the soundtrack, differences of

aesthetic potential are set up, the tension of which becomes unbearable.
Thus it is that the image-text relationship moves towards its climax, the
latter having the advantage. Thus it is also that, quite naturally, at the
command of an imperious logic, there is nothing more that the image has

74

to communicate except by disappearing. The spectator has been led,

step-by-step, towards that night of the senses the only expression of
which is a light on a blank screen.
That is where the so-called silent film and its lofty realism are
headed, toward the disappearance of the image and its replacement
simply by the text of the novel. But here we are experimenting with an
irrefutable aesthetic, with the sublime achievement of pure cinema. Just
as the blank page of Mallarm and the silence of Rimbaud are language
at the highest state, the screen, free of images and handed back to
literature, is the triumph of cinematographic realism. The black cross
on the white screen, as awkwardly drawn as on the average memorial
card, the only trace left by the assumption of the image, is a witness to
something the reality of which is itself but a sign.

With Le Journal cinematographic adaptation reaches a new stage.

Up to now, film tended to substitute for the novel in the guise of its
aesthetic translation into another language. Fidelity meant respect for
the spirit of the novel, but it also meant a search for necessary
equivalentsthat is to say, it meant taking into account the dramatic

75

requirements of the theater or, again, the more direct effectiveness of the
cinematographic image. Unfortunately, concern for these things will
continue to be the general rule. We must remember, however, that it
was through their application that Le Diable au corps and La Symphonie
pastorale turned out so well. According to the best opinions, films like
these are as good as the books on which they are modeled.
In the margin of this formula we might also note the existence of
the free adaptation of books such as that made by Renoir for Une Partie
de campagne or Madame Bovary. Here the problem is solved in another
way. The original is just a source of inspiration. Fidelity in this case is
the temperamental affinity between filmmaker and novelist, a deeply
sympathetic understanding. Instead of presenting itself as a substitute,
the film is intended to take its place alongside the bookto make a pair
with it, like twin stars. This assumption, applicable only where there is
genius, does not exclude the possibility that the film is a greater
achievement than its literary model, as in the instance of Renoirs The
River.
Le Journal, however, is something else again. Its dialectic between
fidelity and creation is reducible, in the last analysis, to a dialectic

76

between the cinema and literature.

There is no question here of a

translation, no matter how faithful or intelligent. Still less is it a question

of free inspiration with the intention of making a duplicate. It is a
question of building a secondary work with the novel as foundation. In
no sense is the film comparable to the novel or worthy of it. It is a
new aesthetic creation, the novel so to speak multiplied by the cinema.
The only procedure in any way comparable, of which we have any
examples, is the filming of paintings. Emmer and Alain Resnais are
similarly faithful to the original, for their raw material is the already
highly developed work of the painter; the reality with which they are
concerned is not the subject of the painting but the painting itself, in the
same way as the text of the novel is Bressons reality. But the fidelity of
Resnais to van Gogh is but the prior condition of a symbiosis of cinema
and painting. That is why, as a rule, painters fail utterly to understand
the whole procedure. If you see these films as nothing more than an
intelligent, effective, even a valuable means of popularizing painting
they certainly are that, tooyou know nothing of their aesthetic biology.
This comparison with films of paintings, however, is only partially
valid since these are confined from the outset to the realm of minor

77

aesthetic works. They add something to the paintings, they prolong their
existence, they release them from the confines of their frames, but they
can never pretend to be the paintings themselves (at least up to the time
of Le Mystre Picasso, which may invalidate this criticism). The van
Gogh of Resnais is a minor masterpiece taken from a major work, which
it makes use of and explains in detail but does not replace. There are
two reasons for this congenital limitation. First of all, the photographic
reproduction, in projection, cannot pretend to be a substitute for the
original or to share its identity. If it could, then it would be the better to
destroy paintings aesthetic autonomy, since films of paintings start off
precisely as the negation of that on which this aesthetic autonomy is
basednamely, that paintings are circumscribed in space and exist
outside time. It is precisely because cinema, as the art of space and time,
is the contrary of painting that it has something to add to it.
Such a contradiction does not exist between the novel and the film.
Not only are they both narrative arts, that is to say temporal arts, but the
cinematic image is equal, if not superior, to the image prompted by the
written word. It is not even possible to maintain a priori the opposite
view, that the cinematic image is essentially an inferior one. Once we

78

accept these essential resemblances, there is nothing absurd in trying to

write a novel on film, to concern oneselflike a filmmaker or a
novelistthat is, with the idea of unfolding a real world.
But Le Journal has just proved to us that it is more fruitful to
speculate on their differences rather than on their resemblances, and to
call for the existence of a novel to be affirmed by its filming and not
dissolved into it. It is hardly enough to say of this work, once removed,
that it is in essence faithful to the original because, to begin with, it is
the novel. Most of all, however, the resulting work is certainly not
better (that kind of judgment is meaningless) but more than the book.
The aesthetic pleasure we derive from Bressons film, while
acknowledgment for it must go to the genius of Bernanos, includes all
that the novel has to offer plus, in addition, its refraction in the cinema.
After Bresson, Aurenche and Bost are but the Viollet-le-Duc of
cinematographic adaptation. That is to say, these two practice a kind of
architectural restoration instead of what Bresson gives us: cinematic
revitalization.

79

Interview with Robert Bresson, by Ian Cameron, from Movie

(February 1963), pp. 28-29.
This interview with Robert Bresson was recorded at the 1962
Cannes Film Festival. Originally intended for broadcasting, the
interview was conducted in English. As he wished to avoid any
chance of inaccuracies (although he speaks English very well),
Bresson insisted on half-an-hours preparation to jot down any
words that he might need and forget during the recording session.
We settled down in the lounge of the largest hotel in Cannes to
discuss the question over a whisky (mine) and a tonic water (his).
Three hours later, many of the questions had been discarded and
others completely altered to the questions that Bresson wished to
answer. As the whole interview was thus written out before it was
recorded, the questions and answers became very terse, and without
any of the usual interplay of conversation. Predictably, it was
considered unsuitable for broadcasting as it now lacked even the
appearance of spontaneity. It sounded not so much like an interview
as a Bressonian dialogue.
Why did you wish to add yet another to the number of films made about
Joan of Arc?
To make her real and immediate.
What was your principal aim in the film? Was it to show history?
Thats the privilege of the cinemato bring things of the past into the
present, providing you avoid the style of the historical films in general. I

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think the only way to reach the public with historical characters is to
show them as if they lived at the present with us. So that was my
principal aim.
You never show Joan in the same shot as her accusers. Why?
First, I couldnt do it. The natural dcors made it impossible to show
them together. But I believe that it is good to create obstacles. For my
part I dont work very well without obstacles. Anyway, perhaps even
without this difficulty, I would have shown Joan and her accusers in the
same way. Because there is only one way of shooting people: from near
and in front of them, when you want to know what is happening inside.
Often you seem to place Joan on a light background when her
interrogator is on a light background, or to place them both on dark.
Thats because it gives a shock to the eye . . . you cant have white in one
shot and black in the following one.
The shooting so that each character has his or her shot in the trial
sequences gives a feeling not of conflict between Joan and her judges,
but of a ritual in which all the participants have their parts to play, parts
which they accept.

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I dont agree. For me it is a duel between the Bishop Cauchon and Joan.
From the beginning to the end, the English and the priests have only
the role of witnesses.
You havent allowed it to become a drama in the normal sense.
My idea is to suggest the things and the feelings also.
What do you expect the audience to bring to your film?
Not their brains but their capacity for feeling.
Do you expect them to know the facts of the trial? Is that why you dont
explain who the various participants are?
I never explain anything, as it is done in the theater.
Or is it that you want the audience to look upon the trial as
spectators at a ceremony that is new to them?
This is a good motivation.
Are all your characters in the film those referred to in the
historical account of the trial?
They are.
You never show the crowd at the execution except for a couple
of shots including their legs. You never show the audience at
the trial. Why?

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Its a necessity. The sight of a medieval crowd would break up the film.
At the beginning of the film were shown the back of Joans
mother, with a hand on each of her shoulders. Why do you just
show her back?
Because I didnt want her to be a character. Besides, it is not in the film
itself. It appears before the title.
At the end of the film you stress the tightness of the garment in
which shes burnt, that it prevents her from walking properly.
Her garment makes her walk ridiculously, like a little girl. It seems that
shes running to the stake.
Whats the significance of the gesture when the stone is thrown
through the window of her cell? She picks it up and looks at it,
at the window and then back at the stone.
Shes astonished, but she doesnt care. Shes sure till the end that shes
to be delivered.
At one point in the trial, the judges make Joan kneel. Then you
dissolve away to her standing again afterwards.

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The moment of cutting has the same function as that of movement in

other films. Shakespeare also cuts at strange times. His cutting is like a
door through which the poetry enters.
Why is there so much emphasis placed in the film on Joans
being a virgin? Particularly on the attitude of the English to
this?
I have shown exactly what I have found in the real account.
There are many shots of doors, open doors. Do these relate to
Joans speech If I see a door open, etc.?
When one is in prison, the most important thing is the door.
The photography is often unusually dark. Is this to establish a
somber mood?
Well, its important for me to establish the real proportions of light
between outside and inside. Outside is very light. Inside more or less
dark. The truth about the light takes its part in the general truth of the
film.
Why are there a large number of shots of the English peering
at Joan through the crack in the cell wall?
There are not as many as you sayas few as possible.

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The crack is low down on the wall. You show this by holding
the shot on the crack as the observers stand up.
They are sitting down on the other side, which I of course never show.
But you may guess that the observers sit down and get up.
When Joan is ill in prison, you show a detail shot first of a
priests handthe doctors handholding hers when shes ill.
Why this detail?
I want to make the public want to see her face before showing it.
Why is it not the Bishop but the two monks in white who inform
Joan that she is to die?
One is her confessor. The other is Brother Martin, who tried to help her
by signs during the trial. These are the two who have been the closest to
her.
There are a number of detailed shots of pens writing the
account of the trial. Why have you put these in when she says
Youre writing against me, not for me?
Because there is a dramatic significance in it. All that is said is written
down, and will be taken in general against her. The scratching of the pen
is dramatically significant for me.

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Why is the garment she wears at her death brought at the

moment when she is receiving the bread at her communion?
The quickness of the end, which is my invention, is for me a dramatic
point.
One hardly notices in this film that it is the English
soldier who gives Joan the cross. Shaw himself made quite
a lot of this.
This detail is so well known to everybody here in France that I only
wanted to suggest it by the sight of his helmet.
Nothing at all is made in the film of the roles of the English
nobleman Warwick and the English priest.

Effectively the

action involves only Joan and the French priests.

I didnt want to introduce the psychology of Warwick.
Why do you have a shot with a dog in the open as Joans about
to be burnt?
Theres always a dog walking across in the open during a ceremony.
The animals feel it when there is something unusual.
Why the details of her clothes being thrown on the fire ?
That is very important. They dont want to leave relics.

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You show Joans feet as shes tripped by one of the crowd. Why do you
do this ?
That has a certain connection with what happened to Christ
when he went to be crucified.

I mean the way Christ was

mocked and molested.

And why the doves, which land on the gauze roof of the pavilions?
There is no symbolism in this. I dont like symbolism. It is
only to show that life is going on.
Why do you treat the burning partly as a subjective shot of the cross
being obscured by smoke?
I think you want me too much to explain what I did.
And, if I could ask you one more question, what is the reason for the very
long held shot at the end just of the stake with chains hanging from it?
Well, its for me like a miraculous disappearance of Joan.
Your next film I believe will be Lancelot du Lac. What in particular
interests you about Arthurian legends?
I think it is our mythology as well as yours.

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Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson, by Susan Sontag,

from Seventh Art (New York), Summer 1964.

1
Some art aims directly at arousing the feelings; some art appeals to
the feelings through the route of the intelligence. There is art that
involves, that creates empathy. There is art that detaches, that provokes
reflection.
Great reflective art is not frigid. It can exalt the spectator, it can
present images that appall, it can make him weep. But its emotional
power is mediated. The pull toward emotional involvement is
counterbalanced by elements in the work that promote distance,
disinterestedness, impartiality. Emotional involvement is always, to a
greater or lesser degree, postponed.
The contrast can be accounted for in terms of techniques or
meanseven of ideas. No doubt, though, the sensibility of the artist is,

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in the end, decisive. It is a reflective art, a detached art that Brecht is

advocating when he talks about the Alienation Effect. The didactic
aims which Brecht claimed for his theater are really a vehicle for the cool
temperament that conceived those plays.
2
In the film, the master of the reflective mode is Robert Bresson.
Though Bresson was born in 1911, his extant work in the cinema
has all been done in the last twenty years, and consists of six feature
films. (He made a short film in 1934 called Les Affaires Publiques,
reportedly a comedy in the manner of Ren Clair; did some work on the
scripts of two obscure commercial films in the mid-thirties; and in 1940
was assistant director to Clair on a film that was never finished.)
Bressons first full-length film was begun when he returned to Paris in
1941after spending eighteen months in a German prison camp. He met a
Dominican priest and writer, Father Brckberger, who suggested that
they collaborate on a film about Bethany, the French Dominican order
devoted to the care and rehabilitation of women ex-convicts. A scenario
was written, Jean Giraudoux was enlisted to write the dialogue, and the

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filmat first called Bthanie and finally, at the producers insistence,

Les Anges du pch (The Angels of Sin, a.k.a. Angels of the Streets)
was released in 1943. It was enthusiastically acclaimed by the critics and
had a success with the public as well.
The plot of his second film, begun in 1944 and released in 1945,
was a modern version of one of the interpolated stories in Diderots great
anti-novel Jacques le fataliste; Bresson wrote the scenario and Jean
Cocteau the dialogue. Bressons first success was not repeated, however.
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (sometimes called The Ladies of the
Park in the United States) was panned by the critics and failed at the
box-office, too. Bressons third film, Le journal dun cur de campagne
(The Diary of a Country Priest), did not appear until 1951; his fourth
film, Un Condamn mort sest chapp (called, here, A Man Escaped),
in 1956; his fifth film, Pickpocket, in 1959; and his sixth film, Procs de
Jeanne dArc (The Trial of Joan of Arc), in 1962.
All have had a certain success with critics but scarcely any with the
publicwith the exception of the last film, which most critics disliked,
too. Once hailed as the new hope of the French cinema, Bresson is now

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firmly labeled as an esoteric director. He has never had the attention of

the art-house audience that flocks to Buuel, Bergman, Fellinithough
he is a far greater director than these; even Antonioni has almost a mass
audience compared with Bressons. And, except among a small coterie,
he has had only the scantest critical attention.
The reason that Bresson is not generally ranked according to his
merits is that the tradition to which his art belongs, the reflective or
contemplative, is not well understood. Particularly in England and
America, Bressons films are often described as cold, remote, overintellectualized, geometrical. But to call a work of art cold means
nothing more or less than to compare it (often unconsciously) to a work
that is hot. And not all art isor could behot, any more than all
persons have the same temperament. The generally accepted notions of
the range of temperament in art are provincial. Certainly, Bresson is cold
next to Pabst or Fellini. (So is Vivaldi cold next to Brahms, and Keaton
cold next to Chaplin.) One has to understand the aestheticsthat is, find
the beautyof such coldness. And Bresson offers a particularly good
case for sketching such an aesthetic, because of his range. Exploring the
possibilities of a reflective, as opposed to an emotionally immediate, art,

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Bresson moves from the diagrammatic perfection of Les Dames du Bois

de Boulogne to the almost lyrical, almost humanistic warmth of Un
Condamn mort sest chapp. He also showsand this is instructive,
toohow such art can become too rarefied, in his last film, Procs de
Jeanne dArc.
3
In reflective art, the form of the work of art is present in an
emphatic way.
The effect of the spectators being aware of the form is to elongate
or to retard the emotions. For, to the extent that we are conscious of
form in a work of art, we become somewhat detached; our emotions do
not respond in the same way as they do in real life.
Awareness of form does two things simultaneously: it gives a
sensuous pleasure independent of the content, and it invites the use of
intelligence. It may be a very low order of reflection which is invited, as,
for instance, by the narrative form (the interweaving of the four separate
stories) of Griffiths Intolerance. But it is reflection, nonetheless.

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The typical way in which form shapes content in art is by doubling,

duplicating. Symmetry and the repetition of motifs in painting, the
double plot in Elizabethan drama, and rhyme schemes in poetry are a few
obvious examples.
The evolution of forms in art is partly independent of the evolution
of subject-matters. (The history of forms is dialectical. As types of
sensibility become banal, boring, and are overthrown by their opposites,
so forms in art are, periodically, exhausted. They become banal,
unstimulating, and are replaced by new forms which are at the same time
anti-forms.) Sometimes the most beautiful effects are gained when the
material and the form are at cross purposes. Brecht does this often:
placing a hot subject in a cold frame. Other times, what satisfies is that
the form is perfectly appropriate to the theme. This is the case with
Bresson.
Why Bresson is not only a much greater, but also a more
interesting director than, say, Buuel is that he has worked out a form
that perfectly expresses and accompanies what he wants to say. In fact,
it is what he wants to say.

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Here, one must carefully distinguish between form and manner.

Welles, the early Ren Clair, Sternberg, Ophls are examples of directors
with unmistakable stylistic inventions. But they never created a rigorous
narrative form. Bresson, like Ozu, has. And the form of Bressons films
is designed (like Ozus) to discipline the emotions at the same time that it
arouses them: to induce a certain tranquility in the spectator, a state of
spiritual balance that is itself the subject of the film.
Reflective art is art that, in effect, imposes a certain discipline on
the audiencepostponing easy gratification. Even boredom can be a
permissible means of such discipline. Giving prominence to what is
artifice in the work of art is another means. One thinks here of Brechts
idea of theater. Brecht advocated strategies of staginglike having a
narrator, putting musicians on stage, interposing filmed scenesand a
technique of acting so that the audience could distance itself, and not
become uncritically involved in the plot and the fate of the characters.
Bresson wishes distance, too. But his aim, I would imagine, is not to
keep hot emotions cool so that intelligence can prevail. The emotional
distance typical of Bressons films seems to exist for a different reason
altogether: because all identification with characters, deeply conceived,

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is an impertinencean affront to the mystery that is human action and

the human heart.
Butall claims for intellectual coolness or respect for the mystery
of action laid asidesurely Brecht knew, as must Bresson, that such
distancing is a source of great emotional power. It is precisely the defect
of the naturalistic theater and cinema that, giving itself too readily, it
easily consumes and exhausts its effects. Ultimately, the greatest source
of emotional power in art lies not in any particular subject matter,
however passionate, however universal. It lies in form. The detachment
and retarding of the emotions, through the consciousness of form, makes
them far stronger and more intense in the end.
4
Despite the venerable critical slogan that film is primarily a visual
medium, and despite the fact that Bresson was a painter before he turned
to making films, form for Bresson is not mainly visual. It is, above all, a
distinctive form of narration. For Bresson film is not a plastic but a
narrative experience.

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Bressons form fulfills beautifully the prescription of Alexandre

Astruc, in his famous essay Le Camra-stylo, written in the late forties.
According to Astruc, the cinema will, ideally, become a language. By a
language I mean the form in which and through which an artist can
express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his
obsessions, just as in an essay or a novel. The film will gradually free
itself from the tyranny of the visual, of the image for its own sake, of the
immediate and concrete anecdote, to become a means of writing as
supple and subtle as the written word. What interests us in the cinema
today is the creation of this language.
Cinema-as-language means a break with the traditional dramatic
and visual way of telling a story in film. In Bressons work, this creation
of a language for films entails a heavy emphasis on the word. In the first
two films, where the action is still relatively dramatic, and the plot
employs a group of characters, language (in the literal sense) appears in
the form of dialogue. This dialogue definitely calls attention to itself. It
is very theatrical dialogue, concise, aphoristic, deliberate, literary. It is
the opposite of the improvised-sounding dialogue favored by the new

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French directorsincluding Godard in Vivre sa vie and Une Femme

marie, the most Bressonian of the New Wave films.
But in the last four films, in which the action has contracted from
that which befalls a group to the fortunes of the lonely self, dialogue is
often displaced by first-person narration. Sometimes the narration can be
justified as providing links between scenes. But, more interestingly, it
often doesnt tell us anything we dont know or are about to learn. It
doubles the action. In this case, we usually get the word first, then the
scene. For example, in Pickpocket: we see the hero writing (and hear his
voice reading) his memoirs. Then we see the scene that he has already
curtly described.
But sometimes we get the scene first, then the explanation, the
description of what has just happened. For example, in Le Journal dun
cur de campagne, there is a scene in which the priest calls anxiously on
the Vicar of Torcy. We see the priest wheeling his bicycle up to the
Vicars door, then the housekeeper answering (the Vicar is obviously not
at home, but we dont hear the housekeepers voice), then the door
shutting, and the priest leaning against it. Then, we hear: I was so

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disappointed, I had to lean against the door. Another example: in Un

Condamn mort sest chapp, we see Fontaine tearing up the cloth of
his pillow, then twisting the cloth around wire that he has stripped off the
bed frame. Then, the voice: I twisted it strongly.
The effect of this line is to punctuate the scene with intervals. It
puts a brake on the spectators direct imaginative participation in the
action. Whether the order is from comment to scene or from scene to
comment, the effect is the same: such doublings of the action both arrest
and intensify the ordinary emotional sequence.
Notice, too, that in the type of doublingwhere we hear whats
going to happen before we see itthere is a deliberate flouting of one of
the traditional modes of narrative involvement: suspense. Again, one
thinks of Brecht. To eliminate suspense, at the beginning of a scene
Brecht announces, by means of placards or a narrator, what is to happen.
(Godard adopts this technique in Vivre sa vie.) Bresson does the same
thing, by jumping the gun with narration. In many ways, the perfect
story for Bresson is that of his last film, Procs de Jeanne dArcin that
the plot is wholly known, foreordained; the words of the actors are not

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invented but those of the actual trial record. Ideally, there is no suspense
in a Bresson film. Thus, in the one film where suspense should normally
play a large role, Un Condamn mort sest chapp, the title
deliberatelyeven awkwardlygives the outcome away: we know
Fontaine is going to make it. In this respect, of course, Bressons escape
film differs from Jacques Beckers last work, Le Trou (called, here,
Nightwatch), though in other ways Beckers excellent film owes a great
deal to Un Condamn mort sest chapp. (It is to Beckers credit that
he was the only prominent person in the French film world who
defended Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne when it came out.)
Thus, form in Bressons films is anti-dramatic, though strongly
linear. Scenes are cut short, and set end to end without obvious
emphasis. In Le Journal dun cur de campagne, there must be thirty
such short scenes. This method of constructing the story is most
rigorously observed in Procs de Jeanne dArc. The film is composed of
static, medium shots of people talking; the scenes are the inexorable
sequence of Jeannes interrogations. The principle of eliding anecdotal
materialin Un Condamn mort sest chapp, for instance, one
knows little about why Fontaine is in prison in the first placeis here

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carried to its extreme. There are no interludes of any sort. An

interrogation ends; the door slams behind Jeanne; the scene fades out.
The key clatters in the lock; another interrogation; again the door clangs
shut; fadeout. It is a very dead-pan contraction, which puts a sharp brake
on emotional involvement.
Bresson also came to reject the species of involvement created in
films by the expressiveness of the acting. Again, one is reminded of
Brecht by Bressons particular way of handling actors, in the exercise of
which he has found it preferable to use non-professionals in major roles.
Brecht wanted the actor to report a role rather than be it. He sought
to divorce the actor from identifying with the role, as he wanted to
divorce the spectator from identifying with the events that he saw being
reported on the stage. The actor, Brecht insists, must remain a
demonstrator; he must present the person demonstrated as a stranger, he
must not suppress the he did that, he said that element in his
performance.
Bresson, working with non-professional actors in his last four films
(he used professionals in Les Anges du pch and Les Dames du Bois de

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Boulogne), also seems to be striving for the same effect of strangeness.

His idea is for the actors not to act out their lines, but simply to say them
with as little expression as possible. (To get this effect, Bresson
rehearses his actors for several months before shooting begins.)
Emotional climaxes are rendered very elliptically.
But the reason is really quite different in the two cases. The reason
that Brecht rejected acting reflects his idea of the relation of dramatic art
to critical intelligence. He thought that the emotional force of the acting
would get in the way of the ideas represented in plays. (From what I saw
of the work of the Berliner Ensemble six years ago, though, it didnt
seem to me that the somewhat low-keyed acting really diminished
emotional involvement; it was the highly stylized staging which did
that.) The reason that Bresson rejects acting reflects his notion of the
purity of the art itself.
Acting is for the theater, which is a bastard art, he has said. The
film can be a true art because in it the author takes fragments of reality
and arranges them in such a way that their juxtaposition transforms
them. Cinema, for Bresson, is a total art, in which acting corrodes. In

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a film, each shot is like a word, which means nothing by itself, or rather
means so many things that in effect it is meaningless. But a word in a
poem is transformed, its meaning made precise and unique, by its placing
in relation to the words around it: in the same way a shot in a film is
given its meaning by its context, and each shot modifies the meaning of
the previous one until with the last shot a total, unparaphrasable meaning
has been arrived at. Acting has nothing to do with that, it can only get in
the way. Films can only be made by bypassing the will of those who
appear in them; by using not what they do, but what they are.
In sum: there are spiritual resources beyond effort, which appear
only when effort is stilled. One imagines that Bresson never treats his
actors to an interpretation of their roles: Claude Laydu, who plays the
priest in Le Journal dun cur de campagne, has said that while he was
making the film he was never told to try to represent sanctity, though that
is what it appears, when viewing the film, that he does. In the end,
everything depends on the actor, who either has this luminous presence
or doesnt. Laydu has it. So does Franois Leterrier, who is Fontaine in
Un Condamn mort sest chapp. But Martin Lasalle as Michel in
Pickpocket conveys something wooden, at times evasive. With Florence

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Carrez in Procs de Jeanne dArc, Bresson has experimented with the

limit of the unexpressive. There is no acting at all; she simply reads the
lines. It could have worked. But it doesntbecause she is the least
luminous of all the presences Bresson has used in his later films. The
thinness of Bressons last film is, partly, a failure of communicated
intensity on the part of the actress who plays Jeanne, upon whom the
film depends.
5
All of Bressons films have a common theme: the meaning of
confinement and liberty. The imageries of the religious vocation and of
crime are used jointly. Both lead to the cell.
The plots all have to do with incarceration and its sequel. Les
Anges du pch takes place mostly inside a convent. Thrse, an exconvict who (unknown to the police) has just murdered the lover who
betrayed her, is delivered into the hands of the Bethany nuns. One young
novice, who tries to create a special relationship with Thrse and,
learning her secret, to get her to surrender herself voluntarily to the
police, is expelled from the convent for insubordination. One morning,

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she is found dying in the convent garden. Thrse is finally moved, and
the last shot is of her extending her hands to the policemans manacles.
In Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, the metaphor of confinement is
repeated several times. Hlne and Jean have been confined in their
love; he urges her to return to the world now that she is free. But she
doesnt, and instead devotes herself to setting a trap for hima trap
which requires that she find two pawns (Agns and her mother), whom
she virtually confines in an apartment while they await her orders. Like
Les Anges du pch, this is the story of the redemption of a lost girl. In
Les Anges du pch, Thrse is liberated by accepting imprisonment; in
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, Agns is imprisoned, and then,
arbitrarily, as by a miracle, is forgiven, set free.
In Le Journal dun cur de campagne, the emphasis has shifted.
The bad girl, Chantal, is kept in the background. The drama of
confinement is in the priests confinement in himself, his despair, his
weakness, his mortal body. (I was a prisoner of the Holy Agony.) He
is liberated by accepting his senseless and agonizing death from stomach
cancer. In Un Condamn mort sest chapp, which is set in a
German-run prison in occupied France, confinement is most literally

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represented. So is liberation: the hero triumphs over himself (his despair,

the temptation of inertia) and escapes. The obstacles are embodied both
in material things and in the incalculability of the human beings in the
vicinity of the solitary hero. But Fontaine risks trusting the two strangers
in the courtyard at the beginning of his imprisonment, and his trust is not
betrayed. And because he risks trusting the youthful collaborationist
who is thrown into his cell with him on the eve of his escape (the
alternative is to kill the boy), he is able to get out.
In Pickpocket, the hero is a young recluse who lives in a closet of a
room, a petty criminal who, in Dostoyevskyan fashion, appears to crave
punishment. Only at the end, when he has been caught and is in jail,
talking through the bars with the girl who has loved him, is he depicted
as being, possibly, able to love. In Procs de Jeanne dArc, again the
entire film is set in prison. As in Le Journal dun cur de campagne,
Jeannes liberation comes through a hideous death; but Jeannes
martyrdom is much less affecting than the priests, because she is so
depersonalized (unlike Falconettis Jeanne in Dreyers great film) that
she does not seem to mind dying.

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The nature of drama being conflict, the real drama of Bressons

stories is interior conflict: the fight against oneself. And all the static and
formal qualities of his films work to that end. Bresson has said, of his
choice of the highly stylized and artificial plot of Les Dames du Bois de
Boulogne, that it allowed him to eliminate anything which might
distract from the interior drama. Still, in that film and the one before it,
interior drama is represented in an exterior form, however fastidious and
stripped down. Les Anges du pch and Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
depict conflicts of wills among the various characters as much or more
than they concern a conflict within the self.
It is only in the films following Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne
that Bressons drama has been really interiorized. The theme of Le
Journal dun cur de campagne is the young priests conflict with
himself: only secondarily is this acted out in his relation with the Vicar
of Torcy, with Chantal, and with the Countess, Chantals mother. This is
even clearer in Un Condamn mort sest chappwhere the principal
character is literally isolated in a cell, struggling against despair.
Solitude and interior conflict pair off in another way in Pickpocket,
where the solitary hero refuses despair only at the price of refusing love,

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and gives himself over to masturbatory acts of theft. But in the last film,
where we know the drama should be taking place, there is scarcely any
evidence of it. Conflict has been virtually suppressed; it must be
inferred. Bressons Jeanne is an automaton of grace. But, however
interior the drama, there must be drama. This is what Procs de Jeanne
dArc withholds. Notice, though, that the interior drama which
Bresson seeks to depict does not mean psychology. In realistic terms,
the motives of Bressons characters are often hidden, sometimes
downright incredible. In Pickpocket, for instance, when Michel sums up
his two years in London with I lost all my money on gambling and
women, one simply does not believe it. Nor is it any more convincing
that during this time the good Jacques, Michels friend, has made Jeanne
pregnant and then deserted her and their child.
Psychological implausibility is scarcely a virtue; and the narrative
passages I have just cited are flaws in Pickpocket. But what is central to
Bresson and, I think, not to be caviled at, is his evident belief that
psychological analysis is superficial. (Reason: it assigns to action a
paraphrasable meaning that true art transcends.) He does not intend his
characters to be implausible, Im sure; but he does, I think, intend them

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to be opaque. Bresson is interested in the forms of spiritual actionin

the physics, as it were, rather than in the psychology of souls. Why
persons behave as they do is, ultimately, not to be understood.
(Psychology, precisely, does claim to understand.) Above all, persuasion
is inexplicable, unpredictable. That the priest does reach the proud and
unyielding Countess (in Le Journal dun cur de campagne), that Jeanne
doesnt persuade Michel (in Pickpocket), are just factsor mysteries, if
you like. Such a physics of the soul was the subject of Simone Weils
most remarkable book, Gravity and Grace. And the following sentences
of Simone Weils
All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous
to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.
Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to
receive it, and it is grace itself that makes this void.
The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through
which grace might pass.
supply the three basic theorems of Bressons anthropology. Some
souls are heavy, others light; some are liberated or capable of being

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liberated, others not. All one can do is be patient, and as empty as

possible. In such a regimen there is no place for the imagination, much
less for ideas and opinions. The ideal is neutrality, transparence. This is
what is meant when the Vicar of Torcy tells the young priest in Le
Journal dun cur de campagne, A priest has no opinions.
Except in an ultimate unrepresentable sense, a priest has no
attachments either. In the quest for spiritual lightness (grace),
attachments are a spiritual encumbrance. Thus, the priest, in the
climactic scene of Le journal dun cur de campagne, forces the
Countess to relinquish her passionate mourning for her dead son. True
contact between persons is possible, of course; but it comes not through
will but unasked for, through grace. Hence in Bressons films human
solidarity is represented only at a distanceas it is between the priest
and the Vicar of Torcy in Le Journal dun cur de campagne, or between
Fontaine and the other prisoners in Un Condamn mort sest chapp.
The actual coming together of two people in a relation of love can be
stated, ushered in, as it were, before our eyes: Jean crying out Stay! I
love you! to the nearly dead Agns in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne;
Fontaine putting his arm around Jost in Un Condamn mort sest

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chapp; Michel in Pickpocket saying to Jeanne through prison bars,

How long it has taken me to come to you. But we do not see love
lived. The moment in which it is declared terminates the film.
In Un Condamn mort sest chapp, the elderly man in the
adjoining cell asks the hero, querulously, Why do you fight? Fontaine
answers, To fight against myself. The true fight against oneself is
against ones heaviness, ones gravity. And the instrument of this fight
is the idea of work, a project, a task. In Les Anges du pch, it is AnneMaries project of saving Thrse. In Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne,
it is the revenge plot of Hlne. These tasks are cast in traditional
formconstantly referring back to the intention of the character that
performs them, rather than decomposed into separately engrossing acts
of behavior. In Le Journal dun cur de campagne (which is transitional
in this respect) the most affecting images are not those of the priest in his
role, struggling for the souls of his parishioners, but of the priest in his
homely moments: riding his bicycle, removing his vestments, eating
bread, walking.

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In Bressons next two films, work has dissolved into the idea of
the-infinite-taking-of-pains. The project has become totally concrete,
incarnate, and at the same time more impersonal. In Un Condamn
mort sest chapp, the most powerful scenes are those that show the
hero absorbed in his labors: Fontaine scraping at his door with the spoon,
Fontaine sweeping the wood shavings which have fallen on the floor into
a tiny pile with a single straw pulled from his broom. (One month of
patient workmy door opened.) In Pickpocket, the emotional center of
the film is where Michel is wordlessly, disinterestedly, taken in hand by
a professional pickpocket and initiated into the real art of what he has
only practiced desultorily: difficult gestures are demonstrated, the
necessity of repetition and routine is made clear. Large sections of Un
Condamn mort sest chapp and Pickpocket are wordless; they are
about the beauties of personality effaced by a project. The face is very
quiet, while other parts of the body, represented as humble servants of
projects, become expressive, transfigured. One remembers Thrse
kissing the white feet of the dead Anne-Marie at the end of Les Anges du
pch, the bare feet of the monks filing down the stone corridor in the
opening sequence of Procs de Jeanne dArc. One remembers

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Fontaines large, graceful hands at their endless labors in Un Condamn

mort sest chapp, the ballet of agile, thieving hands in Pickpocket.
Through the projectexactly contrary to imaginationone
overcomes the gravity that weighs down the spirit. Even Les Dames du
Bois de Boulogne, whose story seems most un-Bressonian, rests on this
contrast between a project and gravity (or, immobility). Hlne has a
projectshe revenges herself on Jean. But she is immobile, toofrom
suffering and vengefulness. Only in Procs de Jeanne dArc, the most
Bressonian of stories, is this contrast (to the detriment of the film) not
exploited. Jeanne has no project. Or if she may be said to have a
project, her martyrdom, we only know about it; we are not privy to its
development and consummation. She appears to be passive, if alone in
her cell. Bressons last film seems next to the others, so undialectical.
6
Jean Cocteau has said (in Cocteau on the Film, a conversation
recorded by Andr Fraigneau in 1951) that minds and souls today live
without a syntax, that is to say, without a moral system. This moral
system has nothing to do with morality proper, and should be built up by

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each one of us as an inner style, without which no outer style is

possible. Cocteaus films may be understood as portraying this
inwardness that is the true morality; so may Bressons. Both are
concerned, in their films, with depicting spiritual style. This similarity is
less than obvious because Cocteau conceives of spiritual style
aesthetically, while in at least three of his films (Les Anges du pch, Le
Journal dun cur de campagne, and Procs de Jeanne dArc) Bresson
seems committed to an explicit religious point of view. But the
difference is not as great as it appears. Bressons Catholicism is a
language for rendering a certain vision of human action, rather than a
position that is stated. (For contrast, compare the direct piety of
Rossellinis The Flowers of Saint Francis and the complex debate on
faith expounded in Melvilles Leon Marin, Prtre.) The proof of this is
that Bresson is able to say the same thing without Catholicismin his
three other films.
In fact, the most entirely successful of all Bressons filmsUn
Condamn mort sest chappis one that, while it has a sensitive and
intelligent priest in the background (one of the prisoners), bypasses the
religious way of posing the problem. The religious vocation supplies

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one setting for ideas about gravity, lucidity, and martyrdom. But the
drastically secular subjects of crime, the revenge of betrayed love, and
the solidarity of imprisonment also yield the same themes. Bresson is
really more like Cocteau than appearsan ascetic Cocteau, Cocteau
divesting himself of sensuousness, Cocteau without poetry. The aim is
the same: to build up an image of spiritual style. But the sensibility,
needless to say, is altogether different. Cocteaus is a clear example of
the homosexual sensibility that is one of the principal traditions of
modern art: both romantic and witty, languorously drawn to physical
beauty and yet always decorating itself with stylishness and artifice.
Bressons sensibility is anti-romantic and solemn, pledged to ward off
the easy pleasures of physical beauty and artifice for a pleasure that is
more permanent, more edifying, more sincere.
In the evolution of this sensibility, Bressons cinematic means
become more and more chaste. His first two films, which were
photographed by Philippe Agostini, stress visual effects in a way that the
other four do not. Bressons very first film, Les Anges du pch, is more
conventionally beautiful than any that have followed. And in Les Dames
du Bois de Boulogne, whose beauty is more muted, there are lyrical

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camera movements, like the shot that follows Hlne running down the
stairs to arrive at the same time as Jean, who is descending in an elevator,
and stunning cuts, like the one that moves from Hlne alone in her
bedroom, stretched out on the bed, saying, I will be revenged, to the
first shot of Agns, in a crowded nightclub, wearing tights and net
stockings and top hat, in the throes of a sexy dance.
Extremes of black and white succeed one another with great
deliberateness. In Les Anges du pch, the darkness of the prison scene
is set off by the whiteness of the convent wall and of the nuns robes. In
Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, the contrasts are set by clothes even
more than by interiors. Hlne always wears long black velvet, whatever
the occasion. Agns has three costumes: the scant black dancing outfit in
which she appears the first time, the light-colored trench coat she wears
during most of the film, and the white wedding dress at the end. The last
four films, which were photographed by L. H. Burel, are much less
striking visually, less chic. The photography is almost self-effacing.
Sharp contrasts, as between black and white, are avoided. (It is almost
impossible to imagine a Bresson film in color.) In Le Journal dun cur
de campagne, for instance, one is not particularly aware of the blackness

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of the priests habit. One barely notices the bloodstained shirt and dirty
pants that Fontaine has on throughout Un Condamn mort sest
chapp or the drab suits that Michel wears in Pickpocket. Clothes and
interiors are as neutral, inconspicuous, functional as possible.
Besides refusing the visual, Bressons later films also renounce
the beautiful. None of his non-professional actors are handsome in an
outward sense. Ones first feeling when seeing Claude Laydu (the priest
in Le Journal dun cur de campagne), Franois Leterrier (Fontaine in
Un Condamn mort sest chapp), Martin Lasalle (Michel in
Pickpocket), and Florence Carrez (Jeanne in Procs de Jeanne dArc), is
how plain they are. Then, at some point or other, one begins to see the
face as strikingly beautiful. The transformation is most profound, and
satisfying, with Franois Leterrier as Fontaine. Here lies an important
difference between the films of Cocteau and Bresson, a difference that
indicates the special place of Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne in
Bressons work; for this film (for which Cocteau wrote the dialogue) is
in this respect very Cocteauish. Maria Casars black-garbed, demonic
Hlne is, visually and emotionally, of a piece with her brilliant
performance in Cocteaus Orphe (1950). She is very much a hard-

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edged character, a character with a motive that remains constant

throughout the story, but this is very different from the treatment of
character typical of Bresson, in Le Journal dun cur de campagne, Un
Condamn mort sest chapp, and Pickpocket. In the course of each
of these three films, there is a subliminal revelation: a face that seems
plain reveals itself to be beautiful: a character that at first seems opaque
becomes oddly and inexplicably transparent. But in Cocteaus films
and in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogneneither character nor beauty is
revealed. They are there to be assumed, to be transposed into drama.
While the spiritual style of Cocteaus heroes (who are played,
usually, by Jean Marais) tends toward narcissism, the spiritual style of
Bressons heroes is one variety or other of unself-consciousness. (Hence
the role of the project in Bressons films: it absorbs the energies that
would otherwise be spent on the self. It effaces personality, in the sense
of personality as what is idiosyncratic in each human being, the limit
inside which we are locked.) Consciousness of self is the gravity that
burdens the spirit; the surpassing of the consciousness of self is grace,
or spiritual lightness. The climax of Cocteaus films is a voluptuous
movement: a falling down, either in love (Orphe) or death (LAigle a

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Deux Ttes, Lternal Retour); or a soaring up (La Belle et la Bte).

With the exception of Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (with its final
glamorous image, shot from above, of Jean bending over Agns, who
lies on the floor like a great white bird), the end of Bressons films is
counter-voluptuous, reserved.
While Cocteaus art is irresistibly drawn to the logic of dreams, and
to the truth of invention over the truth of real life, Bressons art moves
increasingly away from the story and toward documentary. Le Journal
dun cur de campagne is a fiction drawn from the superb novel of the
same name by Georges Bernanos. But the journal device allows Bresson
to relate the fiction in a quasi-documentary fashion. The film opens with
a shot of a notebook and a hand writing in it, followed by a voice on the
soundtrack reading what has been written. Many scenes start with the
priest writing in his journal. The film ends with a letter from a friend to
the Vicar of Torcy relating the priests deathwe hear the words while
the whole screen is occupied with the silhouette of a cross. Before Un
Condamn mort sest chapp begins we read the words on the screen:
This story actually happened. I have set it down without
embellishment, and then: Lyons, 1943. (Bresson had the original of

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Fontaine constantly present while the film was being made, to check on
its accuracy.) Pickpocket, again a fiction, is toldpartlythrough
journal form. Bresson returned to documentary in Procs de Jeanne
dArc, this time with the greatest severity.
Even music, which aided in setting tone in the earlier films, has
been discarded. The use of the Mozart Mass in C minor in Un
Condamn mort sest chapp, of Lully in Pickpocket, is particularly
brilliant; but all that survives of music in Procs de Jeanne dArc is the
drum beat at the opening of the film. Bressons attempt is to insist on the
irrefutability of what he is presenting. Nothing happens by chance; there
are no alternatives, no fantasy; everything is inexorable. Whatever is not
necessary, whatever is merely anecdotal or decorative, must be left out.
Unlike Cocteau, Bresson wishes to pare downrather than to enlarge
the dramatic and visual resources of the cinema. (In this, Bresson again
reminds one of Ozu, who in the course of his thirty years of filmmaking
renounced the moving camera, the dissolve, the fade.)
True, in the last, most ascetic of all his films, Bresson seems to
have left out too much, to have overrefined his conception. But a

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conception as ambitious as this cannot help but have its extremism, and
Bressons failures are worth more than most directors successes. For
Bresson, art is the discovery of what is necessaryof that and nothing
more. The power of Bressons six films lies in the fact that his purity
and fastidiousness are not just an assertion about the resources of the
cinema, as much of modern painting is mainly a comment in paint about
painting. They are at the same time an idea about life, about what
Cocteau called inner style, about the most serious way of being human.

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The Question: Interview with Robert Bresson, by Jean-Luc

Godard and Michel Delahaye, from Cahiers du cinma in English, #8
(February 1967), pp. 5-27.
For those of us who had the privilege of seeing Au hasard,
Balthazar some weeks ago, there is no doubt that we witnessed one of
the most significant events of the cinema, astoundingly meaningful both
in its own right and as a fusion of themes from previous Bresson films.
Therefore we asked Jean-Luc Godard and Michel Delahaye to meet
Robert Bresson. The following interview is one of the longest we have
ever published, and the most significant statement by Bresson himself up
to now. In future issues, we will continue our criticism of Au hasard,
Balthazar, an extraordinary film, with other instruments of
investigation, among them, a round-table discussion.
JEAN-LUC GODARDI have the impression that this film,
Balthazar, reflects something that goes back a long time, something
you had been thinking about for fifteen years, perhaps, and to which all
the films that you made then were tending. That is why one has the
impression of finding again in Balthazar all your other films. In fact: it
was your other films that prefigured this, as if they were fragments of it.
ROBERT BRESSONI had been thinking about it for a long time, but
without working on it. That is to say that I worked on it by fits, and it
was very hard. I wearied myself at it rather quickly. It was hard, too,

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from the point of view of composition. For I did not want to make a film
of sketches, but I wanted, too, for the donkey to pass through a certain
number of human groupswhich represent the vices of humanity. So it
was necessary that these human groups overlap one another.
It was necessary, toogiven that the life of a donkey is a very even
life, very sereneto find a movement, a dramatic rise.

So it was

necessary to find a character who would be parallel to the donkey, and

who would have that movement; who would give the film the dramatic
rise that was necessary for it. It was just then that I thought of a girl. Of
the lost girl. Or ratherof the girl who loses herself.
GODARDIn choosing that character, were you thinking of characters
from your other films? Because, seeing Balthazar today, one has the
impression that this character has lived in your films, that it has passed
through them all. I mean that, with it, one meets, too, the pickpocket,
and Chantal. Consequently your film seems the most complete of all. It
is the total film. In itself, and in relation to you. Have you that feeling?
BRESSONI did not have that feeling in making the film, but I believe
that I have been thinking about it for ten or twelve years. Not in a
continuous way. There were periods of calm, of complete non-thought,

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which might last two or three years. I took it up, that film, dropped it,
took it up again. At times, I simply found it too difficult, and I thought
that I would never do it.
So you are right to think that I had been reflecting on it for a long
time. And it may be that one finds again in it what was, or what was to
be, in other films of mine. It seems to me that it is also the freest film
that I have made, the one into which I have put the most of myself.
You knowit is so difficult, ordinarily, to put something of oneself
into a film that must be accepted by a producer. But I believe that it is
good, that it is even indispensable, that the films we make partake of our
experience. I mean, that they not be works solely of mise en scne.
At least what people call mise en scne, and which is the
execution of a plan (and I mean plan in both its senses, a shot and a
project). So a film must not be the mere execution of a plan, even of a
plan that is your own, and still less that of a plan which would be
another persons.
GODARDWould you have the impression that your other films were
more films of mise en scne?
impression.

As for me, I do not have that

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BRESSONThat is not what I meant. But, for example, when I took as

ground of departure the Journal dun cur de campagne, which is a
book by Bernanos, or that narrative of Commandant Devigny that is the
basis of Un Condamn mort sest chapp, I took a story that was
not by me, that was accepted by a producer, and into which I tried my
best to put myself.
Note well that I do not think it a very serious matter to start from an
idea that is not by you. But, in the case of Balthazar, it is possible that
the fact of starting from a personal idea, into which I had already put a
great deal of thought, even before the work that I had to do on paper, it is
possible that this fact is responsible for the impression that you hadand
which pleases me very much, to know that I have truly put myself into
this film, even more than in my other films.
GODARDI met you once during the shooting, and you said to me, It
is very difficult; I am more or less in the process of improvising. What
did you mean by that?
BRESSONFor me, improvisation is at the base of creation in cinema.
But it is true also that, for a work so complicated, it is necessary to have

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a base, a solid base. For one to be able to modify a thing, it is necessary

that, at the start, that thing be very clear and very strong.
Because if there has not been, not only a very clear vision of things,
but also writing on paper, one risks getting lost in it all. One risks
getting lost in that labyrinth of extremely complex donnes.

By

contrast, one feels all the more freedom vis--vis the very foundation of
the film, because one has compelled oneself to encircle that foundation
and to build it firmly.
GODARDTo take an example: I have the impression that the scene of
the sheep who are dying, at the end, was one of the scenes that were
more improvised than the others. Perhaps at the start you had thought of
only three or four sheep?
BRESSONThat is true as to the improvisation, but not as to the number. For there, in fact, I had thought of three or four thousand sheep.
Only, I did not have them. It is here that the improvisation came in. It
was necessary, for example, to confine them between fences so that the
flock would not appear too meager (a little like the problem of the forest,
of which one can give the illusion with three or four trees). But, in all
cases, it seems to me that what comes abruptly, without reflection, is the

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best of what one does, as it seems to me that I have done the best of what
I have done when I found myself resolving with the camera difficulties
that I had not been able to overcome on paper, and that I had left blank.
And when that happens oftennow I have grown accustomed to
itone understands that the sight of things abruptly found again behind
the camera, when you have not been able to arrive at them by words and
ideas set on paper, makes you discover or rediscover them in the most
cinematographic way there is, that is to say in the strongest and the most
creative way.
MICHEL DELAHAYEYou seemed to say a little while ago that
there was something more in your last film. I believe that a director
always sees or puts something more in the latest film that he has made,
but it seems you were thinking of some specific circumstances that made
it possible for you to put into Balthazar things which you had not put into
your other films.
GODARDAnd then, I believe that one can say that, for the first time,
you tell or describe several things at once (without my putting into that
the slightest pejorative meaning), when, until now (and in Pickpocket, for
example), everything happened as if you were seeking or following one

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thread, as if you were exploring only a single vein. Here there are
several veins at once.
BRESSONI believe that, in fact, the lines of my other films were
rather simple, rather apparent, while that of Balthazar is made of many
lines that intersect one another. And it was the contacts among them,
even chance, that provoked creation, at the same time that it provoked
me, perhaps unconsciously, to put more of myself into this film. Now, I
believe very much in intuitive work. But only in the kind that has been
preceded by a long reflection.
composition.

And notably by a reflection on

For it seems to me that the composition is a very

important thing, and perhaps even that the film is born first from its
composition. Especially if it can be arranged that this composition is
spontaneous, that it is born from improvisation. But in any case, it is the
composition that makes the film. In fact, we take elements that already
exist; so what counts is the relation among things, and thereby, finally,
the composition into which they all fit.
Now, it is the relation among things that you establishsometimes
intuitivelythat best allows you to orient yourself, to prepare yourself
for the actual filming. And I am thinking of another fact: it is also by

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intuition that one discovers a person. In any case, more by intuition than
by reflection. In Balthazar, the abundance of things to deal with, and the
difficulties that, for this reason, the film represented, perhaps made me
try my best: first, at the time of the writing on paper, and then, at the time
of the shooting, for everything was extremely difficult. Thus, I had not
realized that three quarters of the shots of my film were exteriors,
situated in the open air. Now, if you think of the downpour of last
summer, you see what that could represent in the way of an additional
difficulty. All the more so because I was trying to take all my shots in
sunlightand actually, I did shoot them in sunlight.
GODARDWhy did you insist so much on sunlight?
BRESSONIt is very simple: because I have seen too many films in
which it was gray or dark outsidewhich, moreover, could give rise to
beautiful effectsand in which suddenly one entered sunlit rooms.
Now, I have always found that unendurable. But that often happens
when one passes from interiors to exteriors, for in the interior there is
always added light, artificial, and when one passes to the exterior it is no
longer there. Whence an absolutely false shift. Now, you knowand
you surely feel as I do on this pointthat I am a maniac for truth. And

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for that matter, in the slightest of things. Now, a false lighting is as dangerous as a false word or a false gesture. Whence my care to balance
lights in such a way that, when one enters a house, there is always less
lightcertainly less sunlightthan outside. Is that clear?
GODARDYes, yes. That is clear.
BRESSONThere is also another reason, which is perhaps more
precise, deeper.

You know that I moveI think moreover without

seeking ittoward simplification. And here I make it explicit at once: I

believe that simplification is a thing that one must never seek; when one
has worked enough, simplification should come of itself. What is very
bad is to seek simplification, or simplicity, too soon, which leads to bad
painting, bad literature, bad poetry. So I move toward simplification
and I scarcely realize itbut this simplification requires, from the
standpoint of taking photographs, a certain strength, a certain vigor.
Now, if I simplify my action, and at the same time the image fails
(because the contours are not sufficiently sketched in, or the perspective
is not sufficiently embodied), I risk a total failure of the sequence.
I am going to give you an example, chosen from my last film,
Balthazar. If, in the love sceneactually, the beginning of the love

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scenethe photography had failed, had become gray, the action, which
is extremely simple and which hangs on very subtle threads or very
slender elements, would have failed completely; there would no longer
have been a love scene. But I believe, as you do, that photographyor
cinematographyis a pernicious thing for us, that is to say too easy a
thing, too convenient, for which one must almost have oneself pardoned,
but which one must nonetheless know how to use.
GODARDYes, it is necessary, if one can say so, to violate
photography, to put it in its place.

But as for me, I go about it

differently, for I amlet us say more impulsive. In any case, one must
not take it for what it is. I mean, for example, that because you wanted
sunlight so that the photography would not fail, by that you were, in a
sense, forcing it to keep its dignity, its rigor, which three-quarters of the
other directors do not do.
BRESSONThat is to say you must know exactly what you want to
have plasticallyand do what is necessary to get it. The image that you
have in mind, you must foresee, that is to say, see it in advance, literally
see it on the screen (while taking into account the fact that there risks
being a disparity, even a complete difference, between what you see and

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what you will have), and you must make that image exactly as you want
to see it, as you see it, even as you create it.
GODARDGenerally they say of you that you are the cinaste of the
ellipsis. When one thinks of people who see your films with that idea in
mind, it is certain that in Balthazar you break all records. Ill give an
example: in the scene of the two automobile accidentsif one can say
that, since one sees only onehad you the feeling of making an ellipsis
in showing only the first? As for me, I think that you had the feeling not
of having eliminated a shot, but simply of having put one shot after
another shot. Is that true?
BRESSONConcerning the two automobile skids, I think that, since
one has already seen the first, it is useless to see the second one, too. I
prefer to have it imagined. If I had had it imagined the first time, at that
point, there would have been something missing. And then, as for me, I
rather like to see it; I think that it is pretty, an automobile that turns
round on the road. But after that, I prefer to have it imagined with the
help of a sound, for every time that I can replace an image by a sound I
do so. And I do so more and more.

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GODARDAnd if you could replace all the images with sounds? I am

thinking of a kind of inversion of the functions of the image and the
sound. One could have the images, of course, but it would be the sound
that would be the significant element.
BRESSONAs to that, it is true that the ear is much more creative than
the eye. The eye is lazy; the ear, on the contrary, invents. In any case, it
is much more attentive, while the eye is content to receiveexcept in the
rare cases when it invents, but then in fantasy. The ear is a much deeper
sense, and very evocative. The whistle of a locomotive, for example, can
evoke, imprint in your mind, the vision of an entire railroad station,
sometimes of a specific station that you know, sometimes of the
atmosphere of a station, or of a railroad track, with the train stopped.
The possible evocations are innumerable. What is good, too, with sound
is that it leaves the spectator free. And it is towards this that we should
tendto leave the spectator as free as possible.
GODARDThat is what many people sayResnais, for example.
BRESSONYou must leave the spectator free. And at the same time
you must make yourself loved by him. You must make him love the way
in which you render things. That is to say: show him things in the order

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and in the way that you love to see them and to feel them; make him feel
them, in presenting them to him, as you see them and feel them yourself.
And do all this while leaving him great freedom, while making him free.
Now, this freedom, precisely, is greater with sound than with the image.
DELAHAYEIn your films, especially in Balthazar, this amount of
freedom that one has toward sounds and images, is in fact engaged in the
deepest sense; it is moved in a well-determined direction that is the
product of your own vision. You said a little while ago, for example,
that you wanted to paint the vices of humanity. So you impart in the
spectator a certain vision of humanity and its vices.
BRESSONYes, of course. And I come back to what I said a second
ago: the principal thing is that, in the end, it is not a matter of working
for an audience.

There is nothing more stupid, more vulgar, than

working for an audience. Well. That said, it is necessary to do what it is

necessary to do. And, with respect to thatle public, cest moi. I mean
that if I try to represent to myself what the audience will feel, I cannot
help but say to myself: The audience, it is I. So, one does not work for
an audience. But what one tries to do should suffice all the same. For
we have, ultimately, the same chances of acceptance by the audience as a

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painter does, for example, but in both cases only after some time. Thus
the other day someone asked me the question, Do you believe that a
single film of yours could affect people? It can, perhaps, affect some
people, but I do not believe that a single painting by Czanne has made
people understand or love Czanne, has made them feel as Czanne did.
It takes a great many paintings! Imagine a painter painting a Czanne
under Louis XIV. Absolutely no one would have or could have. In
short, had someone done so, they would have put the painting in the
attic!
So it takes us several films. And, as we go on making films, it is
good, and it is agreeable, to feel that the audience, suddenly, is trying to
put itself in our place and to love what we love. To sum up, it is a matter
of making ourselves loved. Loved, in what we love, and in the way in
which we love things and people.
But from what point did we set out in this discussion?
DELAHAYEFrom the vision that you had of things, from the
direction in which you wished to take your vision.
BRESSONGood.

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GODARDIn humanity, why precisely the vices? As for me, I did not
see only the vices.
BRESSONThe film started from two ideas, from two schemata, if you
will. First schema: the donkey has in his life the same stages as does a
man, that is to say, childhood, caresses; maturity, work; talent, genius in
the middle of life; and the analytical period that precedes death. Well.
Second schema, which crosses the first or which starts from it: the
passage of this donkey through different human groups
representing the vices of humanity, from which he suffers, and
from which he dies.
There are the two schemata, and that is why I spoke of the
vices of humanity.
For the donkey cannot suffer from goodness, or from
charity, or from intelligence. He must suffer from what makes
us, ourselves, suffer.
GODARDAnd in all of that Marie, I dare say, is another
donkey.
BRESSONYes, precisely: she is the character parallel to the
donkey, and who ends by suffering like him. Example: in the

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misers house. One refuses food to her (she is even forced to

steal a pot of jam) in the same way that one refuses oats to the
donkey. She undergoes the same jolts as he. She undergoes
lust, too. She undergoes, not rape, perhaps, not exactly, but
something that is almost a rape.
In the end, you see what I sought to do, and it was very
difficult, for it was necessary that the two schemata about
which I have just spoken not give the effect of a system; it was
necessary that they not be systematic. It was necessary, too,
that the donkey not return like a leitmotif with his judges eye,
and look upon what humanity does.
That was the danger. It was necessary to obtain a thing
rather structured, but which would not appear so, just as the
vices must not appear to be there only in order to be vices and
to harass the donkey.
If I said vices, that is because at the start it was indeed
vices from which the donkey must suffer, but I attenuated this
systematic aspect so that the construction, the composition,
could immediately absorb it.

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GODARDAnd the character of Arnold, if it were necessary

to define him? It is not that I would want to define him at all
costs, but, in the end, if one had to do so, if one absolutely had
to provide a key for him, or to have him represent something,
what could one say of him?
BRESSONHe represents drunkenness a little, that is to say,
gluttony, but at the same time for me he represents nobility
that is to say, a certain freedom or openness toward men.
GODARDYes. For, when one sees him, one is compelled to
think that he even has a little of the look of Christ about him.
BRESSONYes, but I did not seek that. Not at all. He
represents first of all drunkenness, since when he is not drunk
he is gentle, and when he is drunk he beats the donkeythat is
to say, he reveals thereby one of the things that must be the
most incomprehensible for an animal, to know that the same
person can be changed into another person by swallowing a
bottle of liquid. And that is a thing that must astound animals,
the thing from which they must suffer the most.

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At the same time, in this character, I felt nobility

immediately. And perhaps, too, I felt a parallelism with the
donkey: they, the man and the donkey, have in common a
certain sensitivity to things. And that, one can find in certain
animals, who are very sensitive to objectsan animal can
flinch, can shy, you know, at the sight of an object. This is
because objects count very much for animals, more, sometimes,
than for us, who are accustomed to them, and who, unhappily,
do not always pay attention to them.
So there is the parallelism. I felt it, but I did not seek it
out. All that came spontaneously. I did not want to be too
systematic. But as soon as there was nobility, of course I felt
that. I did not press it, but I let it act.
It is very interesting to start from a rather strict schema,
and then to discover how one handles it, how one ends with
something much more subtle and even, from a certain point of
view, more intuitive.

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GODARDI think, all of a sudden, that you are someone who

loves painting very much.
BRESSON1 am a painter. And perhaps that is the reason,
precisely, that you think as you do. For I am scarcely a writer.
I write, yes, but I force myself to write, and I writeI
realizea little as I paint (or rather, as I painted, for I no
longer paint, but I will paint again): that is to say that I am
unable to write a continuous passage or paragraph. I am able
to write from left to right, and thus to align some words, but I
cannot do it for a long time, or in continuity.
GODARDTo make cinema, precisely, one has no need of
that ability.

It is the cinema in itself that constitutes the

passage or the page.

It is there from the start, and one

absolutely no longer needs to concern oneself with it.

BRESSONYes, but then you are speaking of the general
composition of the film. As for me, when I write, I write as I
use color: I put a little on the left, a little on the right, a little
in the middle, I stop, I start again; and it is only when there
begin to be some things written that I am no longer annihilated

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by the blank page, and that I begin to fill in the holes. You
see: it is not at all a passage or a paragraph that I write. So,
the film is made somewhat in this way. That is to say, I set
some things at the start, some others at the finish, others still
in the middle; I take notes when I think about itevery year,
or every two yearsand it is the assemblage of all that that
ends by making the film, as colors on a canvas end in coming
together to create the relationship of one element to another.
But the great risk of the film was its lacking unity.
Fortunately, I knew the dangers of dispersion that lie in wait
for a film (and that is the greatest danger that it can run, the
trap into which it almost always falls); I knew that this unity
would be very difficult to find, I was very much afraid that my
film would not find it.
Perhaps it has less unity than other films, but perhaps that
is, as you were saying a little while ago, an advantage.
GODARDAs for me, I only wanted to say that your other
films were straight lines, and that this one is made rather of
concentric circlesif it is necessary to give an image to com-

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pare themand of sets of concentric circles that cut across one

another.
DELAHAYEEverything happens as if there were several
films in one, several film subjects nonetheless unified into one.
BRESSONThat is a little what I fearedand if you feel that,
it does not much please mefor that was really the great
difficulty, with the danger that it involved of a loss of attention
on the part of the spectator. In fact it is very difficult to catch
the attention of the spectator when you take one character, drop
him, take another, then return to the firstfor the attention
dies. I know that this film has less unity than the others, but I
tried my utmost to let it have one all the same, thinking that,
thanks to the donkey and in spite of everything, the unity
would find itself again in the end.

I could not do otherwise

than as I did.
The film perhaps also has a unity of cinematographic
vision, a unity of angle, a unity in the way in which I cut the
sequences up into shots. For all that can give unity to a film,
too. This includes the way the characters speak.

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That is, moreover, what I always seek: that the people in

my films almost all speak in the same way.
To sum up: it is through form that one finds unity again.
DELAHAYEAs for me, I wanted, a little while ago, to
stress, not the plurality in Balthazar, but the unity. And I
wanted

to

say

precisely

that,

beyond

the

diversity

of

elementsand it is fabulousall the same the film finds unity

again.
BRESSONThen, in that sense, I am pleased.
GODARDAnd how do you see questions of formif one can
put it that way? I know indeed that one does not think about
that so much, in any case at the time, but one thinks about it
before, and one thinks about it afterwards. For example, when
one makes a dcoupage, one does not think about it.

At the

same time, I always ask myself, afterwards: why did I cut in

this place rather than that place?

And at other moments as

well, this is the one thing I cannot succeed in understanding:

why cut here and not there?

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BRESSONI believe, as you do, that this is a thing that must

become purely intuitive. If it is not intuitive, it is bad. In any
case, for me it is the most important thing.
GODARDIt must, all the same, be capable of analysis.
BRESSONAs for me, I see my film only through its form. It
is curious: when I see it again, I no longer see anything but the
shots. I do not know at all if the film is moving or not.
GODARDI believe that it requires a very long time to reach
the point of being able to see one of ones own films. One day
you are in a little village, in Japan or somewhere else, and then
you see your film again. At that moment, you can receive your
film as an unknown object, in the same way as an ordinary
spectator would. But I believe that this requires really a very
long time in order to occur.

It requires, too, not being

prepared to receive the film.

BRESSONAs for me, and I come back to it, I attach
enormous importance to form. Enormous importance. And I
believe that the form leads to the rhythms. Now the rhythms
are all-powerful.

That is the first thing.

Even when one

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records the narration for a film, this narration is seen, felt, at

first as a rhythm; then it is a color (it can be cold or warm)
then it has a meaning. But the meaning arrives last.
Now, I believe that access to the audience is before
everything else a matter of rhythm. I am convinced of that.
So in the composition of a shot, of a sequence, at first
there is the rhythm.

But the composition ought not to be

premeditated, it ought to be purely intuitive.

For example,

such a situationone that calls for the use of intuitionarises

especially when we shoot out of doors, and when we approach
a setting absolutely unknown the day before.
novelty, we must improvise.

In the face of

That is what is very good: the

necessity to find, and quickly, a new equilibrium for the shot

we are trying to create.
To sum up: I do not believe in too long a period of
reflection there, on location, either. Reflection reduces things
to no longer being anything but the execution of a shot.
Thingscinematic thingsmust happen impulsively.

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GODARDYour ideas on cinema, how have they evolved?

How do you film today, in relation to yesterday or to the day
before?

And how do you conceive of cinema after your last

film? As for me, I realize today that in the past, three or four
years ago, I had certain ideas about the cinema.

Now I no

longer have them. And to have any, I am forced to continue to

make cinema until I give myself new ones. Let me ask, then:
how do you yourself feel in relation to the cinema? I do not
say in relation to the cinema that is being made now, but in
relation to the art of cinema in general.
BRESSONActually, I must tell you how I feel in relation to
the cinema that is being made. Only yesterday, someone said
to me (it is a reproach that people make to me sometimes,
without intending it, but it is one nevertheless): Why do you
never go to see films? For that is absolutely true: I do not go
to see them. And thats because they frighten me. Precisely,
and quite simply, for that reason. Because I feel that I separate
myself from them, that I separate myself from present-day
films, from day to day and more and more. And this frightens

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me extremely, for I see all those films being accepted by the

audience, and I do not at all see my own films being accepted
by the audience. And I am afraid. Afraid to offer a thing to an
audience that is sensitized to another thing and that would be
desensitized to what I do.

But there is this in it, toothat

going to see a film from time to time does interest me.

order to see what disparity there is.

In

Then I realize that,

without intending it, I move farther and farther away from a

cinema that, in my opinion, has set off on the wrong foot; that
is to say, it is sinking into the music hall, into photographed
theater, and as a result it is losing completely its strength and
its interest, and not only its interest, but its power. And that is
ultimately a move toward catastrophe.
Not that films cost too much, or that television is a rival,
no, but simply because this cinema is not an art, although it
pretends to be one; it is only a false art, which tries to express
itself under the guise of another art. Now, there is nothing
worse and more ineffective than that kind of art.

146

As to what I myself try to make, with images and with

sounds, of course I have the impression that it is I who am not
mistaken, and that it is the others who are mistaken. But I also
have the impression that I am in the presence of means that are
too plentiful, that are in fact extraordinarily plentiful. These
are means that I try to reduce, for what is killing cinema
equally is a profusion of means, luxuryand luxury has never
contributed anything to the arts.
That leads me to say something else to you: it seems to me
that the artsthe fine arts, if you willare on the decline, and
even approaching their end. They are in the process of dying.
GODARDI think so too, yes.
BRESSONAlready there scarcely remains anything of them
any longer. Soon, they will no longer exist. But, curiously, if
they are killed by cinema, radio, and television, it is precisely
this cinema, this radio, this television that kill them which in
the end will remake an art, will remake the artsbut in a completely different way, of course, and perhaps even the word

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art will no longer be used.

In any case, it will not be the

same thing.
It is by cinemabut I will say, by cinematography,
because I like to make the distinction, as Cocteau made it, between cinema, that is to say current entertainment films, and
what is cinematographic artso it is through cinematography
that the art the cinema is in the process of killing will come to
life again. The culprit in this death of the arts is the presentday mechanical means of diffusion. About that, the other day
Ionesco said something rather lovely, in any case very exact:
we are faced with miracles. Cinema, radio, and television are
miracles; it is films, television transmissions, and radio
reportage that are not miraculous. So art is left behind.
Perhaps it is not very exact to say that art is left behind by
miracles. It would be necessary to say more precisely that art
is killed by miracles, but that it will come to life again thanks
to those very miracles.

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GODARDI would not have expressed it that way, but I too

think that art is at its end. Only, I absolutely do not know for
sure.
BRESSONHow it is going to start again?
GODARDYes, how it is going to start again?
BRESSONAs for me, I feel, not in cinema, but in
cinematography, an extraordinary art, marvelous, but which is
absolutely not taken up by the majority.

I try to take it up.

But it is not I who am marvelous, it is the means that are at my

disposal. I try to profit from these means, while shutting the
doordouble-locking itto theater, which is the deadly enemy
of cinematography.
And I say that to you, who make use of actors, and who
know how to make use of them.
GODARDYou

mean:

theater

is

the

enemy

of

cinematography, but not on the stageit is not its own enemy,

right?
BRESSONObviously.

Theater is theater.

Indeed, it is

because of this that theater people who want to change the

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theater never will change it. It exists and you cannot change it,
or then it would be something else other than theater. For in
wanting to change the theater, in wanting to marry it to the
cinema, one kills both, cinema and theater. There is absolutely
no possibility of mixture.
Each time that the theater sticks its nose in the cinema, it
is catastrophic; and reciprocally, each time that the cinema
sticks its nose on the stage, the result is catastrophe. See the
result, when people want to have those extraordinary noises
those spectacular projections, those dizzying plays of images?
What is that? Not, theater, and not cinema, either!
GODARDA little while ago you were talking about actors.
BRESSONActors? Yes, well . . .
GODARDI do not see the difference between an actor and a
non-actor, since in any case each is someone who exists in life.
BRESSONBut there, to my mind, there is the point; it is
about that very issue that everything turns.

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GODARDIf one has a theater actor, then one must take him,
good Lord, for what he is: an actor, and one can always
succeed with such a performer.
BRESSON Nothing can be done with such a performer.
GODARD A moment comes, yes, when nothing can be done,
but there is a moment, too, when one can do something with
him.
BRESSONI have tried, in the past. And I almost succeeded
in doing something.

But I realized that a gulf was being

hollowed out between me and the actor.

GODARDBut it is all the same: a man, or a woman, that one
has there, before oneself.
BRESSONNo.
GODARDNo?
BRESSONNo, because he has acquired habits.
But I think that we are sinking into far too many
subtleties, abstractions.

In short: I am going to finish those

notes, that book, that I am in the midst of writing, and in which

I will explain myself on all of these points. And I will need

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many pages to explain the difference that there is between a

non-actor and a professional actor, who tries to project himself,
tries to forget himself, and who in the end arrives at nothing.
GODARDBut can one not simply consider an actor a little
as, let us say, an athlete, or a runner, that is to say a man who
has a certain training to do something? And can one not make
use of that training to obtain something, even if one does not
wish to have everything that comes along with that training?
BRESSONBelieve me, if I could obtain what I wanted from
an actor, I would not give myself all this trouble! For all that I
do gives me enormous trouble. And if I had been willing to
accept actors, stars, I would be rich. Well, I am not rich. I am
poor.
This is because there was there, at the start, something
that stopped me in my tracks: the self-display of the
professional actor.
GODARDIt is true: a moment comes when professional
actors are all rotten, but, finally, when you take a non-

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professional, and you have him do certain things in a film, he

is acting. In one way or another, you are having him act.
BRESSONNo. Not at all. And that, indeed, is the point.
GODARDFinally, let us understand each other in different
terms: you are having him live.
BRESSONNo. And there, we arrive at an explanation that I
would prefer to leave for another time.
I have said to you that I was writing about that. Then I
would prefer, if you permit, to give you my book when it is
published. It will show that there is an absolutely unbridgeable
gulf between an actoreven one trying to forget himself,
trying not to control himselfand a person, a virgin of cinema,
a virgin of theater, considered as crude matter that does not
even know what you are doing and that surrenders to you what
it did not intend to surrender to anyone.
You can see by this that here there is something very
important, not only with respect to cinematography, but even
with respect to psychologywith respect to a creation that
then becomes, with its body, with its muscles, with its blood,

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with its spirit, part of your creation.

For you find yourself

mixed in with this virginal person. That is to say, you arrive at

the point where you can put yourself both inside him and inside
your film, where you can be present inside it, and not only
because you have imagined it, because you have put into it
words that you had written, but also because you are it in a
sense.

And you cannot be inside a professional actor in the

same way.

From his point of view it is he who creates, not

you.
GODARDWhen you say virgin of cinema, I understand
very well what you mean, but as soon as your non-actor has
done something, as soon as he has filmed one twenty-fourth of
a second, he is less virgin by that one twenty-fourth. To make
a comparison: he is a little like a non-Christian who, once
plunged into the water, will be baptized and theoretically will
have become a Christian. The same goes for a non-actor: there
is something that he does not have, its true, but hes going to
acquire it as soon as he is plunged into cinema.
fundamentally he is still a man like all others.

That said,

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BRESSONNo, not at all.

GODARDThen I do not understand you.
BRESSONNo, you do not understand.

One must first

understand what an actor is, what his profession is, his playing.
First, the actor never stops playing, and playing is a projection.
GODARDOne can break that, destroy it, and prevent the
actor from playing.
BRESSONNo, you cannot prevent him. Oh, but I have tried!
Absolutely nothing can prevent him from playing.
GODARDThen, one can destroy him, break him down.
BRESSONNo, you cannot.
GODARDYes. In the final analysis, one can destroy him, in
the same way that the Germans destroyed the Jews in the
concentration camps.
BRESSONYou cannot, you cannot. Habit is too strong. The
actor is an actor. You have before you an actor, who effects a
projection.
outside.

That is his technical motion: he projects himself

Whereas your non-actor character must be absolutely

closed, like a container with a lid. Closed. And that the actor

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cannot become, or, if he does become closed, at that moment

he is no longer anything.
There are actors who try, yes.

But when the actor

simplifies himself, he is even more false than when he is the

actor, when he plays.

For we are not simple.

We are

extremely complex, in fact. And it is this complexity that you

find in the non-actor.
We human beings are complex, its worth repeating. And
what the actor projects is not complex.
GODARDBut why do you deny the actor so such an extent.
Finally it is all the same: a human being who is an actor,
however bad he may be, and this human being is necessarily
complex.

Why do you deny to the actor this aspect of

humanity?
BRESSONBecause he has acquired the habit of being an
actor to such a degree that even in life he is an actor.

He

cannot be otherwise or live otherwise. He cannot exist other

than by exteriorizing himself.

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GODARDBut, after all, to be an actor is no worse than to be

a blacksmith or a member of any other profession.
BRESSON Why do you use the word worse? I do not at
all hold it against him that he is an actor.
GODARDNo, I meant: just as you accept a blacksmith for
what he can do, and not for being a notary or a policeman, so
too you can accept an actorif worst comes to worst, at least
for playing the part of actor.
BRESSONBut not at all. Imagine, for example, that you are
a doctor who wants to perform an operation.

You calm the

patient so that he will not contract his body, so that he will not
make movements that would prevent you from taking hold of
the tendon or the nerve that you are to attend to. It is exactly
the

same

way

with

the

actor:

his

projective

actors

personality prevents you from reaching what you wanted to

attain; its a reflex action that, in this case, no drug can stop.
In the end it is very simpleif we could go to see some films
together, I would show you: there are actors who are marvelous
on the stage and who pass for very good film actors, but who

157

are empty! They are empty, and you realize that when you put
the actor under a magnifying glass.

Of course in the theater

you do not see him under a magnifying glass; moreover, the

theater is an illusion, and an illusion in which the actor knows
his place.
GODARDBut that moment when he is empty, when he
becomes a human cell againcan that not be interesting? The
actor as single human cell?
BRESSONNot at all. There is no longer anything inside; he
is uninhabited.

He is just a marionette who makes gestures.

And to such an extent that, for me (and it is because of this that

I so dislike going to the cinema), most films appear to be
competitions in grimacing. Really. I am not exaggerating one
bit. I see grimaces. But I do not see the spirit that has caused
these grimaces to be made; I do not see the emotional or
spiritual depth that has nothing to do with grimaces. I simply
do not see it.
So, this kind of perpetual mimicry (and I am not speaking
only of hand gestures, which in any event are intolerable, or of

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eye movements, of looks), everything that goes into the making

of what we call theater, appears to me, seen in close-up, impossible!
Therefore why would I want to mix these two things,
theater and cinema? Why use beings who are trained for the
theater, whom people have trained to act in the theater, for the
cinema? Surely you know what drama schools are, what they
do.
GODARDYes. Its frightful!
BRESSONAnd the voice, moreover! That vocal tone actors
use that creates an absolutely false voice!
behind such a voice?

What is the idea

And what makes them think that they

speak correctly? In the name of what do they affirm the use of

such a voice? When I think that sometimes people say to me
that in my films people speak falsely! Me, that I would have
people speak falsely! What could make a person say something
like that?
For in the theater you use a voice that must agree with
feelings which are not your feelings. Are you going to pretend,

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then, that your voice will remain fixed exactly in that mode and
that it is not going to waver? But your speech wavers all the
time!

There is not a single intonation that is precise, for

anybody!
I say, in opposition, that mechanics is the only thing, as
with piano-playing. It is by doing scales, and it is by playing
in the most regular and the most mechanical way, that one
captures emotion. It is not by trying to serve up an emotion, as
so-called virtuosi do. There it is: actors are virtuosi. Instead
of giving you the opportunity to feel as you think you should,
they serve up their emotion for you, in effect saying to you:
this is how you must feel.
GODARDYes, actors are perhaps virtuosi, but for me they
represent, let us say, a certain kind of poetry, once one takes
them as they are, as virtuosi.

Antonin Artaud, for example,

who is the defining case, was a poet and an actor.

BRESSONHe was an actor, and as for his voice, he did not
know how to make use of it.

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GODARDWhat interests me, in the fact that he was an actor,

is that he was also a poet.
BRESSONWhat is good, in any case, is that you see the
problem. You have reflected on the case of the actor, and you
know what he is: he is your raw material. Good. And you take
actors for what they are: actors. That is probably a means to
your particular end, but as for me, I can no longer make any
use of them.
GODARDI mean that ultimately, when I use actors, it is a
question of ethics.

And perhaps I use them a little out of

cowardice, too, because I find that cinema corrupts people,

especially those who are not prepared. Thus all the people I
have known, whom I loved in actual life, who have made
cinema without being actorsand I think here, for example, of
Nicole Ladmiralare people who ended badly. Either the girls
became whores, or the boys killed themselves. In any case, the
least thing that happened to them was made worse by the
memory of what they had been before.

And even sometimes

when I use an actor like Jean-Pierre Laud, who was in my last

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film, I am saddened at having him play, because I feel that he

is living too much, or at too high a pitch, and that what he is
doing seems too important for him. As a result I feel a little
ashamed toward the actor.

Is this not, then, a question of

ethics?
BRESSONAs for me, I am not in that situation, for I do not
have them act. That is all the difference.
GODARDYes, in a sense what you say is true.
BRESSONFor me, then, your question does not pose itself.
On the contrary.

The people that I use in my films are

delighted at having taken part in them, and say that they have
never been so happy as in doing sosomeone said that to me
again only yesterday; afterwards, they are delighted to go back
to their profession. But they have not acted for a second. For
nothing in the world would they be actors, for the good reason
that they have never been actors.
I do not ask them to experience such-and-such a feeling
that they do not have. I simply explain the mechanics to them.
And I enjoy explaining it to them.

So I describe to them, for

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instance, why I make one shot close rather than another, and
how. But as for having them play-act, I do not ask that of them
for a second. You see the difference. The two realms remain
absolutely separate.
GODARDOne could say that to be an actor is to be
romantic, and not to be an actor, classical.
BRESSONThat is possible.
behind my method.

But look at all that there is

I have said nothing and done nothing

lightly in my profession.

I have been led to reflect on

everything I did because I began by trying several solutions. It

happened, at the time when I was beginning to use nonprofessionals, it happened that suddenly I said to myself: All
right! That scene I can have played by a professional actor, a
good actor. I am going to try. Well, I try. And I botch it. I
say to myself then: it is my fault. Then I botch the scene three
times in succession. And it was only afterwards that I said to
myself: but what happened?
Now, when I think about a film, and I write it down paper,
and people say to me, You should take an actor, it is obvious

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to me that what I am in the process of writing will fail

completely if I take an actor. The result will no longer have
anything to do with what I wanted it to be. And if I took the
actor, then I would have to rewrite everything, to transform
everything, for what an actor is going to do already implies,
even at this stage, a completely different kind of writing.
Finally, when I arrive at a point of simplification such that
I require a flash on a face, and it is necessary to find that flash,
well, that flash is something an actor will not, or cannot, give
to me.
GODARDIt is as if a painter were to take an actress instead
of a model.

As if he said to himself: instead of taking that

laundress, let me take a great actress who will pose much better
than that working woman.

In that sense, of course, I

understand what youre saying.

BRESSONAnd note well that this is not all to diminish the
work of the actor.

On the contrary, I have an enormous

admiration for the great actors.

I think that the theater is

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marvelous, and I think that it is extraordinary to manage to

create onstage with ones body.

But let there be no mixing!

GODARDWould it interest you to make a film about an

actor? And how would you make it? I mean a film on the act
of playing, of play-acting.

For, definitively, it is the act of

playing that does not interest youthe act of being oneself yet
of not being oneselfif this playing is to serve as the sole
basis for artistic creation. But in the case of a film made about
the act of acting, would that interest you? I ask because there
is already a little of that in Balthazar. I am thinking of Arnold
in the film. He has a bit of the character of an actor.
BRESSONYou mean that he represents an actor?
GODARDHe could represent the theater.
BRESSONThere, no, I do not follow you. He did not know
or think any such thing. He did not know or think. When he
was to say a sentence, it was absolutely mechanical.

To say

the sentence in the most mechanical way possible, that is all

that I asked of him.

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GODARDI am not speaking of the person who acts, but of

the character as one sees him in the film.
BRESSONThe

character?

Yes,

maybe, because he is

picturesque. Then, maybe, in that way, yes. Because he is seen in more

relief than the others, he is conspicuous.
GODARDPerhaps that is one of the vices of humanity about which
you did not think. In relation to the others, he is something that they are
not; and therefore he, more than they, could represent the theater.
BRESSONThat is to say that he is a much more mysterious character;
at the same time he is a more definite figure, almost a tangible one. In
this sense, yes, he is a character of fiction.
GODARDWhat I call playing, has nothing to do with being an actor
or not being one; it is doing what Arnold does in your filmfor example, saying goodbye to the kilometer marker and to the telegraph pole.
That is sublime, but it is also something else. Ultimately that is what I
call playing, or being romantic. Now, none of the other characters in the
film would do what Arnold does. They are in different worlds.

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BRESSONPerhaps that is it: we enter a different world, which is the

world of poetry. Nevertheless, as for me, I have seen boozers, drunken
fellows, speak to road signs and to trees.
GODARD Oh, yes, but they are poets, too.
BRESSONYes, of course, but I mean that in the film I did not try to
enter a poetic, theatrical, or romantic domain. You know, everything in
this

filmwith

some

arrangementcomes

ultimately

from

reminiscences and personal experiences of mine. Thus, when I have

Arnold speak to the kilometer marker, it is really because I have seen
analogous acts. I remember from my childhood that there were a great
many fellows like that, who passed by on the roads, in the countryside,
and to whom one gave shelter, whom one put up for the night.
DELAHAYEVagabonds.
BRESSONYes, vagabonds. Well, I have seen some of them speak to
objects, to plants. Yesterday, I saw a fellow on the Avenue de Wagram
speak to a pissoir. I did not understand what he was saying very well,
but it must have been curious.
DELAHAYEYou said earlier, and you have just said it again, that you
put yourself into your films. Well, you also said that you put yourself

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into them thanks to the actorrather, the non-actor. These characters,

then, whom you take because they are not actors, do you not take them
all the same for the characters that they already are in life, with what they
may have (for you) of the near, of the familiar?
Take Pierre Klossowski, for example. Even before your film, he
was a character. When you had him enter the film, did you not take him
on account of what he had written as a novelist: for example, Roberte ce
soir, La Revocation de ldit de Nantes, etc.?
BRESSONOf course, that is one reason why I took him. Ultimately,
though, you know how differentand I am not the first to speak of it
the life of a writer can be from what he writes, and how mistaken one can
be about him. This is the narrative of Proust criticism, is it not? Must
one look at the life of someone in order to judge his work? This is his
work, after all, and that is his life.
I mean by this that one must pay attention. What is important is to
see the man, to feel him in his very being, to arrive at a moral semblance.
That is all. But the moral semblance may very well have nothing to do
with his profession, with the work of the person in question.

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DELAHAYEBut if Klossowski had not written books, if he had not

made himself known for who he is, you yourself perhaps would not have
known him, and so not have taken him.
BRESSONI would not have known him because people would not
have brought him to my attention, would not have made me think of him.
You see what I mean? In the same way, Anne Wiazemsky, the Marie of
the film, was brought to me by Florence Delay. You see how an earlier
film leads to another. And Florence Delay herself had been brought to
me by a friend, who had spoken to me of her, had told me what she was
like, what she was. In all of this, there is a great deal of intuition, but
there is also a kind of search, deep and interior, and not at all exterior.
There we enter the realm of sound. I say that the voice is not only
what people saynoisethe voice is also the most revealing thing that
exists. All the people that I take, I would prefer to have met first over the
telephone, rather than see them enter my house without having heard
them. Connected with this I have had extraordinary experiences. I once
saw someone whom I thought I liked very much; I have even seen some
people several times whose characters I believed I knew. And then, one
day, I heard them over the telephone. Then and there, my opinion was

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completely changed.

That, too, is why we must always take into

consideration what is the sound and what is the image.

Yes: a voice over the telephone is already something extraordinary.
I listen a great deal to people talking. It is the voice that informs me
most about people.

Moreover, when I choose characters, I see the

friends who brought them to me, I speak of them, I see if our impressions
correspond, and sometimes I have good luck. Until now, in fact, I have
rarely been mistaken. Now this person about whom you are finally certain, about whose personality, whose character, whose interior life you
are sure you are not mistaken, at the moment when you put him into your
sequence, something goes wrong. Yet if something goes wrong, there is
also something wonderful happening: since it is you who are mistaken,
the result is that you correct yourself in relation to the person, instead of
its being the person who corrects himself in relation to you. It is in this
way that one enters the realm cinematographic creationa way that can
lead very far.
That is to say, it is not only I who change in relation to the
character, nor is it only the character who changes in relation to me. If

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you will: I am enlightened by his light and he is enlightened by mine. It

is a mixture, a kind of fusion. It is two waxes that melt into one another.
But it was little by little that I realized this, and it is only now that I
see it well, that I see an extraordinary mine for tapping, all of it possible
only with non-actors.
DELAHAYEBut cant a non-actor also reveal in a film something of
himself that he does not reveal in actuality, a thing that he himself,
perhaps, does not suspect is in him? For example, a man, spineless in
life, may be, in a filmwithout his having sought ithard or
courageous.
BRESSONThat is possible, yes. He shows, then, a hardness that he
has never let be seen. And that is wonderful. For we are complex
people. That is why, when you want to show a spineless man in cinema
it is a mistake to make him spineless. For he has the opposite in him as
well.
But the audience is in love with what is false. Why? Because the
habit of theater, of going to the theatre, is one whose disappearance will
require a very long time to bring about. And there is no theater without
falseness. Even the falseness of the actor is indispensable in the theater.

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All right! But, then, let us not put this false actor in front of a camera,
that miracle which catches things that neither your eye nor your ear could
catch. Why give to the camera the falsified? Give it the true! I have no
interest in making, for all intents and purposes, a documentary about the
actor, which I am then going to put in the archives so that people can say
many years late, Oh, that is how they acted plays in 1966.
But this is not at all to go against what you do and against what you
feel, Jean-Luc Godard. It is only that you questioned me. You know
that I like very much what you do, and that it refreshes me a great deal to
go see your films.
But then again, you too are in a domain that is not the ordinary
domain of cinema. It is something else. No doubt you make use of
cinema a little to do what you do, but what you do is really your own.
And nothing of what I have said was said to advance what I think or
create over what you yourself say or do.
GODARDOh, but I have the impression that, compared with you, I do
not make cinema at all. I do not mean that I have the feeling of making
things that are uninteresting, but, compared with you, I do have the

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feeling of not making cinema. Although that is not the word that fits: let
us say, as you and Cocteau do, cinematography.
BRESSONThere is another reproach, too, that people have made to
me. People have said to me: it is from pride that you refuse to take
actors. But what does that mean? I reply: Do you believe that it amuses
me not to take actors?

For not only does it not amuse me, but it

represents a terrible amount of additional work. And, then, I have only

made six or seven films during my career. Do you believe that it amuses
me to remain thus at a standstill? To be unemployed?! For myself, I do
not find that funny at all! I want to work; I would prefer to work all the
time. And why have I not managed to film more? Because I was not
using professional actors!

Because in this way I was ignoring a

commercial aspect of the cinema, the one that dictates the use of stars.
To say things like whats been said against me: it is absurd!
I think, moreover, that bad criticism, which ultimately represents
the majority of all criticism, not only turns the audience away from a
better course, but makes bad directors of those who could be less so.
What rules from the start in the film world is the optics of theater: that

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people accept too much (or too little), that actors and directorsbut
especially actorsexpect constant praise, etc.
GODARDOne must say that the theater is older. It has existed for so
long that one has difficulty not taking it into account.
BRESSONYes, thats true. And when one thinks that there still exist
peoplethose influenced by the theaterwho believe, and sometimes
write (I read it again recently), that a silent film is pure cinema! To think
that we are in such a state!
GODARDThey say that, yes, but what they do not admit is that, when
they see a silent film, they cant endure it!
BRESSONLet me take what I was saying even farther: there was no
silent cinema! It never existed! For in fact the filmmakers had the actors
talk, but they talked in a void, for one did not hear what they said. So let
us not say that they had discovered the silent art of cinema. No, such an
assertion is absurd! There were people like Chaplin and Keaton who
found, for themselves, a stylemoreover, a wonderful oneof
pantomime, but the style that they gave to the films themselves was not a
silent style. On this matter, too, I will say some things in my book.
For I think that is really the best place to say them. But each time that I

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set to work at it, I do not succeed. That is because when I am filming, a

film, for me, is not only working on the film, but being in the film. I
think about it all the time, and all that I live, that I see, unfolds in relation
to the film, passes through the film. To go off to the side, to try to do
something else, is like changing countries.
So, this book of mine does not go forward. However, I must do it.
And I am very impatient to do it. I believe that this is the moment, for
the cinema is falling. And what a fall!
Yesterday, you know, I went to the Empire Cinerama Theatre.
Often I go to sit in the balcony, where there is no one, and
when one sees that immense screen, which covers everything,
what an effect that creates! And the trains that start from the
back of the frame and come right at you!

It is magnificent,

that invention! People start from the right and move far to the
left.

Its marvelous!

Yesterday, then, in the balcony (and

there was a pair of lovers there, I have to say, who absolutely

were not looking at the film), yesterday I saw Blake Edwards
The Great Race and it stupefied me.

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GODARDThe same thing happened to me, four days ago, at

the Studiorama. I sat down in the balcony, and what you say is
true: I saw some images from the film being projectedjust some crazy
characters who were jumping aroundand I saw from this that cinema is
not the same thing as cinematography.
BRESSONAbsolutely! Well, but that is the cinema now.
DELAHAYECan you say, exactly, what impression you had at that
moment, in the balcony of the Cinerama?
BRESSONA horrible impression! The impression of absolute falsity,
of the false being taken up and reinforced by a miraculous apparatus.
For, with the movie camera, one has the ability to deliberately reinforce
the false, to make it penetrate with ease the mind of the spectator. And
when spectators have falsehood like that in their heads, I guarantee you it
is difficult to get it out of them!
DELAHAYEWhat you have just said reminds me of the point from
which we set out half an hour ago, in an attempt to fathom the disparity
between what you make and the cinema as a whole. Now, that makes me
think of another disparity: the one between the things that you show and
the elements in real life from which they are taken. I cite as an example

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an element from Balthazar (borrowed from contemporary reality a little

like A Man Escaped, which started from specific facts): the episode of
the young hoodlums, the blousons noirs or black jackets. You seem
here to want purposely to extract, from specific facts or aspects of the
present, a general significance that goes beyond them. With you, these
realities are purified of all the elements to which people attach
themselves these days, and to which another director would readily
attach himself. And what one sees in your film is a reality that is indeed
ours (for the disparity I spoke of is in a sense a false disparity), but which
has become the foundation in a way for a timeless fable.
BRESSONI think that the disparity stems from this especially: the
cinema copies life, or photographs it, while I re-create life starting from
elements that exist in reality in as crude or natural a state as possible.
GODARDOne could make what was said a little while ago more
specific by saying that cinematography, contrary to cinema, is moralistic.
BRESSONOr, if you will, cinematography is a system of poetry. It
takes elements as disparate as possible from the world and brings them
together in a certain order, which is not the usual order but the artists
own order. But these elements must be crude or natural, as I have said.

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Cinema, by contrast, recopies life with actors and photographs this

copy of life. So we are absolutely not on the same ground. When you
speak of the present, let us say of contemporaneity, as for me I do not
think about it at all when I am filming. If a reference to the time period
came up in one of my films, then perhaps I would think about it, in the
sense that I would say to myself that, as a matter of fact, I prefer to work
outside the period. Starting from the moment in my films when I try to
go deeply inside people, that is one of the dangers I try to avoid: the
placement of the action in a temporal context.
Here I would like to add another thing that I have not yet said and
that is important: the great difficulty of what I am trying to do, in what
amounts to a penetration into the unknown within ourselves, is that my
means are exterior means, and that therefore they exist relation to
appearancesall appearances, the appearance of the person himself as
well as the appearance of everything that surrounds him. So the great
difficulty is to remain in the interior, always, without passing over to the
exterior; it is to avoid the sudden occurrence of a terrible disconnection.
But that is what happens to me sometimes, in which case I try to repair
the fault.

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I take an example from my film: that of the young hoodlums.

When they pour oil on the road and the cars skid, there I am completely
on the outside of reality, in the realm of appearances. And that is a great
danger. Then I recover myself as best I can to catch people again in their
interiority, in what they have inside themselves.
DELAHAYEHere I will make what I wanted to say more specific: at
present, when the cinema shows blousons noirs, what we see is a kind
of sociological documentary, which implies that these boys are
conditioned by certain factors. And, rightly or wrongly, one takes that
into account, which creates certain limits in that suddenly everything can
be explained, or explained away, and no one is in a position to judge.
With you, on the other hand, it seems that these boys are one of the
possible incarnations of Evil.
BRESSONI did that knowing, saying to myself, that it was dangerous,
but without causing too much damage, too much dispersion. For that is
what dispersion is: passing from one point of view to another, that is to
say, as I was saying a little while ago, from an interior to an exterior
point of view.

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Related to this, I believe, I am persuaded, that in the cinema one

can no doubt collaborate with another scenarist, with the cameraman,
with the art director, and so on, but that such work leads necessarily to
divergence. Each collaborator goes in his own direction and thus, in
advance, we are diverted from the goal to which all our work should
lead, with the result, of course, that the work itself is reduced. That is to
say, starting from a Victor Hugo idea, one arrives at an Ernest
Hemingway novel, and because of that, at the end of the operation, one is
ready to draw the ridiculous conclusion that Hemingway resembles
Hugo.
In any case, using this collaborative method, one obtains a cinemanovel that no longer has anything to do with anything.

And it is

precisely such a rote or regulated cinema that bores everyone because all
its products are always alike.
But I fear that I am repeating myself and always harping on the
same things.
GODARDThat is inevitable in a conversation such as this, but I
believe that it is necessary to keep this tone.

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DELAHAYEYou were saying a little while ago that sometimes you

remain on the exterior or the outside, as in the case of the young
hoodlums. Then can one not say that, from your point of view, you are
rendering a moralists judgmentto use the term adopted a little while
ago by Jean-Luc Godard? Could we take up this issue again?
BRESSONIt is because of this issue that I give some people the
impression of attaching myself to everything that others would not attach
themselves tothat is to say, of choosing, among ten things to do,
exactly those that the others would not choose. Why? Because the
others are on the outside, because they are merely photographing
something. As for myself, I know that the other choices would disperse
my focus, and that the course of action I take is the only one that could
be appropriate for me.
People have said that what I make are experiments, attempts, and
its true that the experiment I made from Bernanos was truly an attempt.
Well, people said to me back then: what is odd is that you have taken
from this novel everything that appeared not to be cinematographic, and
you have left behind all the rest. I said, of course thats true, since I was
seeking something else completely! It is normal for others to take what

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they want to take, when they make their customary films, and it is
likewise normal for me to take what serves me in the making of my own
films!
I am not claiming for myself some special kind of originality;
indeed, I would rather speak about originality in relation to anyone else
except myself. There is, in this regard, a definition of originality that is
magnificent, and which could perhaps serve us: Originality is wanting
to do as others do, but without ever succeeding. That is a marvelous
saying, and it is extraordinarily true.
It is true a little of me. I am awkward, clumsy, in my work. I tried
perhaps at the start to do as others do. In fact I took actors, and I made
or tried to makefilms as others did, but I did not succeed. Or rather: I
realized that if I did like the others, I would not be able to say what I had
to say, because I did not be using means of my own devising.
GODARDThere are two tendencies in you (and I do not know which
one seems to suit you better): you are, on the one hand, a humanist, and,
on the other hand, an inquisitor. Does that make any sense?
BRESSONInquisitor? In what sense?
GODARDOh, not in the sense of the Gestapo, of course.

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BRESSONNot in the sense of the Inquisition? Saint Dominic?

GODARDYes, thats what I mean.
BRESSONOh, no! No!
GODARDOr then let us say you are an inquisitor in the Jansenist
sense.
BRESSONJansenist in the sense of the austerity of my style?
GODARDYes, but there is some other word I am looking for to
explain what I mean by inquisitor. Its not just a question of your
cinematic or visual style. Ive got it: Pascalian. If Pascal becomes the
Inquisitor, then Balthazar can be called a Pascalian film.
BRESSONYou know, to my mind Pascal is so great, but really, he is
an Inquisitor! And by extension so am I . . . You do not mean that I
assert my way of seeing things over everyone elses? For yes, I assertI
cannot do otherwisemy way of seeing, of thinking, but everyone who
writes or creates does this. In the end, if an inquisitor I am, then I would
say that I go seeking in people that which is most subtle and most
personal.
GODARDYes, but there is at the same time a frightening aspect to
this.

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BRESSONYou mean the questions I put forward?

GODARDYes, the questions. Or rather the Question, meaning the
ultimate one.
BRESSONAs you say, of course, I put forward questions that will
elicit responses, even to the ultimate Question. But as we live, we must
put forward questions, and we give our own responses or we await
responses from others.

This manner of working could be called

filmmaking-as-questionnaire. Only it is a questionnaire of the unknown,

which is to say: give me something that will surprise me. That is the
stratagem. And if you have professional actors, you will not succeed at
it.

There are too many things that interpose themselves, too many

screens.
DELAHAYEI would like to come back to Jansenism. Do you not
believe that beyond the question of austerity, there is a deep agreement
between your vision and the Jansenist vision of the worldfor example,
precisely on the question of Evil? With you, the world seems
condemned.
BRESSONBut in Jansenism, there is an impression that I have as
well: it is that our lives are made at once of predestination and of hasard,

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of chance. So, perhaps the concept of hasard was indeed the point of
departure for the film. Strictly speaking, the point of departure was a
lightning-stroke vision of a film whose central character would be a
donkey.
GODARDAs in Dostoyevskywhom you cite in the filmwho all at
once saw a donkey and had the revelation of something.
BRESSONYes, it is marvelous. I marveled when I read that, but I
read it, or re-read it, only after having thought of the donkey myself. In
short: I had read The Idiot before Balthazar, but I had not paid attention.
What a passage, and of only a few words! And what an admirable idea is
contained in it! To have an idiot like Myshkin informed by an animal, to
have him see life through an animal, who passes for an idiot but has an
intelligence of his own. And to compare this idiot (but you know that in
fact he is the subtlest and the most intelligent men) to an animal that
passes for an idiotthat is the subtlest and the most intelligent thing of
all. That is magnificent.
Magnificent it is, too, the idea of having the idiot say, when he sees
the donkey and hears him bray: There! I understand!

That is

extraordinary, a stroke of genius, but it is not the idea of my film. That

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idea came, perhaps, visually. For I am a painter, and the head of a

donkey seems to me something admirableit is visual art, no doubt.
Seeing the head of a donkey, all at once, I believed I saw the film. Then
I lost it, and later I found it again.
GODARDBut when you were little you did not see many donkeys?
BRESSONYes! I saw a great many of them.
GODARDRoger Leenhardt also saw many donkeys in his youth.
BRESSONYou know, a donkey is a marvelous animal. But there is
another thing that I can tell you, and it is that I was very much afraid
not only while writing on the script of Balthazar, but also while shooting
the filmthat that donkey would not be a character like the others, that
he would appear a trained donkey, a performing animal. So, to avoid this
problem, I took a donkey that knew how to do absolutely nothing, not
even how to pull a cart. In fact, I had a great deal of difficulty getting
him to pull the cart in the film. Everything that I believed he would give
me, he refused me, and everything that I believed that he would refuse
me, he gave me. Pull a cart, for example: one says to oneself, a
donkey will do that. Well, not at all! And I said to myself:
what will happen when it is necessary to shoot the circus

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sequences? What happened is that I stopped the film, with the

donkey untrained, and sent him to the trainer so that he would
in fact be able to do the circus sequences. I had to wait two
whole months before shooting them.
GODARDYes, in the circus scene, it was necessary that he
know how to stamp his hoofs.
BRESSONWhat I am saying to you more or less corresponds
to what I was saying about actors a little while ago: I wanted
that animal to be, even as an animal, crude matter.
And perhaps the looks that the donkey gave at certain
moments, to other animals, for example and to the characters
perhaps those looks would not have been the same if he had
been a trained, tame donkey. One of the astonishing things I
discoveredor rather verifiedis something that contradicts
everything people think about the donkey: the donkey is not at
all a stubborn animal, or, if he is, he is much more intelligent
and sensitive than other animals; when someone makes a brute
of him, he stops being a brute and no longer does anything.
Now the trainer (an intelligent man and an excellent trainer)

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told me immediately, when I asked him if the donkey is not

more difficult to train than the horse: It is exactly the
contrary. The horse, which is stupid, is rather difficult to train,
but the donkey, provided that you do not scare or threaten him,
understands immediately what he has to do.
GODARDSuddenly I come at Balthazar from another point
of view, the formal one. In order to render the donkeys looks
or glances well, it was necessary to film them at a certain angle
or from a certain distance.
BRESSONOf course.
GODARDThe donkey looks sideways, while we have our
eyes in front. And one had to be certain not to be a millimeter
too much to the left or to the right.
BRESSONThere is something else: I did not at all have the
problems with that animal that I expected, but I did have
others, problems of another order. For example, when I shot
outdoors, in the mountains, or near Paris, I worked with a
small camera, and it made noise. Well, as soon as this camera
was too near the donkey, its noise kept him from doing

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whatever he had to do. You see the difficult situation in which

I found myself!

So it was necessary to distract him with

something else, to try to catch his look. But it happened, too,

that I made use precisely of this donkeys distraction by noise
to catch some looks of his that I might not otherwise have
gotten.
In any case, difficulties of this sort, in addition to the
rain, all made the film very difficult to finish, and I had to
improvise constantly. I could not do this thing in this way or
at that place; I had to do it in another way, and at a different
place.
During the last scene, that of the death of the donkey, I
had terrible anxiety, for I feared never being able to get what I
wanted. I had enormous difficulty in getting him to do what he
was supposed to do, what I wanted him to do. And he did it
only once, but in the end the donkey did it. Only, I had to provoke him to do it, in another way than the one I had originally
devised. In the film, this is the moment when the donkey hears
the bells and pricks up his ears. I caught the reaction that was

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necessary only at the last moment, He gave me what I needed

only once, but it was marvelous. That is the kind of joy that
filming sometimes gives you!

One finds oneself in an

impossible situation and, all at once, a miracle occurs.

DELAHAYEAu hasard.
BRESSONYes, by chance. I love that title. Someone said
to me: I do not like that repetition, hasard and Balthazar!

replied, But that is marvelous, a rhymed title.

GODARDYes, it is marvelous, a title like that.
BRESSONMoreover, how exact, in relation to the film, this
combination

of

hasard-Balthazar.

This brings us back

to

Jansenism, for I really believe that our lives are made up of

both predestination and chance. When one studies the lives of
people, of great men for example, this combination of
predestination and chance is something you see very clearly. I
think of the life of Saint Ignatius, for example, about which at
one point I thought I would make a filmwhich I did not
make. Well, studying the strange life of this man who founded
the greatest religious order (the largest, in any case, and one

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that has spread throughout the world), one feels that he was
destined to do what he did, but everything on the way to his
founding

of

the

Jesuit

order

was

made

up

of

chance

occurrences, chance encounters, through which one feels him

passing little by little as he came to do what he was made to
do.
That is also somewhat the case of the escaped man in Un
Condamn mort sest chapp: he is moving toward a certain
point, and he absolutely does not know what will happen there.
He arrives and, once there, has to choose. He chooses. And
then he arrives at another point. There, again, chance compels
him makes him another choice.
For Saint Ignatius, it went exactly the same way.
Everything that he did, he did not do himself. He did it thanks
to predestination and chance.
DELAHAYEIn Un Condamn, the journey of the hero makes
one think of the spiritual journey of Saint John of the Cross.
BRESSONYes, yes. Because, at bottom, if we are willing to
take notice, everything in life resembles something else in life.

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Even the simplest, flattest of lives resembles another life, of

another man. But on account of chance, one life went in one
direction, and the other in another direction.

In the lives of

great men, this is apparent, because one knows the details, but
I am persuaded that the lives of all of us are made in exactly
the same waythat is to say, made up of predestination and of
chance.

It is well known that we finished products, so to

speak, at five or six years old.

already complete.

At that age, the process is

But only at twelve or thirteen years does

this become apparent. Afterwards, we continue to be what we

have been, making use of the different chances that come our
way. We use them to cultivate what is already inside us.
DELAHAYESo you are saying that at around twelve or
thirteen years, a kind of unchanging depth becomes apparent in
us, which then makes usemore or less wellof the sum of
chances we encounter in life.
BRESSONYes. That is to say that you arrive at a crossroads
where you find chance. But you do not even have to choose;
chance makes you choose to turn to the right rather than to the

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left.

Then you arrive at another crossroads, which is your

destination, and chance again makes you choose to go in this

direction or that, and so on. As for me, I am certain that we
are surrounded with people of talent and geniusI am certain
of itbut the chance of life requires so many coincidences for
a man to succeed in drawing something out from his genius.
And therefore that genius may never appear, and nobody will
ever have known it was there.
I have the impression that people are much more
intelligent, much more gifted, than they seem, but life has
flattened them out. Look at the children of the middle class. I
take the middle class as an example because that is exactly
where they flatten them out. Immediately, people flatten them
out because there is nothing more frightening to a bourgeois
than talent or genius.

People are terribly scared of itthe

parents are scared of it. Therefore they flatten their children

out, make them all the same.

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And among animals themselves, there must be some very

intelligent ones that people flatten out by training and through
corporal punishment..
GODARDAmong your projects, do you still think of
Lancelot?
BRESSONYes.

I hope to make the film.

But in two

languages: in French, of course, and in English. It is the very

type of the film that one must make in two languages. (As a
rule, I should make it in German, too, because the same legend
is part of the Anglo-Saxon mythology as well as the Gallic
one.) Moreover, at their source these stories were written in the
two languagesin French, of course, its Le chevalier la charrette,
by Chretien de Troyes.

Then, there were Perceval le Gallois, and

Tristan, too. In short: it is from those first poems, sung and recited, that
the legend of the Holy Grail came, then to be rewritten by the scribes and
by the monks, who added the religious elements.
DELAHAYEYes, but ancient Celtic source preceded all of that,
before the formation of the French and the English languages, each of
which then adapted what constituted their common possession.

For

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Tristan, for example, it seems that the first known trace of this theme is
to be found in the Cornwall traditionwhose language no longer exists.
BRESSONThat is what interests me: to take up again an old legend
known all over Europe. And if I can make the film in English, I will
have a little more money at the start, which is important, since I cannot
make the film solely with French moneyunless I take stars. And
French stars at that. Well, I will not do it. But indeed I do hope to make
Lancelot in English as well as French.
Nevertheless, I will not take up again the purely fairy-tale element
of the legendI mean the fairies, Merlin, and so on. I am going to try to
transfer this fairy tale into the realm of feelings; that is to say, I want to
show how feelings change even the air that one breathes.
In any case, I think that today people would not believe in that fairy
tale. And, in a film, it is necessary to believe. Moreover, that is one of
the reasons one must not create a theatrical film, for in the theater, one
does not believe. So I will try to make the fairy-tale aspect pass into the
realm of feelings, and to show that these feelings have a concrete effect
on the action of the film. So now, if producers have a little bit of
confidence in me, I am going to be able to work.

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And I would like also, as an experiment, an exercise, to make La

Nouvelle Histoire de Mouchette. It is a very harsh story, of course.
GODARDThe character of Marie, in Balthazar, very much
resembles Chantal in another Bernanos novel: La Joie, which I myself
once wanted to make.
BRESSONYes, perhaps. I must have read La Joie at one time or
another, but, you know, I read few novels. However, I must have read
at least some passages. The novel ends, if I remember well, with the
death of a priest.
GODARDYes, that is it.
BRESSONBut the character of Mouchette is marvelous in that she is
caught between childhood and adolescencecaught in harshness, that is
to say. Not caught in silliness, but truly in a catastrophe. That is what I
am going to try to render. And instead of dispersing myself (I try always
not to disperse myself, not to spread myself too thin) in a swarm of
different lives and beings, I am going to try to focus constantly,
absolutely, on one face: the face of that little girl, in order to observe her
reactions. Then I will take her, yes, that most awkward little girl, with
nothing of the actress in her, nothing of the player of roles (children,

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little girls especially, are often very much that), I will take her and I will
try to draw from her all that she does not suspect that I am drawing from
her. It is her very awkwardness that interests me, and, for this reason, the
camera will not leave her.
GODARDWill it interest you to give her an accent? For Bernanos
himself spoke with a frightful Picard accent.
BRESSONNo. Certainly not. I do not like accents. Bernanos wrote
in a slightly heavy way, you know, but there are two or three things that
he says about the little girl which are extraordinary, marvelous flashes of
insight. And it is not psychology.
GODARDYes, I remember. Thus he said that at the moment when
one spoke to Mouchette of death, it was as if one had said to her that she
could have been a great lady under Louis XIV. In short, there was a kind
of fabulous rapprochement in her mind between death and high life.
And, exactly, this is not psychology.

Although at the same time it

rejoins psychology, but it is something so profound in its own right.

BRESSONIt is not psychology, but, as a matter of fact, I think in this
regard (and here we come back to what seems to be so interesting for us)
that psychology is now so well-known a commodityadmitted and

197

familiarthat there is perhaps another, entirely different psychology to

be drawn from the cinema, or cinematography. That is the one on which
I concentrate, and in which the unknown happens to us, all the time, and
in whichin my films, anyway---the unknown can be recorded. But not
because it rose up out of nowhere, not because anyone intended to find
this unknown. It cannot be foundit can only be discovered.
Here we come back to what Picasso said, that first one finds, and
then one seeks. That is it in a nutshell: one must first find the thing, and
only afterwards seek it out. That is to say: one must find it first, since
one wanted to find it, but it is only by seeking it out that one then
discovers it.
So I believe that one must not engage in too much, or even any,
psychological analysispsychology is such an a priori thingone
must paint, and it is in painting that everything will rise to the surface.
GODARDThere is an expression that people no longer use, but that
they used to employ in the past: they spoke of the painting of feelings.
That is what you are doing.
BRESSONPaintingor cinematographic writing in this case, it is the
same thingis more than a psychology. It is a painting.

198

On Au hasard, Balthazar, by James Quandt.

Godards famous claim that Au hasard, Balthazar is the world in

an hour and a half suggests how dense, how immense Bressons brief,
elliptical tale about the life and death of a donkey is. The films steady
accumulation of incident, characters, mystery, and social detail, its
implicative use of sound, off-screen space, and editing, have the
miraculous effect of turning the directors vaunted austerity into endless
plenitude, which is perhaps the central paradox of Bressons cinema. So
concentrated and oblique is Balthazar, it achieves the density, to extend
Godards metaphor just a little, of an imploded nova.
Bressons twin masterpieces of the mid-sixties, Au hasard,
Balthazar and Mouchettehis last films in black and whiteare rural
dramas in which the eponymous innocents, a donkey and a girl, suffer a
series of assaults and mortifications and then die. With their exquisite
renderings of pain and abasement, the films are compendiums of cruelty,
whose endings have commonly been interpreted as moments of

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transfiguration, indicating absolution for a humanity that has been

emphatically shown to be not merely fallen but vile. Both protagonists
expire in nature, one on a hillside, the other in a pond, their deaths
accompanied by music of great sublimity: a fragment of Schuberts
Piano Sonata no. 20 and a passage from Monteverdis Vespers,
respectively. (That these contravene Bressons own edict against the use
of music as accompaniment, support, or reinforcement is significant;
he later regretted the rather sentimental employment of the Schubert in
Balthazar, and the film without it would be significantly bleaker in
effect.) The representation of both deaths is ambiguous. The sacred
music in Mouchette (Monteverdis Magnificat, with its intimations of the
Annunciation), Mouchettes three attempts to fall before succeeding,
and the held image of the bubbles on the water that has received her body
imply to many a divine, even ecstatic deliverance (and a perhaps
heretical consecration of suicide).

Similarly, Balthazars

death, accompanied by the secular, albeit exalted, Schubert, as

he is surrounded by sheep, suggests to several critics a glorious
return to the eternal, a revelation of the divine.

200

A common reading of Balthazar, relying on an orthodox

sense of Bressons Catholicism, on the Palm Sunday imagery
of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, and
on the films many references to Dostoyevsky especially The
Idiotascribes to the animal a Christlike status.
schema,

Balthazar,

after

enjoying

brief,

In this

paradisiacal

childhood, apparent in the image of his nuzzling his mothers

milk that opens the film and in his playful baptism by three
children, lives a calvary. Passed from cruel master to cruel
master, Balthazar traverses the stations of the cross, beaten,
whipped, slapped, burned, mocked, and, in the concluding
crucifixion, shot and abandoned to bleed to death, the hillside
on which he slowly perishes a modern-day Golgotha. That he
dies literally burdened (with contraband) suggests, in this
reading, a sacrifice for humanity. This meaning is intensified
by Balthazars sole, stigmata-like wound and by the sheep that
flow around him, a tide of white that surrounds his dark,
prostrate form. With their tolling bells, they evoke the Agnus
Dei and thereby the liturgy, Qui tollis peccata mundi,

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miserere nobis. Balthazar has died for the sins of those who
have transgressed against himthe alcoholic Arnold, the
vicious Grard, the mean, miserly merchantand of the few
who have not, particularly the martyred Marie, whose fate
parallels his.
The interpretation is tempting in its simplicity.

That

Balthazar passes through the hands of seven masters suggests

to some a numerical trace of the seven words from the cross,
the seven sacraments of the church formed by Christs Passion,
or the seven deadly sins. The mock baptism performed by the
children and the auditory equation of church bells with
Balthazars bell indicate the animals divinity; Maries name
suggests the mother of God, and the garland of flowers she
makes for Balthazar is reminiscent of Christs crown of thorns;
the strange bestiary in the circus implies the ark; the
smugglers gold and perfume are the equivalent of the
offerings of the magi; Grards band of blousons noirs represent
Christs tormentors (or, as Gilles Jacob has suggested, the
thieves of Ecclesiastes); the wine that Arnold drinks and the

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bread that Grard delivers both suggest transubstantiation;

Arnold is in many ways a Judas figure; and so on.
But Bressons art never proceeded by strict or simple
analogyhe is no C. S. Lewis, no Christian allegoristand he
always resisted such a reductive reading of Balthazar. While the
name Balthazar alludes to that of the third magus and thereby
to the birth of Christ, for instance, one wonders if Bresson,
who began as a painter and was inspired by Chardin, among
other artists, also had in mind the art-historical references
conjured by the name: Balthazar appears in several Adoration of
the Magi paintings, by Drer, Mantegna, Leonardo, et al., often
portrayed as the African or Ethiopian king, following medieval
custom. And just as the pale, sculpted face of Maries father
reminds one of
a Bellini doge, her garland of flowers, which returns as an
ornamental spray on Balthazars harness in the circus sequence,
certainly also suggests the feathered or jeweled turban of the
third magus that was a common index of his exotic origins in
these paintings.

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A transcendental reading of the film also ignores the

pessimism

of

characterize

as

Bressons

visionwhat

luciditywhich

was

to

he

preferred

intensify

in

to
his

subsequent films. Indeed, one is reminded more than once of

Henri-Georges Clouzots acidulous Le Corbeau in Bressons
insistence on the iniquity and malice of French provincial life,
in particular with the anonymous letters sent to condemn
Maries father.

Resolutely turning away from the spiritual or

metaphysical subjects of his previous filmsthe belief that all

is grace in Diary of a Country Priest or that the hand of God
guides humanity to its predestined fate in A Man Escaped
Bresson here begins the trajectory to the materialist world of his
last film, LArgent (in which Yvon Targes cellmate, echoing
Marx, calls money le dieu visible).

In Balthazar, little is

numinous. We are placed in a hard, corporeal world of rucked,

muddy fields and of things and objects, some of them signifiers
of a modernity Bresson finds wanting: cars, carts, coins,
benches,
deathbeds,

guns,

tools,

transistor

booze,

jukeboxes,

radios,

telegraph

poles,

andespeciallyofficial

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documents (police summonses, audits, wills, orders of sale) and

instruments of control and incarceration (harnesses, bridles,
chains, muzzles).

The latter manifest the films theme of

liberty and freedom, of Balthazars and Maries parallel

captivities. She, too, passes from master to master (her father;
Grard, into whose subjugation she willingly enters; and
Jacques, the childhood sweetheart who sustains an ideal image
rather than any real sense of her), but there is no release from
her suffering. She simply disappears near the end of the film,
one infers into a universe of servitude.
The elliptical, sometimes clipped rhythm of Bressons
editing, the physicality of his sound world (the skidding cars,
Balthazars braying, the clanking chains with which Grard is
repeatedly associated), and his fragmentation of bodies through
truncated framingthe focus on torsos, legs, and hands, in
particularamplify this sense of materiality.

Money and its

equivalents (bread, land, contraband) are insistently shown,

alluded to, and invoked, especially in the grain dealers speech
about loving money and hating death. This avaricious miller is

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played by the writer Pierre Klossowski, an expert on de Sade

and the older brother of the painter Balthus, and he briefly takes
the film into Buuel territory as he surveys the shivering Marie,
who swats his hand away from her neck and hungrily spoons
compote from a jar.

He offers her a wad of francs for sex,

fulfilling the command of the young man who danced with her
at Arnolds party: If you want her, pay!

In this monetary

setting, Balthazars circuitous journey to death suggests less a

traversal of the stations of the cross than an exchange of value,
like the passing of the false note in LArgent. His transit from
hand to hand does not unleash an avalanche of evil as the
trading does in the latter film, but just as determinedly reveals a
world of moral and physical barbarity.
Using a rhetoric of reversal, in which a prayer or promise
or characteristic is bluntly contradicted, sometimes within just
one edit (a cut or dissolve), Bresson repeatedly depicts religion,
or at least the church, as false, ineffectual. The casual criminal
acts of Grard, which Gilles Jacob says introduce a satanic
element in the early sequencesslicking a highway with oil so

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that cars spin out of control and crashare immediately

followed by a sequence in which Grard sings angelically at
church, inciting Maries enthrallment with his beatific evil.
Arnold cries to Christ, the Virgin, and all the saints that he will
never drink again but within a quick edit is once more slugging
back the booze. And as Maries father lies dying from grief at
the end, a priest tells him, There must be forgiveness for all.
Youll be forgiven because you have suffered. The ailing man
turns his body away from the priest and the latter reads from the
Bible: He may punish, yet he will have compassion.
does not willingly afflict the children of men.

For he

Even as we

wonder what compassion we have witnessed in the film, aside

from

Maries

tender

ministrations

toward

Balthazarthe

dubious kindness of the bakers wife toward Grard, perhaps?

Bresson all but ridicules the priests teachings.

Outside, the

dying mans wife prays: Lord, dont take him from me too.
Wait. You know how sad and miserable my life will be. The
priests hand beckons her through the window.
Her husband is dead.

She goes in.

207

The mourning wife tells Grard, who wants to borrow the

donkey for a smuggling operation, that Balthazar is a saint,
much, one assumes, as Bressons gaunt, alcoholic country priest
had become a saint, through his ceaseless suffering.

In his

famous essay on Diary of a Country Priest, Andr Bazin notes the

analogies with Christ that abound toward the end of the film.
A transcendental reading of Balthazar relies on a similar
proliferation of signs: the donkeys death, serene and glorious,
sanctified by the Schubert andantino; the sheep and their
pealing bells; his physical burden and spurting wound; and the
silence that engulfs him before the screen fades to black. But
Bressons lucidity sees the death differently, as the prolonged
expiry of an old, abused animal, too wounded to bray, too
exhausted to do anything but collapse to the earth, his value
depleted.

208

Encountering Robert Bresson, by Charles Thomas Samuels, from

Samuels Encountering Directors (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1972),
pp. 57-76.
Bressons living room, where this interview took place, is almost too
appropriate for the most uncompromisingly austere director in film
history: white walls, tan curtains and upholstery, worn wooden floors,
and one spot of color coming from a frayed patterned rug that must
have been reticent oven in its heyday but was now positively attenuated
in contradicting the general pallor. In his mid-sixties, Bresson shows
few signs of age (a slight suggestion of arthritis in the hands) but many
of vigor and even of modishness (he wears his white hair long and
dresses in American-style sports clothes). His most imposing features
are icy blue eyes that flash with impatience, even when he smiles, at the
apparent bidding of some inner voice that seems always to be in
competition with the voice of his interlocutor. At one moment he drums
his fingers nervously on his chair; at another, he seems totally absorbed
in the conversation. All shifts are reflected in his eyes, which never
leave your face, no matter how distracted he may seem. Our
conversation took up an entire afternoon during the period when
Bresson was shooting Four Nights of a Dreamer through the night,
waking up around midday, and devoting his afternoons to preparation.
Despite this grueling schedule and the rustiness of his English (a
language, as he apologized, that he rarely used but adopted for my
comfort), Bresson proved responsive and articulate. As the length of the
interview shows, there were no lulls in the conversation.
SAMUELS: Youve said you dont want to be called a metteur en scne

209

but rather a metteur en ordre. Does this mean that you think the essence
of film is editing rather than staging?
BRESSON: For me, filmmaking is combining images and sounds of real
things in an order that makes them effective. What I disapprove of is
photographing with that extraordinary instrumentthe camerathings
that are not real. Sets and actors are not real.
S: That puts you in the tradition of the silent film, which could not rely
on dialogue and therefore created its effects through editing. Do you
agree that you are more like a silent than a sound film director?
B: The silent directors usually employed actors. When the cinema
became vocal, actors were also used, because at that time they were
thought the only ones able to speak. A rather difficult part of my work is
to make my non-actors speak normally. I dont want to eliminate
dialogue (as in silent films), but my dialogue must be very specialnot
like the speeches heard in a theater. Voice, for me, is something very
important, and I couldnt do without it. Now, when I choose someone to
appear in one of my films, I select him by means of the telephone, before
I see him. Because in general when you meet a person, your eyes and
ears work together rather badly. The voice tells more about anyone than

210

his physical presence.

S: But in your films all the people speak with a single, a Bressonian
voice.
B: No. I think that in other films actors speak as if they were onstage. As
a result, the audience is used to theatrical inflections. That makes my
non-actors appear unique, and thus, they seem to be speaking in a single
new way. I want the essence of my films to be not the words my people
say or even the gestures they perform, but what these words and gestures
provoke in them. What I tell them to do or say must bring to light
something they had not realized they contained. The camera catches it;
neither they nor I really know it before it happens. The unknown is what
I wish to capture.
S: If it is true that your goal is the mystery you drew out of your nonactors, can anyone besides you and them fully appreciate the result?
B: I hope so. There are so many things our eyes dont see. But the
camera sees everything. We are too clever, and our cleverness plays us
false. We should trust mainly our feelings and those senses that never lie
to us. Our intelligence disturbs our proper vision of things.
S: You say you discover your mysteries in the process of shooting. . . .

211

B: Yes. Because what Ive just told you was not something I had
planned for. Amazingly, however, I discovered it during my first
moments behind the camera. My first film was made with professional
actors, and when we had our first rehearsal I said, If you go on acting
and speaking like this, I am leaving.
S: On your second film, you had many quarrels with Maria Casars. But,
you know, I think her performance in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is
one of the greatest on film. Dont you think you conquered her usual
hamminess just a bit?
B: A friend told me that in Julien Greens South she had to appear on the
stage saying, Its raining; in French, il pleut. Despite the simplicity of
these words, her tragedians temperament made her shout emphatically: I
. . . l . . . pl . . . eut! Because Les Dames was not a tragedy, she was
worried at the beginning. To get courage, she used to drink a little glass
of cognac before acting. When I chanced to discover this, I asked her to
take a sedative instead, which she willingly did. Then things started to go
better.

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S: Your major characteristic as an editor is ellipsis. Do you leave more

and more out in each version of a given scene, or do you instinctively
elide things while shooting?
B: I always shoot on the dangerous line between showing too much and
not showing enough. I try to work as if I were on a tightrope with a
precipice at either side.
S: What I want to know, however, is whether you consciously eliminate
things during editing or instinctively eliminate things as you go along.
Put this another way: Did you eliminate as much in your earlier films?
B: I have always been the same. I dont create ellipsis; it is there from
the beginning. One day I said, Cinema is the art of showing nothing. I
want to express things with a minimum of means, showing nothing that is
not absolutely essential.
S: Doesnt that make your films too difficult? Im not even thinking of
the average viewer. Doesnt your extremely elliptical manner baffle even
the educated viewer? Can anyone get all the things you merely sketch in?
B: Many do.
S: Arent you worried about being too rarefied?

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B: No. Here is the problem: The public is educated to a certain kind of

film. Therefore, when they see what you call my elliptical films, they are
disturbed. Bad critics say I am inhuman and cold. Why? Because they
are used to acting; since they find none in my films, they say I am empty.
S: Let me ask you about your actors now. Jules Roy wrote an article
about A Man Escaped in which he said that you never paid attention to
your associates, that you were always locked into yourself, and that
whenever you faced simple and difficult means toward a given end, you
always chose the difficult.
B: Things are always difficult. And I lock myself into myself because
often it seems that some of the others are against me. I find that when I
dont concentrate, I make mistakes.
S: I noticed when I saw you shooting Four Nights of a Dreamer on the
Pont Neuf that you were walking around, ignoring everyone, and
continuously peering at the shooting area between two fingers. I also
noticed that you make use of accidents. For example, a passerby walked
behind your actors while they were performing, yet you did not instruct
the cameraman to stop shooting.
B: Its possible.

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S: You would use such an accident, wouldnt you?

B: Yes. In Pickpocket I deliberately shot the long sequence at the
railroad station during rush hour so as to be able to capture all the
accidental occurrences. I courted the reality of the crowd through the
impediments they placed before my camera.
S: It is said that you shoot every scene many times. How do the actors
respond?
B: Sometimes they react badly, so I stop; sometimes the third shot is the
best, sometimes the first. Sometimes the shot I think the best is the worst;
sometimes the shot that seems worst when I film I later learn is exactly
what I wanted. I require from a shot something I am not fully conscious
of when photographing. When we are editing, I tell my editor to search
for what I remember as having been the most successful take, and as he is
running the film through the machine, I discover that what I had not
sought is in fact what I had always wanted. I must add that lately I dont
shoot so many takes.
S: A common criticism of Pickpocket is that Martin Lasalle fails because
he isnt enough of an actor.

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B: No, I think he is marvelous. Extraordinarily, he identified exactly

with the hero of the film: somehow a little lost in the world but very
sensitive and clever, with an incredible manual talent. As a result, he
became nearly as good a pickpocket as the professional I employed to
teach him. The only difficulty I had with him is that he had a Uruguayan
accent, which we succeeded in correcting.
S: According to one of your interviews, in A Man Escaped you helped
Leterrier to give a good performance through mechanical means. What
were they?
B: By mechanical I mean, as I said before, words and gestures.
Because I tell my actors to speak and move mechanically. For I am using
these gestures and wordswhich they do not interpretto draw out of
them what I want to appear on screen.
S: For you, the non-actor is raw materiallike paint.
B: But precious raw material.
S: Youve said you dont even let him see the rushes.
B: That is true, and for the same reason I never use the same person
twice, because the second time he would try deliberately to give me what
he thought I wanted. I dont even permit the husband of a non-actress to

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see rushes because he would evaluate her performance and then she
would try to improve it. Anyway, mechanics are essential. Our gestures,
nine times out of ten, are automatic. The ways you are crossing your legs
and holding your head are not voluntary gestures. Montaigne has a
marvelous chapter on hands in which he says that hands go where their
owner does not send them. I dont want my non-actors to think of what
they do. Years ago, without realizing any program, I told my non-actors,
Dont think of what you are saying or doing, and that moment was the
beginning of my style.
S: This is very interesting. You seem to be talking about what is now
known as body language. Scientists are now writing books about the
meaning of involuntary gestures.
B: Even as early as Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne I told the actors to
think about anything they wanted except their performances. Only then
did I hear in their voices that inflection (so unlike theatrical inflection):
the inflection of a real human voice. In three-quarters of a persons
activities, his mind does not participate, and that is what I am trying to
capture.

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S: You once said you choose your actors only after talking to them for a
long time.
B: It used to be true, but it isnt anymore. Perhaps I have grown lazy.
And imprudently, as I told you, I sometimes choose my non-actors as a
result of a phone call. A voice calls me up and says, I hear you are
looking for a girl to star in your film, I listen to that voice, and I say to
myself, The role is hers. Thats the way I chose Dominique Sanda for
Une Femme douce.
S: Do you work this way now because you are so sure of yourself that
you can get what you want out of anyone?
B: Yes, I am sure of myself, but, you know, a human being has so many
contradictions and oddities that I can never be entirely sure that Ive
chosen the right person.
S: You have often expressed contempt for psychology. Yet you keep
talking about the mystery of personality in ways that sound psychological.
Whats the difference between what you want to understand and what the
psychologist wants to understand?
B: The psychologist discovers only what he can explain. I explain
nothing.

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S: You are a person with no preconceptions.

B: None at all.
S: Whereas psychology is a closed system, whose premises dictate its
method. Therefore, it discovers evidence in support of a preexisting
theory of human behavior.
B: If I succeed at all, I suppose some of what I show on the screen will be
psychologically valid, even though I am not quite aware of it. But of
course, I dont always succeed. In any case, I never want to explain
anything. The trouble with most films is that they explain everything.
S: Thats why one can go back to your films.
B: If there is something good in a film, one must see it at least twice. A
film doesnt give its best the first time.
S: I think that many of your ideas are a consequence of your Christianity.
Am I right in saying that you pursue mystery without worrying that the
audience will be baffled because you believe that we all partake of one
essential soul?
B: Of course. Of course.
S: So that every viewer is fundamentally the same viewer.

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B: Of course. What I am very pretentiously trying to capture is this

essential soul, as you call it.
S: Do you believe that there is anybody that does not partake in this
essential soul. For example, is an atheist outside your audience?
B: No, he is not. Besides, there are no real atheists.
S: What attracted you to Bernanos?
B: I was attracted by the same thing, on a different scale, that attracts me
in Dostoyevsky. Both writers are searching for the soul. In fact, I dont
share Bernanoss faith and style. But in every book of his there are
sparks, remarkable insights, that are very peculiar and that you do not find
in other writers. In Diary of a Country Priest there are many such sparks.
S: Most of your films are adaptations. Why did you create both story and
script for Pickpocket and Au hasard, Balthazar ?
B: In the latter case, I can answer the question simply. One day I saw
very clearly a donkey as the center of a film, but the next day that image
faded away. I had to wait a long time for it to return, but I always wanted
to make this film. You may recall that in Dostoyevskys The Idiot Prince
Myshkin says he recovered his good spirits by seeing a donkey in the
marketplace. Pickpocket is another matter. I have always liked manual

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dexterity and, when young, made balancing toys, juggled, etc. Ive never
understood intellectuals who put dexterity aside.
S: Everything you say points to your belief that the human mind isnt
enough.
B: Our senses tell us more than our intelligence.
S: Isnt it ironic that you are known as an intellectual director? I have
always thought you profoundly emotional.
B: Most of what is said about me is wrong and is repeated eternally.
Once somebody said that I worked as an assistant director to Ren Clair,
which is not true, and that I studied painting at the cole des BeauxArtsalso not truebut this kind of error appears in nearly every
account of my career. Of course, the worst mistakes concern my ideas
and my way of working.
S: Youve said that your films are sometimes solutions to technical
problems. For example, you made The Trial of Joan of Arc to see if one
could make a film that was only questions and answers.
B: I like exercise for its own sake. That is why I regard my films as
attempts rather than accomplishments. People always ask me about the
motivation of my characters, never about the arrangement of shots.

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S: You seem more interested in putting shots together than in moving the
camera.
B: No. My camera is never stationary; it simply doesnt move around in
a blatant manner. It is too easy, when you want, for instance, to describe
a room, to pan across itor to show you are in church by tilting upward
in a spiraling fashion. All that is artificial; our eye doesnt proceed like
that.
S: You told Godard that you prefer as often as possible to replace image
by sound. Why?
B: Because the ear is profound, whereas the eye is frivolous, too easily
satisfied. The ear is active, imaginative, whereas the eye is passive.
When you hear a noise at night, instantly you imagine its cause. The
sound of a train whistle conjures up the whole station. The eye can
perceive only what is presented to it.
S: Would you prefer working in a medium where you could eliminate
images?
B: No, I want both image and sound.
S: You just want to give the latter predominance?
B: Yes.

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S: How do you prepare your soundtracks?

B: There are two kinds of sound in my films: sounds that occur during
shooting and those I add later. What I add is more important, because I
treat these sounds as if they were actors. For example, when you go into
the street and hear a hundred cars passing, what you think you hear is not
what you hear, because if you recorded it by means of a magnetophone,
you would find that the sound was a mere jumble. So when I have to
record the sound of cars, I go to the country and record every single car in
pure silence. Then I mix all these sounds in a way that creates not what I
hear in the street, but what I think I hear.
S: In this way you can reflect the mind of the character. For example, in
A Man Escaped the amplified sounds of keys, trams, etc. reflect the
supersensitive hearing of a man in prison.
B: Yes. In that film freedom is represented by the sounds of life outside.
S: In view of your emphasis on sound, why do you avoid music?
B: Because music takes you into another realm. I am always astonished
when I see a film in which after the characters are finished speaking the
music begins. You know, this sort of music saves many films, but if you
want your film to be true, you must avoid it. I confess that I too made

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mistakes with music in my early films. But now I use music, as in

Mouchette, only at the end, because I want to take the audience out of the
film into another realm; that is the reason for Monteverdis Magnificat.
S: Why did you suddenly move to color in Une Femme douce?
B: Because suddenly I had money for it.
S: Did the new technique produce any special problems?
B: Yes. Since the first rule of art is unity, color threatens you because its
effects are too various. However, if you can control and unify the color,
you produce more powerful shots in it than are possible in black and
white. In Une Femme douce I started with the color of Dominique
Sandas skin and harmonized everything to it.
S: The sight of her nude flesh is one of the most important in the film.
B: I am also using nudity in Four Nights of a Dreamer. I am not at all
against nudity so long as the body is beautiful; only when the body is ugly
is its nudity obscene. It is like kissing. I cant bear to see people kissing
on the screen. Can you?
S: Thats why you sometimes have your characters kiss each others
hands?
B: Yes. Perhaps.

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S: It happens in Au hasard, Balthazar. I wanted to ask a question about

that. In those many beautiful shots in which Marie embraces the head of
the donkey, were you thinking of the common figure that appears in
Renaissance tapestries of the Virgin and the unicorn?
B: No. The resemblance is accidental.
S: Youve said that the whole universe is Christian and that no story is
more Christian than any other. What do you think is the Christian
element in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne?
B: I never look for a Christian meaning. If it comes, it comes.
S: But this is the only one of your films that seems wholly secular.
B: I never thought about it much, but I suppose you are right.
S: Did you and Cocteau agree completely when you were working on the
script?
B: You know, Cocteau did very little. I initially wrote all the dialogue
myself, retaining as much of Diderot as I could, but inventing the story of
the two women whom Hlne uses. Their behavior and what happens to
them in my film arent in Diderot. What I needed Cocteau for was to help
me blend Diderots dialogue with my own. This he did magnificently in

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ten minutes, out of friendship for me. And since he was Cocteau and I
was not known as a writer, I asked him to take credit for the dialogue.
S: Actually, as is well known, your adaptation of Diderot changes the
spirit of the tale completely. Diderots story is comic and emphasizes
class distinctions. Why did you want to film this if you didnt intend to
film it as written?
B: It was my second film, and I needed an adaptation because producers
are more difficult about original scripts. I admired the story of Madame
de la Pommeraye from Jacques le fataliste because it was well
constructed and dramatic, not comic as you seem to think. I merely used
his basic situation and much of his dialogue, adding characters, scenes,
and so forth to make a film about things that did interest me.
S: Why did you change the period and bring the story up to date?
B: Because I think that costume drama violates the essence of cinema,
which is immediacy. The period I was able to change because feelings
unlike clothesdont change from century to century.
S: You say always that youre a demon for truth, yet this film is
obviously stylized.
B: But style goes very well with truth.

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S: I find symbolism in this film. Was it deliberate? For example, when

Jean comes to ask Hlne to arrange a meeting with Agns, Hlne stands
in front of the fireplace suppressing her jealousy, but we see it reflected in
the raging fire at her side.
B: I dont remember if I meant it that way. I never look for symbolism.
S: Take another instance. Hlne is frequently seen in front of mirrors,
suggesting what is true: that there are two Hlnes, the self she pretends
and the one she really is.
B: That wasnt deliberate, but you teach me now what I ought to have
done or what I did without realizing it. Because you see, luckily,
everything important is instinctive. One mustnt plan every detail in
advance. I agree with Valry: One works to surprise oneself.
S: There are many more fades in Diary of a Country Priest than in Les
Dames du Bois de Boulogne. Are you deliberate about the number and
kind of transitions? In Une Femme douce there are no fades at all.
B: Because more and more I try to be quick. Moreover, to produce a
fade in a color film, you have to superimpose one negative over another,
and that destroys the quality of the shot. As I have always said, a film is

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not its shots, but the way they have been joined. As a general once told
me, a battle occurs very often at the point where two maps touch.
S: You often said that you dont like spectacle. However, Diary of a
Country Priest is spectacular. For example: Chantals white face
hovering in the blackness of the confessional or the priest passing beside
that magnificent tree. If you remade the film now, would you eliminate
such shots?
B: Absolutely. Those things attracted me at the time. One needs much
more experience than I had to eliminate such nonessentials. The most
important shots for me in that film were those in which you see the priest
writing in the diary. At those moments one sees the contact between his
soul and, if you like, the world of matter, as he pronounces the very words
that he is writing down.
S: On other occasions, when he is speaking but not writing, you obtain
marvelous effects. For example, we see him dipping bread into wine as
he says, I am able to take some bread with wine because I am feeling
better. But his face shows that he is dying. As a result, we see how
humble he is, how unaware of his own suffering.

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B: Let me tell you something. What you saw in that shot you invented.
The less the non-actor does, the more he suggests. The combination of
the wine and the bread and the non-actors face (with a minimum of
gesture) suggests that he is going to die. He does not have to say so. If he
acted I am going to die, it would be awful.
S: You said I invented it. I didnt invent it.
B: No, you felt it.
S: Dont you see, invent is the wrong word?
B: A book, a painting, or a piece of musicnone of these things has an
absolute value. The value is what the viewer, the reader, or the listener
brings to it.
S: There is a difference between value and meaning. We can disagree
about the value of a film and still agree on what it means.
B: There are people who when seeing Diary of a Country Priest feel
nothing.
S: But thats their fault. Thats not the fault of the film. There is a
German proverb: If a jackass stares into a mirror, a philosopher cant
look back.

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B: Unfortunately, the public is used to easy films. More and more this is
true.
S: Then you are suffering from lack of comrades. If there were more
directors making suggestive films like yours, the public would be able to
understand better.
B: I have always said that the world of cinema ought to be organized like
the world of painting during the Renaissance, so that apprentices might
learn their craft. Today a man assists now this, now that director, and
learns nothing.
S: In Diary of a Country Priest for the first time
B: You are right; this is the first film in which I started to understand
what I was doing.
S: I had in mind something more specific that one also sees in Une
Femme douce, but above all in Pickpocket. Before a character enters a
place or after he exits from it, the camera holds on the set.
B: Where? What do you mean?
S: In Diary of a Country Priest he rides his bicycle to the house of the
Bishop of Torcy. He enters the house, and you hold outside the house. It
happens repeatedly in Pickpocket.

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B: I dont remember.
S: Ill give a more recent example. In Une Femme douce the couple
comes into the house, and the camera remains on the door. Then they
walk upstairs, and the camera holds on the landing. We see the door to
their apartment before they open it and after they close it, etc. You
werent conscious of this?
B: Of course, I was conscious, but I never remember what I have done
later. Let me tell you something about doors. Critics say, Bresson is
impossible: He shows fifty doors opening and closing; but you must
understand that the door of the apartment is where all the drama occurs.
The door either says, I am going away or I am coming to you. When I
made Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, I was also accused of showing too
many doors. And Cocteau said I was criticized for being too precise. In
other films you see a door because it just happens to be there, he said,
whereas in your films it is there on purpose. For that reason each door is
seen, whereas in other films the door is scarcely noticed.
S: You say that you first discovered yourself in Diary of a Country
Priest. Was part of that discovery the use of commentary?

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B: Perhaps. But you know, I shouldnt have used commentary in my

next film, A Man Escaped. Since it was virtually a silent film and since it
required some rhythm, I depended on commentary.
S: I want to ask some questions about A Man Escaped, which, by the
way, seems to me your greatest film. Incidentally, does that judgment
upset you?
B: I dont know how to make such comparisons. But there may be
something in what you say. When I finished it, I had no idea about its
value. Yet I had, for the first time in my life, an impulse to write down
everything I felt about the art of filmmaking, and for that reason A Man
Escaped is precious to me.
S: You have been working on this book for a long time. When will it be
published?
B: I havent worked at it much. I have no time to finish it. It is
principally a gathering of notes on little pieces of paper, on cigarette
wrappersthings I wrote down while shooting or on some other
occasion.
S: A Man Escaped shares with The Trial of Joan of Arc an implication of
French nationalism. Did you want that?

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B: No, the prisoner could have been a young American or a Vietnamese.

I was interested only in the mind of someone who wishes to escape
without outside help.
S: The problem is more serious in The Trial of Joan of Arc, in which you
use certain historical facts and ignore others. For example, in one
tradition, the soldier who offered Joan a crucifix at the stake was British.
But you dont show that. Moreover, you make the British characters
particularly stupid.
B: Not stupid but rather brutal. Indeed, the English bishop is intelligent
and refined.
S: Your films are the fastest films made, but people say that you are
slow.
B: Because my characters dont jump about and scream.
S: The most serious criticism that can be made against you is that you are
too fast. For example, I cant imagine anyone catching everything in Au
hasard, Balthazar. Consider the inquisition of Grard at the police
station. I have seen the film twice, and I still cant understand what
happens in that scene.

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B: I only wanted to show that a crime had occurred and that the boy was
questioned by the police. The scene shows the stupidity and vanity of the
boy and of his comrades. The police captain says, In prison for
stupidity! It is also important because in the next scene the boy tries to
make Arsne think that Arsne, who is a tramp, is also the murderer that
the police are looking for.
S: To return to A Man Escaped: Though you create very well the
experience of being in prison, you never show the brutality. For example,
you dont show Fontaine being beaten. You only show him afterward.
Why?
B: Because it would be false to show the beating since the audience
knows that the actor isnt really being beaten, and such falsity would stop
the film. Moreover, this is what it was like when I was a prisoner of the
Germans. Once I heard someone being whipped through a door, and then
I heard the body fall. That was ten times worse than if I had seen the
whipping. When you see Fontaine with his bloody face being brought
back to the cell, you are forced to imagine the awfulness of the beating
which makes it very powerful. Furthermore, if I showed him being taken

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from his cell, being beaten, then being returned, it would take much too
long.
S: There is another wonderful effect of concentration in this scene:
Fontaine says, After three days I was able to move again, although only
a few seconds of film time have passed. This suggests how quickly he
restores himself and how much courage he has.
B: That is very important. His will to go on establishes a rhythm of
inexorability that touches the public. When men go to war, military
music is necessary, because music has a rhythm and rhythm implants
ideas.
S: Whenever we see the window in Fontaines cell, it glows like a jewel.
Was that a special effect?
B: No, but I do remember that I worked with my cinematographer to
obtain just the right degree of light from both window and door.
S: There is one thing in the film that seems uncharacteristic in its patness.
When Fontaine is sentenced, the scene takes place at the Hotel Terminus.
...
B: Every city in France had such a hotel where the Gestapo stayed during
the occupation.

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S: You didnt desire the pun?

B: Of course not. Everything in this film is absolutely factual. I had no
trouble inventing details and was familiar with the history of the place.
All of the characters actions take place exactly where they occurred in
real life.
S: You search for mystery in your films. It seems to me that here you
really attain it because although the title tells us that he will escape, the
film is very suspenseful.
B: The important thing is not if but how. Here is another mystery:
Although every detail of the film came from the report of Andr Devigny,
I invented the dialogue with the young boy who is finally brought to
Fontaines cell. When I read it to Devigny, I was very worried about his
reaction. Do you know what he said? How true! This shows that truth
can be different from reality, because in the actual event, as Devigny told
me, he behaved as if the boy were a woman he needed to seduce in order
to make good his escape. In my film, on the other hand, I show Fontaine
dominating the boy. You know, I wanted to call the film Help
Yourself, and thats why I showed Devigny as dominating in the last
scenes. Help yourself and God will help you.

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S: There are other great moments in the film. For example, when
Fontaine tells the old man in the next cell that his own attempt to escape is
being made for the old man, too, or the moments when a community is
achieved by means of men tapping on the walls. I could go on. This film
is your greatest, I think, not because it is technically superior to the others
but because it is richer in content.
B: Mouchette is rich, too!
S: I would place Mouchette with A Man Escaped among your greatest
films.
B: But it seems to me there is a little too much spectacle in Mouchette.
S: You added a lot to the Bernanos novel in Mouchette. Conversely,
Pickpocket, which is an original, appears to be inspired by Crime and
Punishment. For the viewer aware of this parallel, there is a problem in
Pickpocket. In Crime and Punishment, whether justifiably or not,
Raskolnikov thinks of his crime as benefiting humanity and thus earns a
measure of sympathy. Your hero has no excuse for the crime and thus
seems a little pretentious in his desire to be taken as a superior being.
B: Yes, but he is aware that pickpocketing is very difficult and
dangerous. He is taken with the thrill of that. He is pretentious perhaps,

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like Raskolnikov, but on quite a lesser scale. Like Raskolnikov, he hates

organized society. And I am sure you know that Dostoyevsky took the
idea of his novel from Max Stirners Der Einzige und sein Eigentum,
though that is perhaps not the actual title of the book. The French
version, at any rate, which is called LUnique et sa proprit, contains
sentences like these: What am I legitimately allowed to do? All that I
am able to and My rights, so far as Im concerned, extend as far as I can
extend my arm. These are a good encouragement to pickpocketing,
especially the latter sentence.
S: What I am trying to explore with you is the emotional problem for the
spectator.
B: I never think of the spectator.
S: But you can see that your hero might appear unsympathetic.
B: He is unsympathetic. Why not?
S: I am also puzzled, in view of your lack of interest in psychology, at
the heavy psychological emphasis in this film. Let me explain. As we
see the hero stealing, we dont know his motive, but toward the end of the
film we find out that he previously stole from his mother. We then realize
his psychological motivation; he stole from his mother, felt guilty about

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that, was ashamed to confess to her, and, therefore, commits crimes so as

to be punished and fulfill his need for penitence.
B: Perhaps, but only a psychiatrist would explain it like that. As
Dostoyevsky frequently does, I present the effect before the cause. I think
this is a good idea because it increases the mystery; to witness events
without knowing why they are occurring makes you desire to find out the
reason.
S: But this doesnt answer my question. Here, in the first of your films
from an original story, you, who profess to dislike psychology, are at your
most psychological. Why?
B: You think its psychological? I didnt mean it to be. I simply showed
a man picking pockets until he was arrested. I included the fact that he
stole from his mother simply to provide evidence the police needed in
order to be put on his track.
S: In other words, you didnt put it in as explanation but rather as plot
device?
B: Yes. It is only to make the chief of police certain that Martin is a
thief. What interested me is the power this gave the inspector, because
the inspector liked to torture himas in that long scene, where the hero

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doesnt know how much the inspector knows. In fact, I originally wanted
to call the film Incertitude.
S: There is something else I rather doubt you wanted in the film. The
hero of your film is a criminal in two ways: He is a thief, and he denies
God.
B: On the contrary, I make him aware of the presence of God for three
minutes. Few people can say they were aware of God even that long.
This line of dialogue is very personal; it shows that although influenced
by Dostoyevsky, I made my story benefit from my own experiences. At
his mothers funeral, a singer sings the Dies Irae in exactly the same
simple way another singer sang it at my mothers funeral in the Cathedral
of Nantes, where, apart from ten nuns, my wife and I attended the service
alone. Somehow this Dies Irae made a strange impression on me; I could
have said then, like my pickpocket, I felt God during three minutes.
S: This raises another question. You are famous for maintaining your
privacy. I didnt even know you were married, and it was a great surprise
when your wife came to the door. Isnt Pickpocket a game of hide-andseek since, according to you, it reflects so much of your personal
experience, although if you hadnt told me, I wouldnt have known it?

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B: I hate publicity. One should be known for what he does, not for what
he is. Nowadays a painter paints a bad painting, but he talks about it until
it becomes famous. He paints for five minutes and talks about it on
television for five years.
S: That reminds me of Godard. He makes bad films, but he defends them
so interestingly.
B: His films are interesting. He upsets the official cinema, which cares
only for profits. He taught films how to use disorder.
S: Dont you think his purpose is more important than the individual
resultswhich arent very good?
B: When he uses professional actors, I dont like his films, but when he
doesnt, he makes the best that can be seen.
S: On this matter of your zeal for truth: There are moments in Pickpocket
that seem to me to be true only to your peculiar style. For example, in the
opening scene where the hero steals the purse, the people at the racetrack
are preternaturally calm. I cant believe that people watch a race so
impassively.
B: But not every part of a racetrack crowd reacts in the same way. There
are always certain people who watch impassively. I didnt want him to

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commit his theft when people were shouting; I wanted it to happen in

silence, so that one could hear the crescendo of the horses galloping.
S: But such a scene, even among sympathetic viewers, raises the question
of whether we are seeing truth in your films or the reflection of a very
deliberate and personal style. I ask myself that question occasionally in
Pickpocket and almost always in The Trial of Joan of Arc.
B: If that happens, it is my fault. My style is natural to me. You see, I
want to make things so concentrated and so unified that the spectator feels
as if he has seen one single moment. I control all speech and gesture so as
to produce an object that is indivisible. Because I believe that one moves
an audience only through rhythm, concentration, and unity.
S: When I watched The Trial of Joan of Arc, however, I found myself
interestedmoved, if you willnot by the dialogue and characters but by
your subtle method of crosscutting: the way, for example, you indicate
that Joan has scored a point by keeping the camera on her when Cauchon
is responding. Aiding this, of course, was the great familiarity of the trial
itself.
B: Its a pity you didnt hear it in your own language.
S: Even so, my French is good enough so that I got most of it.

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B: But, you know, her words are very subtle.

S: Even so, they seemed to me less subtle than your editing, which began
to replace the words as my object of interest.
B: Look, I am even surprised that you were able to sit through the film.
Its effect depends so much on subtlety of dialogue, which is said so
rapidly, that if you were sufficiently caught by the rhythms to like the film
even when you couldnt fully follow the dialogue, Im very pleased.
S: Yes, but I think that interest in the editing rhythms conflicts with
interest in the dialoguethat is, interest in technique replaces interest in
content. I think here your interest in technique is subverting the story. In
any case, you once said what impressed you most about Joan was her
youth. Since she is a famous figure of rebellion, were you thinking of any
analogies between her and contemporary youth?
B: Not exactly, but I wanted to make her seem as similar to young girls
now as I could, which is why she is dressed as she is.
S: I have always been put off Joan by her fanaticism. I mean, what if a
fanatic believes in something you find terrible?
B: I understand this feeling, but I dont share it. Joan of Arc was not a
fanatic. She wanted to save her country. For me, she is the most

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extraordinary person who ever lived. I made the film to see what would
happen when I had a young girl say the words Joan actually said.
S: I wondered about that. This story is so familiar, so often told. How
did you think you were correcting your predecessors?
B: The legend, which the public is used to, of a poor and ignorant little
shepherdess commanding the army and saving her king and France is
known now to be false. Besides, we have her exact words and those of
her questioners at the trial. I wanted to be very simple and only insist,
without prejudice, on what she said.
S: What does she mean to you?
B: Renaissance painters frequently depict the world with a level above it,
on which sit God and the angels. Joan lived her whole life with one foot
on earth and the other on that higher level. And the typical drama of her
trial, with everyone against her! The French were as bad as the English,
but they were hypocrites, which is why I dont show Cauchon as a total
villain.
S: We talked before about your speed. There are signs in Au hasard,
Balthazar of excess speed. You once said, for example, that you wanted
Arsne to be gentle when sober so that the audience could feel Balthazars

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bafflement at the total change wrought in his master by a simple bottle.

But you never show us enough of the gentle Arsne to make the contrast
felt.
B: I dont remember, but you quote me accurately. I had two ideas in
this film. First, to see an analogy between the different stages of the life
of a donkey and the life of a human being; second, to see the donkey
suffering for all human vices. Drunkenness is, of course, one vice.
S: Something new enters your films in Balthazar.
B: Eroticism.
S: Something else, too. Until now, all your films take place, as it were,
without spatial or temporal particularity. Here, for the first time,
contemporary mores are unmistakable: the blousons noirs, jazz, etc. Was
this conscious and deliberate?
B: No.
S: It just happened? Yet it happens again in Mouchette and in Une
Femme douce. For example, in each film jazz enters with such volume
and cacophony that it becomes hateful. Am I not correct, then, in sensing,
beginning with Balthazar, your hatred for the modern world?

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B: Perhaps not hatred, but rather distrust for some kinds of modern
society. I am starting to write a script about the forces that dominate
modern man.
S: What causes this recent interest of yours in contemporary life?
B: This interest is not recent. Since my films have become simpler and
simpler, I want to attach myself to some material that is resistant and that
will make my work tougher.
S: Do you think it is a reflection of your time of life: the impulse to judge
the age?
B: No. I dont judge; I only show. Or rather, I show how the world
makes me feel now.
S: You say that Balthazar must pass among the vices of man. But
Grard, because of the very accuracy with which he is portrayed as a
contemporary juvenile delinquent, seems to me to be too banal to
represent vice.
B: Since six years have passed, he may seem banal. In any case, he is
imbecility and violence, which go well together, the one producing the
other.

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S: Some of the editing in Balthazar is brilliant, like the montage of the

donkeys work life. Why however, did you superimpose the subtitle the
years pass in that scene? It isnt necessary.
B: You know, Im also using titles in my new filmfirst night,
second night, story of Jacques, story of Marthe, etc.not to amuse
myself but to make the distinctions among the various parts of the film
sharper.
S: Thats okay, because it will emphasize the fact that you are shooting a
four-part story. But the title to which I refer is the only title in Balthazar,
and it only makes clear what is already clear from the editing.
B: You are quite right. You see, you teach me many things about my
films.
S: No.
B: Yes.
S: One thing I want to criticize in this film
B: One thing more!
S: One thing more. Certain objectionable coincidences. Let me give you
an example. After the violent scene in which Grard beats Arsne while
the other boys watch, Marie just happens to come by on the motorcycle

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when the beating is finished, which permits a scene between her and
Grard that makes an obvious point about her susceptibility to evil. Even
more serious is Arsnes death scene. I understand that it is meant to be
ironic, but when Arsne falls off the donkey at the precise moment that,
having just won a fortune, he says good-bye to this country in which he
has suffered so, it is too pat.
B: It is, as you said, the irony of life. Like bad things, good things never
happen at the right time.
S: That is another sign of lifes mysteriousness?
B: Yes. But you didnt like this scene?
S: Ill tell you why.
B: But Arsne is a drunkard, so it is quite natural that he would fall of the
donkey. Moreover, the others pushed him. They place him on the
donkey and kick it so that it goes too fast and he falls off.
S: If I had shot this, I would have allowed thirty seconds more of him
riding.
B: Yes: in a state of happiness. You are right.
S: Because, you see, the cuts from the kick, to him saying good-bye, to
the road market, to him falling off the donkey, are too quick and make the

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sequence seem contrived, so that the irony seems rather the result of your
artificial manipulation.
B: What you dont know is that I work with very little money, and when
I shot that scene in the south at night in the mountains, I couldnt reshoot
anything. I even lacked the time to imagine that anything might be reshot.
I begin by improvising, but when I see that money is running out, I shoot
whatever stage we have arrived at. But your criticism is exactly right, as I
now see. I should have made him gallop happily before the fall so that it
would be more shocking. Perhaps. Perhaps. Im not sure.
S: Your working conditions make repeated takes difficult.
B: Yes. I never approach what I want to do. Many things that I see and
want to include in my films I am prevented from including by lack of
funds. But too much money can also be a handicap.
S: Why did you include in Au hasard, Balthazar that short scene with the
action painter?
B: He sits on a clever donkey; I make him speak nonsense.
S: Do you know how this has been interpreted?
B: That I like action painters?

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S: Yes. Not only that, but that he symbolizes your method as a director
because he says that his paintings catch the essence of a thought. But that
is obviously wrong.
B: Originally, I had three other people talk in that scene, but I cut them
out while editing because the scene was too long.
S: Another question: In the scene where Arsne comes to the circus at
which Balthazar is performing, I think Balthazar is moving away from
Arsne, but critics have said that he is moving toward him. Who is right?
B: He is going away.
S: He must be; hes frightened.
B: Hes frightened because he sees the bottle; he expects that Arsne will
beat him. Its obvious.
S: Do you know that everyone Ive discussed this with says the opposite?
Some critics have even written that Balthazar moves toward Arsne in a
gesture of Christian forgiveness. When people cannot see what they see,
what do you do?
B: What can I do?
S: Every day you become more difficult for your audience. So, you only
shrug! Youre a hard man.

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B: No, I am simply someone who likes exercise. You know that

ascetic comes from the Greek word for practice of exercise. You know
where the title of the film comes from? In the south in Les Beaux there is
an aristocratic family that pretends to be the descendants of the Magus
Balthazar, and so on their crest they wrote Au Hasard Balthazar. I
found it by accident, and the whole story of Balthazar is his chance
involvement in the lives of others, so I decided to use this title, which,
besides, has a very beautiful rhyme.
S: But to get back to this question of coincidence: Just before she seems
to be going off to be married, Marie feels she must visit Grard one last
time. Why does she feel she must see him?
B: Because although she is a lost girl, she still has something straight left
in her character. She wants to exorcise Grard from her life; because she
wants to make her life better, it is made worse.
S: But once again the thematic meaning is clearer than the personal
motivation. If only we saw thirty seconds more of her expression so that
we could see the force of her compulsion to return to Grard. It is all
done simply and beautifully: Out of shame, she kisses her fiancs hand
before leaving him.

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B: But your thirty seconds of expression would mean that the non-actor
acts!
S: I want to move from Balthazar to Mouchette, which is very easy
because they resemble each other more than any other two of your films.
Indeed, the latter seems a new version of the former. Do you agree?
B: Perhaps it is because this was the first time that I shot two films in
successive years.
S: Mouchette is like the donkey: stubborn, sordid, long-suffering.
B: Both are victims.
S: One difference between Bernanoss novel and your film is that
Bernanos explains Mouchettes motives. . . .
B: All the time! But how can he know what goes on in a little girls
mind!
S: Oddly enough, though, I understand her suicide more in the film than
in the novel.
B: Because his explanation is wrong, like his description of her suicide;
you dont jump in the water the way you put your head on a pillow.
When I was reading the novel, I thought at once that she had to die as she
does in the film.

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S: So heartbreakingly, for it is a game, the only game she ever plays in

the film.
B: You know death is like a magic trick: In a flash, the person vanishes.
That is why I dont show her falling in the water. We see her rolling
down the bank, there is a cut, and she is gone; we know she is dead only
from the sound and the circles growing in the water.
S: Obviously, you must show Mouchettes suicide because that is the
conclusion of Bernanoss novel, but as a Christian how do you feel about
it? You seem to celebrate suicidethe blast of the Magnificat at her
deathbut isnt this heretical?
B: Yes, but I confess that more and more suicide loses its sinfulness to
me. Killing oneself can be courageous; not killing oneself, because you
wish to lose nothing, even the worst that life has to offer, can also be
courageous. Since I live near the Seine, I have seen many people jump
into the river in front of my windows. Its remarkable that more dont do
it. There are so many reasons for suicide, good and bad. I believe that the
church has become less rigorous against it. Sometimes it is inevitable,
and not always because of madness. To be aware of a certain emptiness
can make life impossible.

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S: On the surface it seems that Mouchette kills herself because life is so

terrible, but I think the real reason is that she is so ashamed of herself for
what has happened to her. Do you agree?
B: There are so many motives, which is why this film isnt too bad. I
explain nothing, and you can understand it any way you like. Still, you
must feel that no single explanation will suffice. One is the wall placed
before her by other people after the rape. She cant live in the village; she
cant live in the house. Then too, she has been abused by a man whom
she started to love.
S: Not only does she love him. but she forgives him his crime. She
blames herself.
B: You must have noticed that in the film there is not one word about
what her experience means.
S: Why did you include the prologue in which the mother is in church
lamenting her tuberculosis?
B: To introduce this sick woman early so that I can pick her up later
without having to make elaborate preparations. Later we see what her
illness has done to her faith.
S: Here and in Balthazar one senses a new fascination with pain.

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B: Yes?
S: Why?
B: Perhaps because I feel that pain must be acknowledged no less than
happiness.
S: The opening of Mouchette seems to me the greatest in your films. . . .
B: When I was young , I hunted small animals in exactly this way. It is
not exactly a symbol, but it provides the right atmosphere.
S: It introduces Mouchette.
B: But not like a symbol! It shows the sort of world in which she lives.
If you like, she is caught, just as the partridges are caught, in a trap.
S: I love also the amusement-park sequence, which is so poignant, since
it shows Mouchette having her one moment of pleasure by being hit in
bumper cars. Even pleasure involves being hit for her. But I was curious
why you shot it as you did, with the stationary camera that misses some of
the action.
B: Only a stationary camera permits you to show real movementthere
is no other way.

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S: The constricted framing is marvelous; it keeps us from feeling

released. It prepares us for that horrible slap with which the father,
inevitably, concludes Mouchettes one moment of enjoyment.
B: Perhaps; at least at the time I had no sense that my shot was mistaken.
S: Why does that unidentified woman give Mouchette the money to take
the ride?
B: Why not? Life is very often like that. It is the same in A Man
Escaped, when the man, whom Fontaine doesnt really know, knocks at
the door of his cell. Can you imagine if I had to explain: My little girl,
you are so poor, I will let you take this ride?
S: Why do you start Une Femme douce with a floating scarf?
B: To avoid the clich of showing her falling to the pavement. And that
is worse than a clich. Since I try never to show anything that is
impossible and since, of course, Dominique Sanda does not actually hit
the ground, I used the scarf to indicate what was happening. Furthermore,
when she is putting the scarf on her shoulders, because you have seen it
floating in the air at the beginning, it tells you she is going to commit
suicide.

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S: Its also emotionally effective; this beautifully floating scarf and then
the blood. Did you intend that?
B: Of course.
S: Several people have called the film necrophiliac in its constant
focusing on the corpse.
B: I want to understand death, and I hate flashbacks. There are no
flashbacks in the film: it is all a matter of the live husband now
confronting his dead wife. Walking around the corpse, he says, I had
only desired her body, and there it is: dead. People saw the film as a
series of flashbacks, but it is all life in the face of death.
S: This film has a background of car sounds, and there is that harsh cut to
the modern sculpture when they go to the Museum of Modern Art. Does
this too reflect your suspicion of the modern world?
B: On the contrary, I think that sculpture is pretty.
S: Why does the wife like it?
B: Probably to spite her husband. He likes the old, she the new. She is
much cleverer than he, which is the opposite of Dostoyevsky, in which
the girl is an innocent, stupid waif.
S: Doesnt she marry him to try to escape her past?

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B: Many girls marry to escape their homes, but I didnt even try to
explain her action to myself. I only wanted to show that marriage wasnt
enough to her, that it disappointed her. As Goethe says, marriage has
something awkward about it.
S: Isnt the problem in the marriage her fault, too? In some sense, she
shows the prison of original sin. She reads in a book, at the end, that birds
all repeat the song of their parents, and her dressing gown has a bird
pattern on it. She says she comes from a sinister home, and she can never
throw off its influence. Arent you showing that she wants to but cannot
get rid of her bad upbringing?
B: No. I only made her say that she wants marriage to be more than
marriage.
S: Another interesting relationship in the film is that between the
husband and the maid. Isnt the maid a kind of confessor for the
husband?
B: Perhaps.
S: The horror of the film is that they kill each other. She saves him from
liking only money; he saves her from a difficult life. As a result, they
destroy each other.

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B: It seemed to me that many people couldnt understand her true motive

for killing herself. There are many motives here, too, but principally it is
obvious she will never know whether or not her husband saw her attempt
to kill him.
S: And the more he loves and forgives her, the more difficult he makes
things for her. His love kills her.
B: Yes. Yes. One often hurts most the person one loves most.
S: I think you do have a scene in the film that is a clue to your meaning:
when the husband and wife discuss Mephistopheles speech in Faust.
B: I like these words of Mephistopheles. They are in Dostoyevskys
story.
S: This is the first of your films containing allusions to other works:
Faust, Hamlet, etc.
B: Hamlet I included because I hate such theatrical shouting. I have
myself seen it performed by a French company that omitted Hamlets
advice to the players because it contradicted their style.
S: But I think there is a mistake here. When she goes back to the
apartment and reads Hamlets speech. . . .

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B: I included this to show that she is utterly unconcerned with her

husbands feelings and only wishes to annoy him.
S: But doesnt the whole business about Hamlet stop your film to provide
an essay about your theory of acting?
B: No, I dont think so. Perhaps it is too long, but I simply couldnt cut
it.
S: Its not that its boring, but I begin to be puzzled about its function.
B: It prepares the following scene, as I told you.
S: Why do they always see races and machines on television?
B: The auto race excites them sexually in the scene after the wedding,
and the noise of the airplanes goes with his anxious awaiting of her at
night.
S: The wife is a terrible person in a way.
B: Of course, the title is ironic.
S: Her suicide is a hostile act, dooming him to an eternity of grief
unmitigated by understanding.
B: Of course.

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S: There is one other group of directors that shares your feeling about
professional actors: the Italian neorealists. Do you feel any affinity for
them?
B: I dont know their films well. But although they use non-actors, I
understand they sometimes dub their voices with professionals. That is
wrong, because the voice sums a person up as nothing else can.
S: Why do so many of your actors walk about with their eyes cast
downward?
B: They are looking at the chalk marks.
S: Youve made several films from works of fiction. Do you think its
possible for a film to be faithful to its source?
B: Yes. For example, in Diary of a Country Priest I wasnt faithful to
the style of Bernanos, and I omitted details that I disliked. But I was
faithful to the spirit of the book and to what it inspired in me as I read it.
Of course, I included as many things as I could from my own experience.
S: Why did you give up painting?
B: For reasons of health. The doctor made me stop because it was
making me too nervous.
S: How were you enabled to break into films?

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B: I first made a short film which I called Les Affaires publiques. After
that, for six or seven years, no one would give me a job. In 1939, I was a
prisoner of war, but I succeeded in coming back to France after a year.
Since there were few people in Paris when I returned and since the film
industry was just starting up again, I was able to find work. Path signed
a contract with me, but they threatened to break it. I needed to use
Giraudoux as a collaborator on Les Anges du pch; without him, I
wouldnt have received money to make the film. Nevertheless, even with
Giraudoux, I had to find another producer.
S: Cocteau helped you, too, didnt he?
B: Yes, but Cocteau was my choice.
S: What influence does your being a painter have on your films?
B: Painting freed me from the desire to make paintings with each frame
and freed me from the need to worry about beautiful photography. It
helped me make every shot a necessary shot.
S: Why was there such a long gap between your first two films?
B: I couldnt find any money. Two or three contracts were signed, but all
were broken.

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S: How did you occupy yourself in those days?

B: With waiting in producers offices and with teaching myself to write.
You see, I believe that I cannot make my own films if I have collaborators
on the script.

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Bressons Gentleness, by Charles Thomas Samuels, from Samuels

Mastering the Film and Other Essays (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1977), pp. 160-170.
To be profitable, even art films must be entertaining; and although
art and entertainment may coincide, the former is often starved because
the latter is too narrowly defined.

In literature, readers can enjoy

Nabokov, whose difficulty is lightened by rococo language and sex, as

well as Beckett, who is recondite even when funny. But in film, even
cultivated spectators expect pleasure to require no personal exertion (you
have to turn pages to read a book) and austerity is regarded almost as an
affront.
Often, great directors reach their audience through sensational but
artistically inferior efforts. Because it is a fine film one doesnt deplore
the success of Blow-Up, although one wishes more attention were paid to
Lavventura; but a preference for La Dolce Vita over Fellinis early
comedies, or for Bergmans Seventh Seal over The Naked Night, is
deplorable.

When a good film doesnt bathe the eve or gratify the

emotions, it often sinks quickly into oblivion (I think, in recent years, of

Henning Carlsens Hunger, Alain Jessuas Life Upside Down, or Vittorio

264

De Setas Bandits of Orgosolo). Some directors are dismissed in toto

like the excellent Ermanno Olmi. When his film The Job was renamed
The Sound of Trumpets, filmgoers still werent blasted out of their houses,
and even free tickets couldnt get them to the theater when The Fiancs
played in New York City.
As we move up the scale from Olmi to Robert Bresson, the carnival
mentality of most filmgoers does even greater damage to the cause of art.
Except for Antonioni and Bergman, no other Western director possesses
so original a style, although Bresson wouldnt welcome the comparison.
He dismisses Antonioni as a mere photographer and Bergman as someone
wrongly dependent on rhetoric.

Accordingly, Bresson himself is

linguistically concentrated and visually unadornedso spare, in fact, that

even admirers of the other directors (artists who are distinctly not crowdpleasing) find Bresson too rarefied. This helps to explain why Bresson
has been able to direct only nine films in thirty years. Nevertheless, he
has become more and more appealing to producers without compromising
his stubborn austerity. During his first decade, when he was forced to
direct professional actors (although he hates their artificiality), he was
able to find backing for only two films; during his latest, most Bressonian

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decade, he has found backing for five. This is especially remarkable

because only one of his efforts (A Man Escaped) has been a hitand this
principally in Franceand because his recent works have been pretty
much restricted to film clubs and art cinemas and, in America, to onenight stands at festivals.
By now, Bresson is slighted neither by producers nor by film
scholars; audiences are what he requires. That his newest effort, Une
Femme douce, might provide them is evident from the admiring review it
earned in Time (no proponent of the avant-garde) when it was shown at
the 1969 Lincoln Center Film Festival. Perhaps sensing that Bressons
hour had comesince the new film is in lovely color, features a beautiful
leading lady (the then non-professional Dominique Sanda), and treats a
favored subject (unhappy marriage)Paramount Pictures toyed with the
idea of underwriting commercial distribution.

Eventually, however,

Paramounts courage receded, leaving the possibility of import to the

more adventurous but less wealthy New Yorker Theater. Daniel Talbot,
who manages that crucial showcase for neglected art, has every intention
of bringing Une Femme douce to the United States; but, as he says, Ive
discovered that young peoples taste, . . . and they would be 95 percent of

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the audience for a film like Une Femme douce, is hopelessly

conservative. Therefore, in a time of economic jitters, Mr. Talbot may
not be able to risk dependence on an audiencefor all the cant about a
film generationwhose taste remains uninstructed. Should this film
not reach America, we will perhaps have missed our easiest entrance into
Bressons art; but, since at sixty-three the director shows no sign of
slowing down, the loss will be entirely ours.
Unlike Bergman but like Antonioni, Bresson is even more distinguished for his method than for individual films (although like
Antonioni, he has produced, with A Man Escaped, at least one cinematic
landmark). His method is a relentless pursuit of inner truth. Because
Bresson disdains acting, rhetoric, and spectacle, he considers himself a
realist, but viewers rightly contend that life is not so spare as it appears in
his films. Bressons realism is to be understood as a definition of
intention, not as a description of style. In fact, he is the most rigid stylist
in the history of cinema, and no one but Bresson himself would think to
call his work natural.
His realism produces a surface order to uncover its depths, as is
revealed by the first crucial aspect of his technique. Alone among his

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peers, Bresson habitually films preexisting texts. Although he remains

strictly faithful to themretaining most of the action and dialogue and
rarely adding or inventing anythinghe arranges the details so as to
release an insight that was only latent. For example, the Madame de la
Pommeraye episode from Diderots Jacques le fataliste, which Bresson
used in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, is only a clever anecdote,
illustrating feminine wiles, about an aristocrat who avenges herself on a
faithless lover by tricking him into marriage with a courtesan. Comically,
her plot misfires: when the lover upbraids his wife for her cooperation in
duping him, she is so contrite that she wins him over. By updating the
story, Bresson diverts attention from specific social attitudes, which are
prominent in the original, to uncover a deeper moral meaning. Filming
Diderots plot and dialogue in the emotionally compacted style of Racine,
he shows how vengeance is emasculated by its own character. Locked in
unforgiving rage, the mistress cannot even imagine the merciful love that
makes her jealousy self-defeating.
Dostoyevskys novella, A Gentle Spirit, Bressons source for Une
Femme douce, is, to begin with, richer in possibility than the Diderot
episode.

While his young wife lies on her bier, the narrator of

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Dostoyevskys tale reviews his marriage in order to comprehend the girls

motive for suicide. He recalls how his infernal pride made him alienate
her affection to test it.

Because she had been poor, he flaunted the

financial favor conferred on her by marriage. Because she was naturally

loving, he responded coldly. It is not surprising that all this drove her to
hatred and almost to adultery, but when the husband rented a room to spy
on her, he had the triumph of hearing her repulse the other man.
Nonetheless, his humiliation of his wife caused her to attempt murder.
With her gun at his temple, he momentarily awakened and kept himself
from flinching to impress on her his largeness of soul. This he did so
effectively that the girl was crushed by guilt and, spiritual creature that
she was, made atonement by leaping to her death while clutching an icon.
Concluding his baleful story, the husband curses his own perversity and
avers that all men live in unbreachable solitude.
This story required less alteration than Diderots to make it suitable
to Bressons sensibility. Nonetheless, he made one major change that
greatly enriches his source. Whereas in Dostoyevsky the wife is mainly
an item in her husbands reminiscence, in Bresson she is a living

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presence. This is accomplished through the second important feature of

Bressons technique.
In half of his films, Bresson uses narrated commentarya device,
widely condemned as anti-cinematic, that is instead the directors most
important formal contribution. Narration is obviously efficient because it
elides time; in place of functional but undramatic scenes it permits speedy
summation (For six weeks she was feverish, et cetera).

More

important, it allows Bresson to present both objective and subjective

views of the action.
Asynchronous relation of dialogue to image has long been standard
cinematic technique, as in the classic example of a man murmuring lovewords to a woman on whom he advances while the camera holds on a
knife in his hands. But although this technique is normally put to such
melodramatic uses, in Bresson it is employed to reveal the soul. Thus, in
Diary of a Country Priest, the titular narrator frequently tells us through
his commentary that he is doing exactly what we see him doing on the
screen.

Such duplication, so apparently wasteful, becomes functional

through deviations, as rhyme becomes more than mere adornment when

occasionally it goes off. At one moment, for example, the priest tells us

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that he is feeling better and can even eat bread and wine (he is dying from
cancer of the stomach), while the image tells us with what difficulty he
eats and how sick he really is. By comparing his total accuracy when
reporting priestly activities with his failure to register the state of his
health, we comprehend his humility: he reports what he is doing but
neglects to acknowledge the personal odds against doing it.
In Une Femme douce this technique is even more essential to
Bressons meaning.

Dostoyevskys narrator fully understands his

experience; Bressons does not. As only cinema can, this film solves the
long-standing literary problem of how to present a story through an
unreliable narrator without confusing the audience about the plot or the
character. Thus the films dramatic sequences are not flashbacks; they are
illustrations of past events accompanied by a commentary that exposes
the husbands inability to cope with them.
Unlike Dostoyevsky, Bresson shows the wife independent of her
husbands viewpoint, and this increases both our participation in the
failure of their marriage and our comprehension of the complexity of its
cause. Two minor alterations in detail point toward the latter intention.
In Dostoyevsky, the husband hears his wife spurn her would-be lover

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through a door; in Bresson, he comes upon the couple by accident as they

are sitting in an automobile. All we see is the wife moving away from the
man; we do not hear, as the husband tells us he heard, her refusal. As a
result, we are free to suspect his attribution to his wife of perfect
innocence, a suspicion strengthened by the other change. Bressons
heroine does not die clutching an icon. Before her, jump, she fingers but
rejects an ivory Christ, leaving behind only a shawl that floats to earth
with ironic grace and is the only visible sign of her suicide. Because of
these and many other indications in the film, both husband and wife
become ambiguous figures. She is not merely the gentle victim of his
egotism; he is not simply a monster trying her soul. The moral distinction
between them is made rather clearly in Dostoyevsky, but Bresson
constantly reminds us that responsibility for the failure of a relationship
can never be simple.
Avoiding discursive dialogue, so essential in Bergman, or visual
symbolism, as in Antonioni, Bresson makes things doubly difficult for his
audience; but the power of the film depends on our awareness of mystery.
Although he was referring to another artist, John Updike has nicely
formulated what is also the essence of Bressons appeal. We are held,

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Updike says, either by stories that offer basic circumstantial suspense

or, more significantly, by those whose suspense is gnostic.

In the

former we want to know the outcome of an unresolved situation; in the

latter we read on in the expectation that at any moment an illumination
will occur. Most directors even more than most writers cater to the
former interest: Bresson is preeminent among those who court the latter.
For that reason, he always begins his films by telling us what will happen.
The heroine of Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne says she will be avenged
and immediately we see the medium of her vengeance; in Diary of a
Country Priest the face of the priest tells us instantly that he will die; the
very title gives the plot away in A Man Escaped. Just so, in Une Femme
douce, the film commences with the suicide. What draws us on, like the
husband, is the desire to know why. But to know why in Bresson (as is
not the case in Dostoyevsky), we have to watch intently everything that
happens because nothing is explained and even the explainer is an item to
be fathomed.

Many viewers find Bresson cold and remote, but this

coldness may be only a reflection of their own passivity. If you can be

excited by the search for understanding, you can be excited by Bresson.

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So Bresson forces total concentration. Actors are not permitted to

act lest we be diverted by their excellence as performers from what they
incarnate. Framing is constricted lest our eye wander to an irrelevant
detail. Scenes are enacted and assembled without differing degrees of
emphasis lest we strain forward for one and relax in another. Dialogue is
held to a minimum lest we settle for abstractions in place of facts. Only at
the very end of each film does Bresson release us from our hush of
contemplation with a shock that sums up what weve seen, as when
bubbles emerge from the river in which the heroine of Mouchette has
drowned herself and a blast of the Magnificat admits that death alone is
victory for such a life.
The last scene of Une Femme douce is equally conclusive.
Throughout the film, the husband has been pacing around the corpse of
his wife, seeking but failing to breach this final barrier. Now he can only
raise her bloodless face from its final repose and murmur hopelessly: Oh.
Open your eyes.

A secondonly for a second.

Then her head is

lowered, the screen momentarily darkens as his back passes in front of the
camera, and we hold for several seconds while a coffin screw is fastened;
the sound of its turning indicates the finality of his defeat.

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Figuratively, the screw had always been turning on a separateness

no more irrevocable in death than it was in life. Recalling their first real
conversation on one of the girls trips to his pawnshop, he comments that
she was pleased to find him more educated than she might have expected,
but we see on her face little more than sullen regard. Thus begins the
husbands attempt to understand things only insofar as they can support
his repeated desire for a solid happiness.
How voluptuous when one no longer doubts, he tells the
impassive maid who must listen to his monologue. But, whereas he dotes
on intellectual certainty, his wife is certain only that life is mean.
Paleontology, she tells him, dictates that even men are structured like
mice. When he buys her flowers as a sign of love, she wryly mocks the
acts distinctiveness.

Seeing a nearby woman receive an identical

bouquet, she rids herself of hers, remarking, We, too, form a couple, all
based on the same model. But obscurely she searches for some higher
satisfaction, although she cannot even specify the object of her search. In
Dostoyevsky, the wife is an orphan, exploited by her relatives, who
marries to better her position. In Bresson, her motives are deliberately
enshrouded. All she reveals is that she comes from a sinister house, and

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she succumbs to the pawnbrokers entreaties for no apparent reason.

When he tells her that she will help him by marrying him, she asks
whether it would not be possible to do so without marriage. Then, when
she finds herself tied to him, committed as she is to her obscure ideal, she
tortures his bourgeois certitude.
He tells her that they must be frugal so as to improve their lot, and to
mock him she offers prodigal sums to his customers. He asserts that
marriage is a state desired by most women, but she expresses her
contempt for this ideal through apparent infidelities.

Because he is

devoted to certainty, the infidelities torment him, the more so because his
devotion to his wife makes it unthinkable that so gentle a creature should
be heartless.
Is she gentle?

The husband keeps saying so, but the action

undermines his contention.

He admires her passion for books and

records, but we see her listening to jazz (the sound-cuts to it are always
accomplished with deafening volume) while munching fancy pastries, or
leafing through books, only to extract the lesson that man is no more
august than a mouse. Do these actions express intellectual passion or
emptiness of spirit? Does her esteem for books accord with the careless

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way in which she tosses them about, as we recall the disarray of her
dresser and the provocative lingerie found on her bed? When they go to a
museum she disagrees with her husband that there is a gap between
classic and modern art, but does she deny the gap out of catholicity of
taste or because nothing means very much to her? Moreover, doesnt she
express her denial simply to mock him? Young birds are drawn to the
same chant as their parents. she tells her husband, and all birds sing the
same way. Is her whole life a doomed attempt to break away from her
sinister upbringing, her aspiration a baffled yearning toward what her
imagination cannot conceive?
Yet the husband persists in regarding her as gentle, finer than he is,
more intelligent, more compassionate, and, above all, faithful, that is to
say, secure. When they go to a movie and a man next to her tries to make
a pass, the husband forces her to change seats; and when they exit from
the theater and she throws her arms about her husband, he comments that
she obviously wants to love him. What he will not face is the possibility
that she is incapable of this. He blames himself for accepting possession
merely of her body, but that is all she offers him. Even in the midst of
their alienation she turns toward his flesh.

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In the dramatized sequences, the wife seems lost, perhaps more

ferocious than gentle, but at least she is honest whereas the husband is
sentimental, and, unlike him, she is not so stupid as to think that cash and
marriage insure happiness.

Desiring to educate her to his parochial

values, the husband drives her to adultery. Desiring to free herself from
his stifling conventionality, the wife awakens in him a terrible
perturbation of spirit.
But worse lies ahead, ironically. During their first conversation (as
in Dostoyevsky), the husband quotes Mephistopheles in Goethes Faust,
who proclaims himself one of those wishing to do evil who inadvertently
does good. Although the line is here pronounced to impress the wife with
the husbands learning, it should be recalled during the latter half of the
film, where, out of their mutual enmity, a bizarre mutual improvement
springs.
After the wife is driven to attempt murder, the husband makes use of
her action to gain control. Refusing to admit what he saw, he nonetheless
punishes her by banishing her from his bed. She, in turn, driven wild by
her uncertainty about his motive and, as we later learn, by her fear that he
will abandon her, falls into a fever from which she emerges transformed.

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Whereas all her energy had gone into combating her husband, now she
seems to turn her criticism inward, at last attaining that gentleness in
which her husband took such solace. Jazz is replaced on her phonograph
by Bach and Purcell, she begins to serve her husband dutifully, and she
promises to be a faithful wife. Watching all this, he feels torn between
pity for her abasement and exultation at her new docility, but the change
gives him hope for their future. She has indeed become more nearly the
tender creature he has always sought and, out of gratitude, he confesses
how badly he has sinned against her spirit and proceeds to show that he
too can change.

Committing acts of ostentatious kindness to his

customers, he also literally abases himself to his wife in love.

Why, then, does his wife burst into sobs when he tells her how
deeply she is adored? Because the new spirituality that he has released in
her makes her intolerably guilty. But he cannot moderate his passion
because the act of murder to which he nearly drove her has awakened in
him an equal measure of guilt. They are as terribly isolated in their
mutual regret as they were in their former enmity. The evil that they did
to each other ironically produced good, freeing her from desolate negation

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and him from self-protective acquisitiveness. Now this good produces

evil.
Lost between the self she was and the self she has promised to
become, the wife cannot summon sufficient faith to believe in the
permanency of her new dispensation. The husband wishes to sell the
shop, move away, and devote his life simply to adoring her, but the more
he affirms this plan the more unbearable becomes her sense that she is
unfit for adoration. Before their marriage she had come to him to pawn a
gold crucifix with an ivory Christ attached and had not wanted the Christ
that he had offered to return. Now, in her perplexity, she fingers it in the
drawer where it has lain, but when the maid comes in to inquire after her,
she quickly hides what she is doing. Then, donning a shawl, she steps on
a little iron table and leaps from her balcony into the traffic that has been
resounding throughout the film.
The wife is not what her husband thinks her to be, yet when she
almost embodies his erroneous image, her integrity is shattered and she
can only die. The husband is brutal, not so much when he seeks to
possess his hard-eyed wife as when he seeks to make amends for having
sought possession. Watching their marriage progress, we feel a growing

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terror, because opposites merge and solutions turn out to be worse than
the problems they solve. The husbands story, in its ironic complexity,
ridicules his very effort to understand it. He never comes closer to the
mystery of his ineluctable misalliance than when he confesses that he
cannot understand the impulse that made him leave his wife at their
highest moment of intimacy, thus unintentionally facilitating her suicide.
The films clear point is that tragedy can be comprehended as a
process, while still evading our need to fathom motives and fix blame.
Therefore, Bresson uses his cinematic meansframing, editing, dialogue,
actingto achieve an even emphasis that precludes abstract summation.
Whatever inspires these people can only be inferred from their laconic
utterances and meager gestures. But this very meagernesswhich we are
made to experiencecomes as close as anything can to being the source
of their solitude. Both Dostoyevskys story and Bressons film light up
the distance between two human souls (although Bresson magnifies the
distance by giving us a fuller portrayal of the wire).

Dostoyevsky,

however, attributes the distance to a fundamental human perversity;

Bresson links it to a world without spiritual force.

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Throughout the film we hear more traffic noises and footsteps than
dialogue; we see more doors and empty stairways than people. Usually a
frame is filled with objects; fragmentation even turns characters into
things. In Nathanael Wests novel Miss Lonelyhearts the Christ-hungry
protagonist sees the world as dead . . . a world of doorknobs; this is also
the world in which Bressons tragedy transpires.

The wife yearns

obscurely beyond a universe in which all is matter; the husband tries to

turn matter into might. Why did we adopt silence from the beginning?
the husband laments, and as the couple is shown to us we are tempted to
give an answer. Neither husband nor wife can rise above the world of
things; as a result they can reach toward each other, even gaze into each
others eyes, but they can communicate nothing of their souls. In the
midst of his agony the husband wishes he could pray but knows that he
can only think.

The wife can finger her Christ, but the tentative

movement seems almost to shame her. The maids silence makes her
simulate the role of confessor, but when she pronounces her first line, late
in the film, we learn how distant she has been from the husbands ordeal
(After the burial, I will leave for eight days, if you will let me).

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Une Femme douce is distinguished from Bressons other films by

the absence of some principle of redemption.

The courtesan in Les

Dames du Bois de Boulogne receives forgiveness; the hero of A Man

Escaped is granted liberty. Even in those films where Bressons heroes
die, some promise of transfiguration is made; all the victims resemble that
most Bressonian of characters, Joan of Arc, who loses the earth but
achieves Heaven. Une Femme douce is, however, the darkest of three
recent films in which Bresson contemplates the modern world.
Successively, in Au hasard, Balthazar and Mouchette and this work, he
portrays a spiritual wasteland, characterized by brutality and a selfpunishing pursuit of pleasure. But even Balthazar dies amid a field of
peacefully grazing sheep and Mouchette drowns to the Magnificat; the
wife in Une Femme douce falls to the cacophony of screeching brakes.
It is this bleakness that will, I think, make the film seem more
tenable to the uninitiated than the profound Christian certitude of
Bressons other works. But although the mood here is untypical, the
technique is not. In A Man Escaped the mystery of human courage and of
divine aid are illustrated through the most mundane details. A spoon is
needed in Fontaines escape; by chance he finds it, and we marvel at the

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concentration with which it is used. The contrasting spiritual aridity of

Une Femme douce is shown through the same close-in depiction of the
ordinary.
The wedding sequence can serve as an example. In the scene immediately preceding, the husband begs the girl to say yes, but although
she looks at him before entering her apartment, she makes no answer.
Rather we witness her assent in an immediate cut to the signing of the
marriage register, an act itself quickly replaced by hands exchanging rings
over a restaurant table. We then see reverse shots of the two gazing at
each other and cut to an almost excessively detailed staging of their
entrance into their new home. Again, there is no dialogue, only the sound
of a key turning in the lock, of a door opening and closing, of footsteps
and traffic. They embrace but we see her staring quizzically over his
shoulder. They hesitate, but she finally pulls him forward. In quick cuts,
we see her walk to the bathroom, throw a nightgown on the bed, while he
watches television. She comes to him, laughingly unbuttons his shirt,
turns off the television (in the action dislodging a towel and giving us a
glittering view of her lovely body), and then jumps into bed. They pull
the covers over them, we hear the sound of laughter, and then only

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silence. Car noises come up on the soundtrack, followed by his voice

commenting that he had to throw water on the marvelous
drunkenness of his joy.
Each detail measures the paucity of their hopes. The marriage is not
assented to but only performed, and then not as a sacrament but as the
signing of a register. Even the real marriage, at the restaurant, is only a
series of movements and looks, and the consummation, initiated by the
wife and excited by the mechanical noise of auto racing on the television
set, is meager in its unseen joy. Yet the husband persists in regarding this
uncommunicative, wholly material coming-together as something
marvelous in its intoxication.
Many artists would depict a desolation of spirit so profound through
more striking dramatization, but Bresson would think this a mistake; he
includes in Une Femme douce a scene that illustrates his aesthetic. When
the couple sees Hamlet at the theater the husband is impressed but the
wife doesnt join in his applause. Returning home, she explains why, by
running to a volume of Shakespeare to read lines that had been eliminated
in the performance only so that the actors could get away with shouting
and gesticulation. The lines come from Hamlets advice to the Players (in

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a French translation) and among them is the veritable motto of Bressons

art: in the torrent, the tempest, the whirlwind one must always be
moderate and acquire even a certain gentleness. Like the wife herself,
Bresson shows that gentleness of manner does not deny inner ferocity.
For the spectator who can match the films concentration with his own,
Bresson, by rigorously controlling passion, inspires it.

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Dostoyevsky Adapted: An Interview with Robert Bresson, by Carlos Clarens,

from Sight and Sound, #40-41 (Winter 1971-1972), p. 4.
Bresson is not an easy man to interview, reserving, like all great directors, the
right to a final cut. His candor in conversation is more than tempered by his wary
delicacy when confronted with the written word. Many anecdotes have disappeared
from the following interview: they involved technicians or directors who could
possibly feel attackedneedless to say, unintentionally. I hope M. Bresson will
forgive me for introducing as a passing comment the story of how he came to a
parting of the ways with his cameraman, L. H. Burel (who shot Diary of a Country
Priest, A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, and The Trial of Joan of Arc), after finishing the
Joan-of-Arc film. Burel had such vivid memories of Dreyers The Passion of Joan
of Arc that he could not reconcile them with Bressons even more austere view of
the character. It seems to me that there is no doubt Dreyers Maid is a saint and that
the film is iconographical; despite Falconettis realistic performance, she still wears
her martyrdom like a crown. Bressons Joan, on the other hand, goes to the stake
unswervingly, following her compulsion, at the end of which there might be God.
You first turned to Dostoyevsky for A Gentle Creature and returned to him for
White Nights, which you called Four Nights of a Dreamer. Why?
ROBERT BRESSON: It was partly because of lack of time. Let me add that I
would never dare to adapt the novels (The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, Crime
and Punishment, etc.), which are formally perfect and complete in themselves. The
two Dostoyevsky stories from which I made my films are rather skimpy, but perfect
for my purpose.

And naturally there is always a solidity, an accuracy in

Dostoyevsky that permits reasonable adaptation in a comparatively short time. For

Four Nights of a Dreamer, a sum of money was suddenly made available to me and
I welcomed the chance to make a new film. At that time I was putting down on
paper another project, but it still needed a whole years work before shooting could
start. Then I remembered reading White Nights a long time ago. I immediately

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went back to it. In both A Gentle Creature and Four Nights I try to avoid a simple
rendering.

Although the films keep to the plots of Dostoyevsky, I try to

communicate impressions that are mine and are part of my own experience.
These last two films, the Dostoyevsky adaptations, seem so much more secular
than your other recent filmsthan, for instance, Mouchette.
Its true that in Mouchette there was a musical motif of Monteverdis
Magnificat introduced at the beginning and at the end of the narrative that seemed
clearly to indicate the mystical aspect. But Jacques, the hero of Four Nights, is so
wary of the conventional world that this very mistrust becomes an almost mystical
view of man. You will find it all in Dostoyevsky. I invented nothing.
Yet the character emerges as pure Bresson, even to the stoop-shouldered gait
that is the mark of all your heroes.
Je fais mon miel comme je peux. As for the mystical aspect of A Gentle
Creature, there is the crucifix which appears twice in the film: the heroine at first
rejects it as a useless object, only to recognize its symbolic meaning later on, when
she takes her own life.

There is another aspect to Four Nights which is not in Dostoyevsky, and that is
the erotic.
Nowadays, films can show almost everything. I preferred a vertical couple
standing nude and motionless, holding each other close, to the eternal scene of
lovers tossing about horizontally. Also, the sense of their stillness is reinforced by

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the awareness of the mother moving about in the hall. I believe in the value of
concentration in this respect as in every other.
And then there is a third aspect to Four Nights, the obsessive side, the idea of
love being stronger than the love-object itself, which must have attracted you to
the story. Yet it was your idea to have Marthe fall in love with the young lodger
through the wall, without ever having set eyes on him.
And, of course, when they finally meet, disappointment is out of the question.
This is the Dostoyevsky notion of the dream overpowering reality. Also, the hero is
a dreamer, a solitary young man who builds elaborate fantasies on the flimsiest
realities. I thought the best way to convey his imaginary world was through the use
of a tape recorder.
Isnt that another instance of the Bresson rule that, whenever possible, sound
should replace the image?
Yes, since the ear is more easily directed towards the inside, the eye towards
the outside. You know how much I am for the inside, which I strongly believe to
be the true vocation of the cinema, as opposed to theater, which remains, whatever
they may say, exterior and decorative.
Would you say something about the films-within-the-film and the play-withinthe-film, which are not to be found in Dostoyevsky?
In Four Nights I profited from the chance to poke fun at a certain kind of movie: its
just a mockery of passion and romanticism, of blood and violence. I also thought
that all that exaggeration would contrast with the restraint of my character, which is

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not really restraint but simply a refusal to indulge in theatrics. To think that the nonacting in my films is regarded by some people as unreal and unnatural! The excerpt
from Benjamin that you see in A Gentle Creature, as well as the Elyse Paramount
cinema where we shot some scenes, was placed at my disposal by Mag Bodard and
Paramount, respectively producer and distributor of both films. But I thought the
clip would also serve a more definite purpose. It is a film that audiences accept as
somewhat libidinous, and the heroine of A Gentle Creature, not unexpectedly, is
groped by the man sitting at her side during the screening.
Also, in A Gentle Creature, the Hamlet performance functions variously: it
introduces the notion of death and suicide both to the heroine and the viewer; then, it
demonstrates that nowadays actors on stage are capable of splitting the ears of an
audience, against Hamlets advice to the players not to overstep the modesty of
nature.

I know some people have found such a performance of Hamlet old-

fashioned; I assure you that there is not, after all, much difference between it and
current styles of play-acting. Right after the show, when the young woman in my
film finds herself back at home, she reads the text of the scene to her husband,
pretending that she attaches more importance to the Shakespeare tragedy than to her
own. From the viewpoint of story construction, it serves further to disunite the
couple.
You used to select your non-actors according to a moral rather than a physical
resemblance to the characters as they exist in your mind.

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In the past, this method consumed a good deal of my time. Today, I go much
faster. I rather trust my instinct and believe in luck and random chance. I realize
that the characters we imagine are too constructed, too consistent, while reality
presents us with a great deal of contradiction and inconsistency, which are not at all
perceptible to the eye but which the camera, our extraordinary instrument, will grasp
gradually while shooting. In Four Nights, there was less time than usual to select
the interpreters. They were recommended to me by friends. They had no acting
experience or ambition, but instead a literary or university background. Guillaume
des Forts, who plays Jacques, was a student of astrophysics and the son of a wellknown writer. Isabelle, who plays Marthe, is the daughter of the playwright Roman
Weingarten. She has worked as a model.
Like Dominique Sanda, the heroine of A Gentle Creature. But dont you think
that modeling is, in a way, a sort of play-acting, and that these two girls are
considerably more expressive than the usual non-actress?
In Sandas case, I knew that she would be right from the moment I spoke to
her on the telephone. It was her voice that convinced me, and I simply confirmed
the choice when we met the following day. As for the way in which she looked at
her husband at certain moments of the film, that look which you say bespeaks all her
feelings . . . well, it was nothing but a blank. This goes with the flatness of the
image, so that I can express myself not through the miming of the interpreters, which
is often an interference, but through the interrelation of the images. Images, for me,
exist only as signs, the sense of one modifying the next. Im not after rupture; Im

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after simultaneity, which is intrinsic to the film. An image must be flat if it is to gain
its value when it joins the others.
Would your paintings have the same degree of concentration as your film
images?
The eye must be directed and told where to look for meaning, in paintings as
in films. I like the people in my films to look at each other. I like to isolate each
player and each look, and concentrate on it. A look is an unspoken word. I believe
Proust said something like that.
You know my films have always seemed to me . . . how should I say it? . . .
attempts . . . trials . . . The language of images is still so unknown, so new, so
difficult to practice.

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On The Trial of Joan of Arc and Four Nights of a Dreamer, by

Carlos Clarens, from Sight and Sound, #40-41 (Winter 1971-1972), p.
3.
Of the making of works of art about Joan of Arc, there continues to
be no end, and understandably so. She is a figure who presents new
facets of interest to every generation. The books about her pass
ascertainable number. The composers who have treated her include such
different ones as Tchaikovsky, Verdi, and Honegger. (The first time I
ever heard Renata Tebaldi was in Verdis Giovanna DArcowhich
includes a love scene between Joan and King Charles!) The plays run
from Shakespeares political cartoon in the First Part of Henry VI through
Schiller up to the peak of Bernard Shaws Saint Joan, then down the other
side (Georg Kaiser, Jean Anouilh, etc.).
The film world began early with the subject. The imaginative
pioneer Georges Mlis made a Jeanne dArc in 1900. Cecil B. DeMille
made Joan the Woman in 1917, with Geraldine Farrar, a war-time
recruiting-poster film to show that all Anglo-Saxons owed a debt of honor
to France in atonement for Joans martyrdom. More recently, Ingrid
Bergman brought Maxwell Andersons Joan of Lorraine to the screen,
alas, and Otto Preminger tortured Shaw even more than he tortured Jean

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Seberg in Saint Joan. An outstanding film version was Carl Dreyers

silent the Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), in which, incidentally, Antonin
Artaud appears.
I had thought Dreyers version austere until I first saw, then reviewed, Robert Bressons film The Trial of Joan of Arc. It challenges
Dreyers work both by concentrating, like Dreyer, on the trial and by
attempting a cinematic treatment that is even more severe. Bressons film
is, as Dreyers was, a straight photographic reproduction of the trial of the
maid, her confession, her recantation, and then her burning at the stake;
the camera never goes beyond the courtroom, the adjacent corridors, or
Joans bare cell, until it finally goes out into the Place du Vieux March in
Rouen, where the execution was performed. Yet outside of the fact that
Dreyer worked largely with close-ups and that Bresson uses mostly
medium shotsfrom the waist upthe new film pampers the eye much
less. There is none of Dreyers figural composition against white walls,
none of his small-scale Eisensteinian feeling with soldiers. With a few
exceptions, and they are very consciously interludes, the bulk of the film
consists of shot and reverse-shotflip-flop cuttingbetween Joan and
her interrogators.

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The questions are asked in terse, flat fashion, and Joan answers
without change of expression in a muted monotone. It is as though the
director had distinctly aimed to make this a passionless report about the
nature of the famous trial at Rouen, without bias toward either side. Even
one brief shot of the prisoner being tortured on the rack is objective and
unemotional, without a clear look at her face. Indeed, the only time the
camera becomes involved in an implication of emotion is during a close
shot of Joans bare feet, shuffling along a watery stone pavement and then
stopping at the steps to the stake, where the camera pauses while the mind
of the viewer absorbs the intense significance of this moment. In contrast
to Dreyers film, which places emphasis upon the profound emotional
reactions and fluctuations of Joan, as revealed in those magnificent closeups of the face of Maria Falconetti, Bressons version thus places
emphasis upon the starkness and austerity of the total picturethe simple,
hard, relentless actuality of the trial itself.
Florence Carrez and Jean-Claude Fourneau play Joan and Cauchon
in the films key, by doing almost nothing. Hence there is very little
acting of a conventional sort in The Trial of Joan of Arc. As in a number
of his other films, Bresson chose not to use professional actors here. He

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believes that real actors often hide behind their stage personae and that,
when watching a great actor, we sometimes struggle to separate the actor
from the character. Bresson feels that by using non-professional actors,
he helps the audience to get at the heart of the character, unencumbered
by a professional performers previous roles. The accomplishment of the
participants, in the case of The Trial of Joan of Arc, is their ability to be
consistently motionless and, within that motionlessness, either passive or
severe. The result, paradoxically, is penetrating insight into the actual
character of Joan, by which I mean her innermost being: her quixotic mix
of gentleness, spirituality, and, on occasion, insolence; her intrepidity and
resoluteness, on the one hand, and her fear and desperation, on the other.
We sense that what we are seeing is a realistic and unsentimental, yet
nonetheless compelling, portrait of Joan at her darkest, as well as her
brightest, hourunspoilt by the imagination of directors and artists.
This picture is one more offering at the altar of Bressons cinematic
ideals: extreme distillation, economy, and astringency. In fact, the
striking feature of the film is its very simplicity. There is nothing staged
for dramatic or emotional effect; Bresson adds nothing to complicate, or
distract from, the essence of this extraordinary trial. And it is precisely

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from his decision to remain as faithful as possible to the exact transcript

of the trialall the dialogue is taken verbatim from that transcript, as well
as from Joans later rehabilitation trial twenty-five years after her
deaththat the power of his Joan of Arc derives. Manifestly, then, less
is more has never been believed by anyone more devoutly than this man.
The impact comes, in The Trial of Joan of Arc as in Bressons three films
prior to it (Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, and Pickpocket),
from the spareness of the scene, the staidness of the rhythm, the sheerness
of the end.
By contrast, because it is noticeably less stark and somber than any
Bresson picture to date, Four Nights of a Dreamer is headed for a low
place in the directors canon, and seems likely to be written off as a lesser
work by one of the screens very few practitioners of tragedya light
rendition of a heavier, if less than classic, Dostoyevsky novella. The
latest Bresson is also less overtly mystical; less strict and formal than The
Trial of Joan of Arc, to some critics the peak film that summed up and
defined the directors style; less preoccupied with grace, divine or human,
than such uncompromising works as Pickpocket and Mouchette. There is
no denying that, in France at least, Bresson has suffered a critical decline

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since then.

His recent Dostoyevsky adaptationsA Gentle Creature

(1969) and now this updated version of White Nightsappear by

contrast to the earlier films more flexible if no less controlled, perhaps
due to the introduction of color, which, regardless how muted or
discreetly employed, still tends to act upon ones reflexes; or due to the
choice of performers, especially female, more attractive and less morose
than is customary with Bresson; or to the films settings in a modern
urban landscape, complete with intrusions from the world of television,
the theater, and even non-Bressonian cinema, which renders them more
accessible if scarcely less hors temps.
Yet, precisely by adapting the familiar Bressonian language to the
telling of a Dostoyevsky narrative, by readjusting the authors themes to
those of the director, the film sheds profuse fight on the Bressonian
method. Bresson takes the characters of the storythe girl who waits on
the bridge for her lover, the lonely young man who befriends her and
finally falls in love with her, the lover who returns at the end to claim the
girland places them in familiar Parisian territory, amid the traffic and
bustle of the Pont Neuf at night. The setting seems at first one of the least
likely for a Bresson picture, its contemporaneity so difficult to abstract.

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But Bressons style remains lean and spare as ever. Four Nights enjoys
no more a geographical site than did Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne,
where every extraneous detail, including the furniture, was pared away.
Throughout the film, an impression of milling traffic is mostly
conveyed by a slightly distorted soundtrack, or an occasional dark form
traversing the field of vision to blot out Marthe and Jacques from our
viewa sort of punctuation subsidiary to the more formal chapter
headings that parcel the chronology of the tale. Steadily, the camera
preserves the direction of every stare, without distractions or detours (and,
consequently, without zoom shots or camera movement other than the
most functional tracking); and hardly a shot is introduced without an
establishing look from the characters to set up a spatial relationship
between observer and object: a police car that stops nearby as Marthe
stands precariously poised on the outer side of the balustrade, a
sightseeing bateau mouche that sails under the bridge, Marthes lover
glimpsed in a crowd at the end of the film. In fact, we see only what
Marthe and Jacques see, and we hear them distinctly, almost removed
from their context, with traffic as a mere low obbligato, and the postsynchronized sound adding to the sense of isolation.

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Then, the protagonists are free to pursue their obsessions, sometimes

jointly when they happen to coincide, their lives flowing briefly together
in pursuit of the dream.

Jacques (Guillaume des Forts) is a lonely

painter who pours his fantasies into a tape recorder, every girl briefly seen
and followed in the street becoming a dreamlike vis--vis on tape. Deftly,
Bresson solves with this one prop the problem of the internal monologue
and/or the omniscient narrator. Marthe (Isabelle Weingarten) pursues in
turn her obsession of faithfulness to the student who once lodged at her
mothers apartment and with whom she fell in love sight unseen, through
the wall as it were, through the sound of his footsteps, the books he lent to
her mother, or his voice coming from behind the door of the lift cage
none of which is to be found in Dostoyevsky but all of which reinforces
the Bressonian concept of contiguity, of people struggling to make contact
across impassable barriers of their own creation.
Like Fontaine and Joss in A Man Escaped, the priest and the old
noblewoman in Diary of a Country Priest, or the man and woman during
their brief season of marital bliss in A Gentle Creature, Marthe and
Jacques travel together, inevitably not for long. Give me your hand and I
will see you to your home, says Jacques formally to Marthe on their first

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night on the bridge, just a moment after we have seen his hand catch hold
of her arm to prevent her suicide, in one of the films telling close-ups.
The cinema of Bresson is full of such gestures: they signal more than just
an establishing of physical contact and seem imbued with extreme
spiritual strain. One remembers the intricate hand-play in Pickpocket, the
almost imperceptible brushing of hands between the shy lovers in Au
hasard, Balthazar. By contrast, The Go-Between and Murmur of the
Heart seem almost primitive in this respect, and a film wherein a young
child first discovers sexual passion through a fleeting look or a barely
discernible gesture still remains to be made.
A gestural cinema cannot help being an erotic cinema, and there is
an erotic side to Bresson that is rarely discussed although richly annotated
by the films themselves. Mouchette comes most readily to mind. This
most relentless of films contains a deeply liberating moment in which the
viewer is given a sense of the heroines still undefined pleasure at being
followed about by a young stranger, who even engages her in an
exhilarating bumper-car skirmish at a fairground attraction. In fact, an
undisputed sexual content is to be found already in Agnss top-hatted
gear and dance in the much earlier Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne; it

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extends noticeably to the love scene in the parked car in Balthazar, and
suffuses most of Dominique Sandas scenes in A Gentle Creature. In
Four Nights of a Dreamer, Bresson intercuts a sustained shot of the nude
lovers in an almost primal bodyhold with shots of the mother fussing
about outside the locked door, and there is even an overlay of the
mothers voice over the entire scene. This is most deliberate, I think, and
rather than infuse a spurious suspense into the scene, it underlines the
precariousness of such scenes in the Bressonian context, the all-too-rare
moments of physical/spiritual contact that manage to seep through the
wall of isolation.

Bressons female archetypethe vulnerable child-

woman victimized by the system or by established conventionremains

irrecoverable to the end: Joan, Mouchette, and the enigmatic, wounded
gentle creature go to their deaths without renouncing some personal
vision.
The characters played by Anne Wiazemsky in Balthazar and Nicole
Ladmiral in Diary of a Country Priest staunchly refuse salvation because
it entails submissiveness.

In his 1957 adaptation of White Nights,

Visconti delivers his hysterical heroine into the hands of the long-awaited
lover, who becomes in the final shots no less than the death-figure of the

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Romantics.

When Bresson allows Marthe to disappear down the

Boulevard Saint-Germain on the arm of her regained lover, a myopically

unromantic scholar, he is no less unflinchingly consigning her to her
dream, the stuff that Jacquess own dream will be made of, the fantasy on
the tape. Call it a happy ending if you wish.
Since the days when Andr Bazin established a metaphysical system
for the Bresson films in the early 1950s, many critical theories have been
put forward to account for the unique power of the deceptively simple
Bressonian method of filmmaking. They have been mostly amalgams of
shoddy humanism, literary flights of fancy, and pictorial or religious
parallel. Now, Jean-Pierre Oudart, in Cahiers du cinma, has come up
with an infelicitous term, suture, smacking more of surgery than of
semantics, and an argument rather too abstrusely stated for lhomme
moyen culturel (drawing as it does on large doses of Barthes and
Greimas). But Oudart nevertheless establishes a structural system hinging
on the relationship between field of vision (the screen) and field of viewer
(an actual or potential reverse shot), and the resulting shift of value in the
image from sign to signifier, between what the image is and what the
image acquires by being contiguous to another (possibly non-existing)

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image of our own creation. Thus the role of voyeur in the spectator is
reduced, and the nearly neutral image becomes charged with all our
subjective experience. Perhaps we havent come that long a way since the
Kuleshov experience, after all. Keep it in mind as you watch the boat, or
the bubble, in that call to adventure known as Four Nights of a Dreamer.

Robert Bresson in Conversation with Ronald Hayman,

from Transatlantic Review (London), #46-47 Summer 1973, pp. 16-23.

RB: What we see in the cinema is something like a bastard of the theater.
But that doesnt mean it has no importance. It has. This doesnt mean
that its nothing. Its something. Cinema could be an art and I always
question myself about how cinema could become an artnot while Im
shooting but in between each film. And one day I thought I had to put
down on paper what I felt. It happened during the fourth or fifth film I
did. Everything went intuitively, and then afterwards I started to write
notes on envelopes, on anything I had. Afterwards I added to them.
When youre working you must not think of theory, but afterwards its
good if you consider your methods. The more means you have at your

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disposal, the harder it is to control your own work. I think economy is a

great quality in any workin writing, too. But that came by itself.
Without being a theorist I wanted to judge why I would do such a thing in
one way and not in another, to analyze my way of working.
Very often, by the way, I cant find money because I dont use stars
and actors.
RH: Is economy a different problem when youre working in color
instead of black and white?
The problem of unityeconomy of means or artistic unity, they are
the same to meis the same in either format. You touch peoples
emotions with unity of effect. You must start from the blank screen and
start from the silence. I like silence very much. When I read this little
sentenceSilence was pleasdin Miltons Paradise Lost, I liked the
idea of silence being pleased.
Another thing I became aware of was that nearly all gestures, all of
our ways of talking, are mechanical. Its true. You put your hand like
this: look. There are two pages in Montaigne about the way our hands go
where we dont want them to go. Hes a writer who isnt really difficult.
You can always read a page or two and find something. Theater consists

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of well-controlled gestures and words. Cinema must be something

differentnot controlled. It must be the equivalent of life, like any art,
but certainly not copied or simulated. There must be little elements of
life, of reality, captured separately, little by little with the extraordinary
machine that is the camera. Then when you put them together in a certain
way, suddenly life comes out of itcinematic life, which is not at all like
everyday life. Nor is it like the life of the theater. The life of the theater
is like life only because the actors are literally alive. In the cinema, when
you photograph somebody, you kill him on film. Its all dead images.
Projecting a film is projecting people killed. But there is a certain way of
doing it so that the images are transformed by their contact together.
Then life comes into the cinema, like flowers being revived in water.
You said in an interview once that the ear relates to what is inside and
the eye more to what is outside.
The ear is much more profound. You must strive to feel, or use, the
ear and the eye together as fully as possible because the ear gives
something to the eye. When you hear the whistle of a train it gives you an
idea of the whole station. The ear is inventive.

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How much do you know before you start shooting about what you want
the relationships between the different parts of the film to be? How
much do your preconceptions change during shooting and during the
editing?
I am the opposite of a writer. To make a film you must do
everything yourself. To make an adaptation you must find in the book
what could be inside yourself, what corresponds with your own
observations. For the subject Ive now been working on for many months
I took notes on pieces of paper and put them together and waited, as I
always do, until I thought the time had come to write the script. But Im
less and less in a hurry these days. I let things come instead of going to
them. And when I start writing the script I try much harder than I once
did to see and hear the things together. Sometimes I write three or four
linesperhaps tenof dialogue, which comes into my head, just like
that. Then with that I try to make a film-script. The dialogue is created
inside my head and this dialogue, when I have finished it, I take apart and
try to rewrite it fifty times. Im not a writer but I want the words to be
mine.

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Then I have to find a producer, which is very difficult for me

without actors. Next I have to choose my non-actors. Now I can find
money but not enough to make expensive films. For my early work I
couldnt find money at all. I started working with actors and I made three
or four or five films without being able to be free. I need a special kind of
person who doesnt exteriorize. I want people to be inside themselves.
When we were shooting, Id say to them, Talk as if you were talking to
yourself, not to the others. But they carried on as if they were on the
stage. The French actor steps outside of himself. Sometimes when they
are performing in the theater its all rightnot from the head but from the
heart. So now I choose nearly all my actors through friends. They are not
people who come to me. Nadine Nortier, the Mouchette, was an
exception. I had another girl but at the last moment her parents did not
want her to act this kind of role. So I had to find another girl three days
before we started shooting, and my assistant found this little girl.
How often do surprises occur during shooting?
The less the actors know about the film, the more I like it: thats
how you get happy surprises. I only ask them, You are sitting here
look at that door. Then we rehearse that ten times. Next I say, When

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you are there, you say this sentence. Say it as calmly as possible, as
mechanically as possible. In the action, you see, what this girl or this
boy has got inside takes place without their knowing it. They therefore
say it in a way that is the right way. But French film actors are the same
actors who work in the theater, and theyve got the same way of pushing
words together.
Im a painter and I cant stop being a painter. In the first film I did,
which I dont like at allI cant bear to see it anymorethey were all
actors and actresses. In my first minute of my first day I looked at them
acting and I stopped them. I said, Im leaving. There wont be a film.
I was very surprised when that happened, but I think I was expecting it,
and everything Im writing and thinking now comes from that first
minute. I realized they meant to go on acting as if they were in the
theater. And little by little everything Im telling you now came to me,
without my wanting to be a theorist at all. And after my third film I said,
I cant work with actors. Not because I dont like them or dont like the
theater. But because its wrong to confuse the methods of theater with the
methods of the cinema.
How did you get from being a painter to directing your first film?

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I had to stop painting. I was too nervous. Then I thought of the

cinema. But its only now after so many years that I begin truly to think
in terms of the cinema. When the cinema re-started in Paris after the
Occupation there were not so many people in Paris. At first they said no.
It was very difficult to be accepted. Then after Les Dames du Bois de
Boulogne I still went for five or six years without being able to make a
film. Its only in the last fifteen years that Ive been more free.
Arent non-actors equally liable to act when theyre in front of the
camera?
With Claude Laydu sometimes I noticed that he was controlling
himself, was instructing himself to act in this nor that way. When I made
The Trial of Joan of Arc I asked the girl I had chosen not to think for one
single moment that she was or could be Joan of Arc, but just to remain
herself. Thats all. And to go from here to there without thinking at all.
In the other cinema theyd say, Do you think you could be Joan of Arc?
You know the story. Could you believe you are going to be burned at the
stake?
Sometimes there is a very good expression on the face of my actress
and I see it for the first time during the editing. When I used a few young

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married women, the husbands told me, I saw in my wife something Ive
never seen before. I think the cinema can be a means of advancing
psychology, of giving something to it. I know that if the actress doesnt
act, if she does it mechanically, there will be something very interesting
that the camera takes. There are other ways of trying to catch the truth
while shooting. When directors ask a girl to talk about her own life in any
way she likes, then she starts acting. Yet if you just tell the person to
move and to talk in a monotone, it doesnt become monotonous. Its like
a pianist who doesnt put emotion onto his piano but waits for the emotion
to come. But he waits with the most mechanical way of playing the
piano. Movement has the same effect on my performers. Nevertheless,
when critics come to see my films they think there is nothing there. They
are used to judging films by the talent of the actors. They see him playing
a policeman one week and a gangster the next. But such talent hides the
real nature of the man or the girl. Its like a screen between you and the
person.
In Au hasard, Balthazar you arrived at a very touching relationship
between the animal and the human beings.

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First of all I didnt want a very clever donkey. You cant tell a
donkey to look to the right or to the left. Then I put the images of the
donkey in a certain place in the film and the editing gives the impression
of the donkeys love for the girl. We did the death of the donkey with a
drug. But I didnt know what would happen. The veterinarian told me
that when you give an animal a pill you never know whats going to
happen. Perhaps hell start galloping away or perhaps hell go to sleep. I
was very anxious because the time was running out. But it all happened
as if by miracle. He just went to sleep very slowly, then it looked as if he
was dead. But in five minutes he was up again. Its very difficult to work
like that, you know. Somebody like Stanley Kubrick has a lot of money
and everything he needs. He has only to watch the way the actors act
everything else is done by other people.
When I was getting ready to shoot Balthazar I asked the producer
for a black donkey. The real donkey for me is the donkey of my youth,
all black with a white nose. But they had no black donkey. Then two or
three days before we started shooting, there was this black donkey. Then
on location the weather was very bad and I wanted to go south, but before
going south I had to shoot a scene where the donkey got wet in the rain.

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The rain was an effect from a machine. And the man in charge of him
said, Dont get him wet or hell catch cold. Then we went south and the
donkey was red. Theyd dyed him the way you would a womans hair,
and in the light in the south the red showed. So one of my men had to
powder him with black powder every day.
How did you arrive at the idea for the film?
Some years ago I had the idea for the film and I wanted to write it as soon
as Id finished shooting the picture I was working on. The first morning,
nothing came, and I had to stop. I tried many times to write it and I
couldnt. I made a lot of notes and thats all. But one day I said, Ill
have to write the script or the film will never be made. Then I wrote it
down in two days. I had two big ideas for the construction: for the
donkey, as for a human being, to concentrate on the time when he grows
up and the time when he works, then on his approaching death, then on
the mystical time before dying, then on the death itself. The other idea
was to make the donkey pass through or experience all the vices of
humanity. With these ideas in mind it was easier for me to write
everything down on paper.
How do you react when critics see symbolism in your work?

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I dont like symbols but when they come to me I dont push them
away. At the end of Balthazar there is the idea of Christ going to be
crucified when he goes up to the mountains and then comes back. The
other element is Christs suffering at the hands of humanity and his
suffering for the vices of humanity. I didnt want this symbolism but
many people found it there and I didnt say no, of course. Its a bit like
the early Charlie Chaplin films. He dressed in black, like the donkey, and
he suffered on behalf of humanity.
What is you attitude toward the Italian neorealists who used nonprofessional actors?
They were very good but sometimes they took non-professional
actors and dubbed them with professional voices. Not always, but
sometimes. And each director also had about ten scenarists. That I cant
understand. The kind of thing you imagine when you are alone is not the
kind of thing you imagine when you are tenhowever good they are. Its
not exactly falsification but its also not the real truth.
Its been said that your films place the world in the light of eternity.
I wish I could. I dont know what to say about that. Perhaps they
mean I want to make films from a childs eye-view. Of course there is a

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conception of another life in my work because I believe in it. At least,

one day I believe, the next day I dont, but I believe anyway that theres
something more than just living on the earth.
And you believe in some sort of fatality?
Yes, that would be a sort of Jansenist conception: to say that God is
looking at us and declaring, This one is good; that one isnt. But there
is the feeling that God is everywhere, and the longer I live, the more I see
that in nature, in the country. When I see a tree I see that God exists. I
try to catch and to convey the idea that we have a soul and that the soul is
in contact with God. Thats the first thing I want to get in my filmsthat
we are living souls. And that couldnt happen in the theatrical cinema. I
feel certain that the vocation of the cinema is the inside while the vocation
of the theater is the outside. The more talent professional actors have the
less likely they are to be real people for the cinema. As I said before, its
as if there were a screen between them and the camera, between them and
the audience. What Im looking for is the real agitation in the human,
which the camera can catchsomething that cannot be caught by a
painter or a writer. But acting prevents you from getting it because the
actors obligation to his art is to be somebody else.

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At the end of Mouchette where there are these two playful attempts at
what could be suicide before the third one, which is fatal, do you see it
as being chanceor something morethat kills her?
I wanted the ambiguity. What shocked me in the book is that Bernanos
made her die by wanting to put her head in the water as if on her pillow in
bed. Ive never seen anyone committing suicide like thatwaiting for
death in the water. But the funny thing is that when I read the book I
immediately knew how the film should end. The first thing that I knew is
that she should die by rolling downhill into the water. It was an intuition,
and I didnt hesitate for a second. Still, I wanted her to make three
attempts so that we know what she wants before anything decisive
happens. But its a game. There are many ways of committing suicide
and Russian roulette is one. Rolling downhill is a little girls game that is
her equivalent.
Its something like what happened when she had the baby in her
arms. I didnt ask her to look like a mother or to think she was a mother.
She just took the baby and put its hand on her breast. Then the baby takes
its milk and her tears begin to fall. They were real, sincere tears. I dont
think you arrive at the truth by means of the truthas in painting, which

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is a mechanical process. Writing, tooyou write with words. One day

the painter Degas was trying to write poetry and he meets Mallarm and
says to him, I was trying to write a poem today, but I didnt have any
ideas. Mallarm said, But you dont write poems with ideas. You write
poems with words. Its the same with the cinema. You dont make a
film with the theater of life but with images put together.
Your work cant consist entirely of intuition, though. There must be
some thinking in between.
It is terrible because when we shoot a film in Francethe situation
is not the same in the United States, where there is silence in the studio
you have no idea of the noise. Its like a fairground. So you have to
concentrate. Its like writing. If youre not in a certain state you cant
write. So I try to create silent surprises for myself and shoot scenes in
new places with new people. I try to improvise, and not to be in the habit
of filming only in one way. In Four Nights of a Dreamer, for example, I
improvised the whole garden scene. There is something else that I like in
that film and about which I feel strongly. In the love between the
students, she loved him because she never saw him. She loved the idea of
him. Even if he were very ugly or very nasty to her it would make no

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difference. This issue does not come up in Dostoyevsky, but even in an

adaptation you can inject a lot of yourself, especially with Dostoyevsky,
who goes so deeply into the emotions.
What do you think of Tolstoy?
In comparison with Dostoyevsky I find him very dry. He works much
more from the outside than from the inside. Of Dostoyevsky you feel,
Im sure he doesnt make mistakes about human beings. Thats what
Im looking forto remain on the inside, where you dont make mistakes.
Once you said, Plastically one must sculpt the idea into the face by
means of light and shade.
Of course the way a face is lit can change things. Im very careful
about that. And if a face is lit in different ways it is not the same person.
Ten photographs of somebody can be ten different people. Nowadays, of
course, color is another factor. As in painting the color you choose makes
a statement, even though the average director just shoots to have the film
in color without being aware of the effect that the dominant colors are
having on the substance of the film. In this respect, I had great difficulty
in making Four Nights of a Dreamer at night in Paris. Every time I
changed my angle I had to re-light everything in front of the camera, for

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the sake of color consistency. I also had to wait. The great difficulty is to
wait, because you can lose your enthusiasm.
But youd never want to go back to black and white?
No. In a film shot almost entirely at night the difficulty is that you
get certain colors that exist somewhere between blue and green and
brown. In daylight blue is blue, even on a dull day. In Une Femme
douce, when you see the traffic at night through the window, the lamps
we set to have more light on the faces had to be as blue as possible to
match the blue, or dark blue, of outside.
The whole tendency in moviegoing today is that people go to see as
much as they can. Horrid thingsanything. A car crash, a girl being
beaten on the street. People want to have as many things as possible in
front of their eyes. But there is no spiritual content and viewers take no
pleasure in seeing something well-written or well-composed, wellconceived.
When I was making Diary of a Country Priest I wanted to do it in
the north where Bernanos lived. It was the same with A Man Escaped. I
wanted to make it on the same spot where Devigny wrote his account.
With reality as your material you are free to do anything. Its terrible to

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take a man in a condemned cell as a subject but the Minister of Justice

gave me access to a prisonto reality, as it were. The rest is cinema.

Bresson (extract), by Paul Schrader, from Schraders

Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1972), pp. 70-81.
Moviegoers love emotional constructs, they enjoy emotional
involvement with artificial screens, and one can only sympathize with the
viewer who storms out of Diary of a Country Priest for the same reason
he storms out of Andy Warhols Sleepits just too boring. Although
the irate viewers attitude is understandable, his perception is poor. He
has mistaken the everyday for transcendental style, and has only seen a
fraction of the film. The viewer who stays recognizes that there is more
than the everyday, that Robert Bresson has put a strangely suspicious

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quality into his day-to-day living.

The viewers emotions have been

superficially rejected, but they have been simultaneously tantalized by the

disparity.
One of the dangers of the everyday is that it may become a screen in
itself, a style rather than a stylization, an end rather than a means. The
everyday eliminates the obvious emotional constructs but tacitly posits a
rational one: that the world is predictable, ordered, cold.

Disparity

undermines the rational construct.

Disparity injects a human density into the unfeeling everyday, an
unnatural density that grows and grows until, at the moment of decisive
action, it reveals itself to be a spiritual density. In the initial steps of
disparity Yasujiro Ozu and Bresson use different techniques to suggest a
suspicious and emotional quality in the cold environment. Because Ozus
everyday stylization is more polite in the traditional Zen manner than
Bressons, Ozu can use what Japanese critic Tadao Sato called a break in
the geometrical balance to create disparity. Ozu also makes more use of
character ambivalence than Bresson does (possibly because of Ozus
background in light comedy), but both employ irony. Bresson, unlike
Ozu, uses doubling, an overemphasis of the everyday, to create

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disparity. Both, however, create disparity by giving their characters a

sense of something deeper than themselves and their environment, a sense
that culminates in the decisive action. All the techniques of disparity cast
suspicion on everyday reality and suggest a need, although not a place, for
emotion.
Bresson overemphasizes the everyday through what Susan Sontag
calls doubling.

Through the use of repeated action and pleonastic

dialogue Bresson doubles (or even triples) the action, making a single
event happen several times in different ways. For example: in Pickpocket
Michel makes a daily entry into his diary. Bresson first shows the entry
being written into the diary, then he has Michel read the entry over the
soundtrack, I sat in the lobby of one of the great banks of Paris. Then
Bresson shows Michel actually going into one of the great banks of Paris
and sitting in the lobby. The viewer has experienced the same event in
three ways: through the printed word, the spoken word, and the visual
action.
Bressons favorite doubling technique is interior narration. In
Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, and Pickpocket the main
character narrates the on-screen action in a deadpan narration that is often

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only an audio replay of what the viewer has already witnessed. In Diary
of a Country Priest the priest calls anxiously on the Vicar of Torcy. The
housekeeper answers, obviously informing the priest that the vicar is not
at home. The door closes and the priest leans dejectedly against it. Then
we hear the priests voice, I was so disappointed, I had to lean against
the door.

In A Man Escaped the order is reversed: first Fontaine

narrates, I slept so soundly the guard had to awaken me. Then the
guard walks into his cell and says, Get up.
Interior narration is customarily used to broaden the viewers
knowledge or feelings about an event. In Max Ophls Letter from an
Unknown Woman and David Leans Brief Encounter, for example, the
heroines recount their romantic experiences through narration. In each
case the reflective and sensitive female voice is used as a counterpart to
the harsh male world of action. The contrast between female and
male, sound and sight, narration and action expands the viewers
attitude toward the situation. Bresson, however, uses interior narration for
the opposite reason: his narration does not give the viewer any new
information or feelings, but only reiterates what he already knows. The

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viewer is conditioned to expect new information from narration;

instead, he gets only a cold reinforcement of the everyday.
When the same thing starts happening two or three times
concurrently the viewer knows he is beyond simple day-to-day realism
and into the peculiar realism of Robert Bresson. The doubling does not
double the viewers knowledge or emotional reaction; it only doubles his
perception of the event. Consequently, there is a schizoid reaction; one,
there is the sense of meticulous detail that is a part of the everyday, and
two, because the detail is doubled there is an emotional queasiness, a
growing suspicion of the seemingly realistic rationale behind the
everyday. If it is realism, why is the action doubled, and if it isnt
realism, why this obsession with details?
The doublings, Sontag concludes, both arrest and intensify the
ordinary emotional sequence. That statement, like many by Sontag, is
both astute and baffling, and the perceptive reader will immediately ask
How? and Why?, questions that Sontag doesnt attempt to answer.
The above description may partially explain Sontags perceptions. The
emotional sequence is arrested because of the everyday stylization (the
blocking of screens), and it is intensified because of the disparity (the

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suspicion that the filmmaker may not be interested in reality after all).
The viewers mood becomes wary, expectant.
Techniques like doubling cast suspicion on the everyday, and the
next step of disparity goes farther: it tries to evoke a sense of something
Wholly Other within the cold environment, a sense that gradually
alienates the main character from his solid position within the everyday.
Jean Smolu has distinguished three levels of such alienation in Diary of
a Country Priest: (1) sickness: the priest and his body; (2) social solitude:
the priest and his parishioners; (3) sacred solitude: the priest and the
world of sin. The young priest is unable to relate to any of the elements in
his environment; even nature, which does not figure in Smolus
schema, seems hostile to the suffering priest as he collapses under the
gray sky and tall, dark barren trees. At this level Bressons theme would
seem to fit his pseudo-documentary everyday technique: the unending
conflict between man and environment is one of the cardinal themes of
documentary art.
But the conflict is more complicated than it at first seems. The
source of this alienation does not seem to be intrinsic to the priest (his
neurosis, misanthropy, or paranoia) or to his environment (antagonistic

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parishioners, inclement weather), but seems to originate from a greater,

external source.

The priest is the frail vehicle of an overwhelming

passion that in the context of Diary of a Country Priest is called the holy
agony (la Sainte Agonie). Little by little, as if moving down the Way of
the Cross, the priest comes to realize that he carries a special weight, a
weight that he finally accepts: It is not enough that Our Lord should have
granted me the grace of letting me know today, through the words of my
old teacher, that nothing, throughout eternity, can remove me from the
place chosen for me from all eternity, that I was the prisoner of His
Sacred Passion.
As in Ozus films, the passion in Diary of a Country Priest
is greater than a man can bear, more than his environment can
receive.

The young priests cross of spiritual awareness gradually

alienates him from his surroundings and eventually leads to his death.
The levels of alienation demonstrated by Smolu are actually
extensions of the holy agony. In fact, what seems to be a rejection by the
environment is more accurately a rejection by the priestand not because
he wishes to estrange himself, but because he is the unwilling (at first)
instrument of an overwhelming and self-mortifying passion.

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1. Sickness. The priests illness seems factual enough: his health

slowly wanes and finally fails him because of what is eventually
diagnosed as stomach cancer. But there is a complication: the more ill he
becomes the more adamantly the priest refuses to take nourishment or
rest.

He feels himself condemned by the weight he must bear, and

associates his agony with the sacrificial agony of Christ. His need for
atonement drives him to self-mortification. He eats only small portions of
bread dipped in wine, an alcoholic parody of the sacrament. He ignores
the needs of the flesh, exerting himself until the moment of death. The
physical pain seems to be real enough, but its source is ambiguous: is it
cancer or the spiritual malady?
2. Social solitude. The priests ministry is a failure. He is timid and
inept; his parishioners are antagonisticor so it seems. But it is uncertain
whether the priest is actually unfit for the priesthood or whether his
devouring passion blocks any attempt at ministry. At first the priest
seems unduly paranoiac; he thinks his parishioners dislike him. Then he
receives an anonymous note: A person of good intentions advises you to
request your transfer . . . But the premonition comes first: it is as if the
priest willed himself to be unwanted. The country community at first had

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no more hostility toward him than they would have had toward any new
young priest, but the priests melancholy turns them against him. After an
unsuccessful catechism class the priest enters in his diary, But why the
hostility of these little ones? What have I done to them? His religious
obsession has led him to believe that the mischievous children are against
him. The priests agony alienates the community, and it is an agony that
he seems unable to control.
3. Sacred solitude. The priest is unable to cope with the world of
sin, either in himself or in others. The normal recourse of a Christian,
prayer, is not open to him. Never have I strived so much to pray, he
writes. And later: I have never felt with so much violence the physical
revolt against prayer. He is able to bring peace to others, yet has none
himself. This is the miracle of the empty hands: How wonderful that we
can give others a peace that we ourselves do not possess. Oh, the miracle
of our empty hands. His holy agony allows him none of the temporal
means of release that Church, society, and body provide. None of the
temporal metaphors can satisfy his passion, so he progresses inexorably
toward the metaphor of martyrdom.

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On each level the priests alienation originates in neither the

environment nor himself, but in an overpowering, transcendental passion.
The melancholy priest earnestly desires to be like his peers (My God,
he writes of the Vicar of Torcy, How I would wish to have his health, his
stability), but an irresistible force drives him further and further away
from them. If the origin of this holy agony is not natural (human or
environmental), it is of necessity supernatural.
Bressons protagonists, like the country priest, cannot find
metaphors capable of expressing their agony. They are condemned to
estrangement: nothing on earth will placate their inner passion, because
their passion does not come from earth. Therefore they do not respond to
their environment, but instead to that sense of the Other which seems
much more immediate. Hence the disparity; the Bresson protagonist lives
in an all-inclusive cold, factual environment, yet rather than adapting to
that environment, he responds to something totally separate from it.
It is a shock when Joan of Arc answers her corrupt inquisitors with
sincerity, forthrightness, honesty, and complete disregard for her personal
safetyshe is not responding to her environment in a 1:1 ratio. She
answers her judges as if she were instead speaking to her mysterious,

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transcendental voices. Similarly, in A Man Escaped Fontaines desire

to escape surpasses any normal prisoner motivation. He is nothing but an
embodied Will to Escape; the viewer sees him only as a prisoner whose
every breath strives to be free. Throughout the film Fontaine wears a
ragged, filthy, and bloody shirt, and when he finally receives a package of
new clothes, the viewer rejoices (or wants to rejoice) for him. Instead of
trying the new clothes on, Fontaine immediately tears them up to make
ropes. To Fontaines mind (as defined by privation) the package did
not contain new clothes at all, but potential ropes. Another prisoner, who
had the desire but not the passion to be free, would have used the old
clothes as ropes. Fontaines obsession is his definitive quality, and it is
greater than the desire to be inside or outside those prison walls. The
prison at Fort Montluc is only the objective correlative for Fontaines
passion. In Pickpocket, Michels pickpocketing has the same familiar
obsessive quality; it is neither sociologically nor financially motivated,
but instead is a Will to Pickpocket. And when Michel renounces
pickpocketing for the love of Jeanne, his motivation is again ill-defined.
The viewer senses that Michels overburdening passion has been
transferred to Jeanne, but still does not know its source.

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In each case Bressons protagonists respond to a special call that has

no natural place in their environment.

It is incredible that Joan the

prisoner should act in such a manner before a panel of judges: nothing in

the everyday has prepared the viewer for Joans spiritual, self-mortifying
actions. Each protagonist struggles to free himself from his everyday
environment, to find a proper metaphor for his passion. This struggle
leads Michel to prison, Fontaine to freedom, and the priest and Joan to
martyrdom.
The viewer finds himself in a dilemma: the environment suggests
documentary realism, yet the central character suggests spiritual passion.
This dilemma produces an emotional strain: the viewer wants to
empathize with Joan (as he would for any innocent person in agony), yet
the everyday structure warns him that his feelings will be of no avail.
Bresson seems acutely aware of this: It seems to me that the emotion
here, in this trial (and in this film), should come not so much from the
agony and death of Joan as from the strange air that we breathe while she
talks of her Voices, or the crown of the angel, just as she would talk of
one of us or this glass carafe. This strange air is the product of
disparity: spiritual density within a factual world creates a sense of

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emotional weight within an unfeeling environment. As before, disparity

suggests the need, but not the place, for emotions.
The secret of transcendental style is that it can both prevent a runoff
of superficial emotions (through the everyday) and simultaneously sustain
those same emotions (through disparity).

The very detachment of

emotion, whether in primitive art or Bertolt Brecht, intensifies the

potential emotional experience. (Emotion cannot be projected without
order and restraint.) And emotion will out. The trigger to that emotional
release occurs during the final stage of disparity, decisive action, and it
serves to freeze the emotional into expression, the disparity into stasis.
Before the final stage of disparity, however, Bresson, like Ozu,
derives ironic humor from his characters and their alienated surroundings.
Irony, in fact, is almost unavoidableBressons characters are so totally
alienated from their environment.

The country priests paranoia is

crucial, obsessiveand ridiculous. When Olivier, a foreign legionnaire

on leave, offers the priest a ride to the railroad station on his motorbike,
the priest reluctantly accepts and then feels the exhilaration of the ride.
He then states to himself, with no hint of self-parody, that he has been
allowed to taste the pleasures of youth only so his sacrifice will be more

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complete. Bresson also uses understatement as an ironic commentary on

his characters.

In A Man Escaped Fontaine spends every possible

moment hiding and disguising his means of escape. When it appears that
his cell will be searched and his plan discovered, and that he will be
executed, Fontaine says in deadpan interior narration, I dreaded the
thought of a search.
Irony makes it possible for a filmmaker to create disparity over a
period of time.

If a viewer does not want to completely accept the

dilemma of disparity (and few do), he does not have to reject it outright
but can take an ironic attitudewhich is essentially a wait-and-see
attitude. Such a viewer can look at the disparity from an ironic distance,
seeing its tensions and humor, and does not have to commit himself. Like
the disparity that produces it, irony is a technique designed to hold the
spectator in the theater until the final decisive actionwhich does
demand commitment.
The decisive action is an incredible event within the ban-structure.
The prescribed rules of the everyday fall away; there is a blast of music,
an overt symbol, and an open call for emotion.

The act demands

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commitment by the viewer (the central character has already committed

himself), and without commitment there can be no stasis.
In Diary of a Country Priest the decisive action is the priests death,
when his frail body falls from the frame and the camera holds on a blatant
symbol: the shadow of the cross cast on a wall. In A Man Escaped it is
the nocturnal escape, with its concomitant and all-important acceptance of
grace in the person of Jost. In Pickpocket it is Michels imprisonment and
his inexplicable expression of love for Jeanne. In The Trial of Joan of Arc
it is Joans martyrdom, when the camera holds on the symbol of the
charred stake, which is preceded by the inexplicable symbols of the flying
dove and three ringing bells.
Before these decisive actions there have been decisive moments
that anticipate the final act. In these moments, Smolu writes, the hero
realizes that he is right to desire what he desires, and from then on
identifies himself more and more with his passion. (The final decisive
action is more audience-oriented: the viewer must then face the dilemma
of the protagonist.) As in Ozus early codas, these decisive moments are
characterized by a blast of music. In A Man Escaped each interlude of
Mozarts Mass in C Minor becomes a decisive moment. As in Ozus

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codas, there is nothing on screen to properly receive such a burst of

emotion-inducing music.

On ten occasions Fontaine and his fellow

prisoners walk by rote across the courtyard, emptying their slop buckets
to the accompaniment of Mozarts Mass. In A Man Escaped there was
no direct relationship between image and music. But the music of Mozart
gave the life in prison the value of ritual. Joans regular walk back and
forth from her cell, accompanied by overloud door-latchings, creates the
same sort of coda in The Trial of Joan of Arc, as do the lyrical sequences
of pickpocketing in Pickpocket. Each of these moments calls for an
unexpected emotional involvement and prefigures the final decisive
action.
Pickpocket is the only film of the prison cycle that does not overtly
discuss religious values, yet it is nonetheless a good example of the role
of the decisive action within transcendental style. There is no invocation
of the spiritual as in Country Priest and Joan of Arc, no debate of grace as
in A Man Escaped, yet there is transcendental style, and the decisive
action is the miraculous element within it. Pickpocket opens with the
familiar everyday stylization: Michel is a pickpocket within a cold factual
world. He displays no human feeling, either for his dying mother or for

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Jeanne, a family friend.

He does, however, have a passion:

pickpocketing. His obsession with pickpocketing goes beyond the normal

interests of crime and questions of morality. In one of his discussions
with the police inspector he contends that some men are above the law.
But how do they know who they are? the inspector asks. They ask
themselves, Michel replies. Michels passion, in the ways previously
mentioned, creates a growing sense of disparity. Then, in a somewhat
abrupt ending, Michel is apprehended and imprisoned. The police had
been lying in wait at Longchamp for Michel for some time, and it is
uncertain at the moment of his capture whether he was captured unaware
or whether he willingly let himself be captured.

In the final scene,

Michel, who has led the free life of crime, is now in jail. Jeanne comes
to visit him in prison and he, in a totally unexpected gesture, kisses her
through the bars saying, How long it has taken me to come to you. It is
a miraculous event: the expression of love by an unfeeling man within
an unfeeling environment, the transference of his passion from
pickpocketing to Jeanne.
The decisive action forces the viewer into the confrontation with the
Wholly Other he would normally avoid. He is faced with an explicably

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spiritual act within a cold environment, an act that now requests his
participation and approval. Irony can no longer postpone his decision. It
is a miracle that must be accepted or rejected.
The decisive action has a unique effect on the viewer, which may be
hypothesized thus: the viewers feelings have been consistently shunned
throughout the film (everyday), yet he still has strange, undefined
feelings (disparity).

The decisive action then demands an emotional

commitment that the viewer gives instinctively, naturally (he wants to

share Michels love, the tears of the Ozu character Hirayama).

But

having given that commitment, the viewer must now do one of two
things: he can reject his feelings and refuse to take the film seriously, or
he can accommodate his thinking to his feelings. If he chooses the latter,
he will, having been given no emotional constructs by the director, have
constructed his own screen. He creates a translucent, mental screen
through which he can cope with both his feelings and the film.

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Robert Bresson, Possibly, Interview with Paul Schrader, from Film

Comment, 13, #5 (September-October 1977), pp. 26-30.
In 1972 Robert Bresson, in response to my recently published book,
Transcendental Style in Film, wrote me, I have always been very surprised not
to recognize myself in the image formed by those who are really interested in
me. Its equally a shock for a critic to meet a director whom he has respected
from a distance and whose films he has studied and interpreted. T he criticinterviewer is often quite surprised to discover that his subject has a rather
different interpretation of his films, their value and meaning. The director will
explain patiently and emphatically, for example, that he used a particular
tracking shot for an entirely different reason from the one the critic has proposed
in two articles and a monograph-in-progress. The critic finds himself with the
uncomfortable choice of becoming an obliging Boswell or trying to converse
across a widening chasm.
It was with these trepidations that I interviewed Bresson last year
trepidations, the following interview demonstrates, which were fully justified.
For I not only respect Bresson, but consider him the most important spiritual artist living (now that Rothko is dead)a spiritual artist who has forged a style so
singular it resists imitation. I had corresponded with Bresson several times from
1969 to 1972 and had fantasized that, upon meeting, we would burst like old
friends into eager debate.
The interview indicates something quite different. Bresson was earnest,
sincere, hospitable; he continually struggled to make his thoughts clear. Yet
there was never the rapport I had hoped for. His answers were not in tune with
my questions, or my questions with his answers. It felt as if each idea was
fighting to assert itself through a fog of misunderstanding. Perhaps this distance
was due to the peculiar nature of a first meeting, or perhaps it was a byproduct
of the barriers of age, culture, and language. But more likely it was because
Bresson cannot (or will not) understand why I respect him, and I cannot (or will
not) accept his interpretation of his films.
We talked for four or five hours and although we were rarely on the same
wavelength, the discussion often became animated and passionate. I left with
my respect for Bresson intact, eager to read the transcribed interview.
Several months later, I sent Bresson an edited copy. He wrote back
saying he preferred not to have the interview published. The Devil, Probably
had been shut down for lack of funds, and he was despondent that it is not
possible to make a film in France without a major star or to make a film that is
something more than an actors performance. Despite the fact that your
questions were extremely pertinent, he wrote, I find the interview flat and
|uninteresting. Without any doubt I was that day in crisis against everything
regarding my profession and fighting against my disgust toward it.

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A year later, after the release of The Devil, Probably, and at the urging of
Stphane Tchalgadjieff, his producer, Bresson relented and agreed to let Film
Comment publish the interview.
The interview was conducted on May 17, 1976, at Bressons austere
apartment on Quai de Bourbon, Ile St. Louis, Paris, overlooking the Seine and in
the shadow of Notre Dame. Bresson was preparing to direct The Devil,
Probably. I was in Paris for one day (my first), en route to Cannes, where Taxi
Driver was to be shown. The interview was arranged by Richard Roud and
Stphane Tchalgadjieff. Roberta Nevers assisted as interpreter, although once
Bresson began speaking in English he needed little assistance. After the
interview I prepared to take a photo of Bresson, whereupon he picked up a tarn,
upholstered Louis Quinze chair and pretended to hide behind it.

I would like to ask you some personal questions, rather than

professional onesquestions I am trying to answer for myself.
When I first saw your films, 1 felt I understood them immediately.
No one needed to explain them to me. When Jost comes into the
cell in A Man Escaped and Fontaine decides not to kill him, I
immediately knew that the film was about grace and redemption.
That was the way I was educated. I saw it as a phenomenology of
grace, that is: we must choose grace as it appears to us, and,
therefore, we will escape, even though we are predestined to
escape. (Predestined, because it says in the title he will escape.)
We cant escape unless we choose the grace that is offered to us, in
this case, the young boy. This seemed natural and logical to me.

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But in your last three films, the color films, Une Femme douce,
Four Nights of a Dreamer, and Lancelot du Lac, I feel a new
direction in your films that I dont fully understand and . . .
Because they are in color?
No. My supposition is that in the earlier films there was an
effort to create, if not saints, the possibility of saintliness in a
world without God, to use Camuss phrase, and I sense that in the
most recent films you are trying to create a kind of saintliness in a
world without theology.
You cant say that about Lancelot.
I feel that from Diary of a Country Priest to Au hasard,
Balthazar, you were working off a given theology, and now you
are foraging new terrain.

I can understand creating a saint

without God, but 1 cant understand creating a saint without

theology. Does this make any sense to you?
No, no, because the more life is what it isordinary, simple
without pronouncing the word God, the more I see the presence of
God in life. I dont know how quite to explain that. I dont want to
shoot something in which God would be too transparent. So, you see,

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my first films are a bit nave, too simple. It is very hard to make a
film, so I did it with great simplicity. The further I go on in my work,
the more I see difficulty in the work, the more careful I am to do
something without too much ideology. Because if you have it at the
beginning, it wont be at the end. I want to make people who see the
film feel the presence of God in ordinary life, as in Une Femme douce
when the young woman is facing death. I think back to the five minutes before she is going to kill herself. Theres something there that
is ideological; an idea is present. That death is there and mystery is
there, as in Mouchette, in the way she kills herself: you can feel that
there is something, which, of course, I dont want to show or talk
about. But there is a presence of something which I call God, but I
dont want to show it too much. I prefer to make people feel it.
Do you sense this change?
The change in my work? Of course. I said that in my first films
it was too obvious. I dont want it to be.
Maybe thats what I mean when I say that in your later
films, I dont feel a sense of theology.
Not in Lancelot?

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You seem to be creating your own theology rather than

working off a previous theology.
I see another way to answer your question. Ideology is the
moral. I dont want to be ideological per se. I want to be true, I want
to have a certain way of being on top of life, and I dont want to show
you anything especially. I want to make people feel life as I do: that
life is life, and in everything, the most ordinary, the most material, I
see ideology.
In your book, Notes on Cinematography, you write that ideas
derived from reading will always be book ideas. In the Godard
Cahiers du cinma interview years ago, you spoke of Jansenism,
and in an interview three years ago in Transatlantic Review you
also spoke of Jansenism. Do you feel at this point that Jansenism
is book ideas?
There are two translations of Jansenism: Jansenism itself, the
religious doctrine; or the style that is too cold and too strict. Thats
what they mean by Jansenism when they call me a Jansenist. I dont
agree with this at all.

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Even when you spoke of Jansenism in the interviews?

I did? I dont remember.
Yes. You spoke of it in distinctly religious terms. You were
talking about the concept of chance in Balthazar. You said in
Jansenism there is a concept of grace by chance.
Yes, I said I would rather be a Jansenist than Jesuit. I dont want
to go too deep in abstract conversation about this. But I think there is
predestination in our lives. Certainly. It cant be otherwise.
I believe that also. Again, is Jansenism among those ideas
derived from reading which will always be book ideas?
I want to be as far from literature as possible, as far from every
existing art. Thats why I say books because I did take my ideas from
books, from Dostoyevsky and others, but I am a bit shy. I dont like
to say it so much. This borrowing from books is not because of laziness, but because I wanted to work. It takes me two or three years of
thinking to write an original film. That takes too long. If I want to
work quickly, I have to ask if the producer will accept my way of
working, doing an adaptation. Until now, I have found only two
writers with whom I could agree: Georges Bernanos, a little, not too

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much, and, of course, Dostoyevsky. I would like the source of my

films to be in me, apart from literature. Even if I make a film from
Dostoyevsky, I try always to take out all the literary parts. I try to go
directly to the sentiments of the author and use only what can pass
through me.

I dont want to make a film showing the work of

Dostoyevsky. When I find a book I like, such as Country Priest, I

take away what I can feel myself. What remained was what I could
have written myself.
I want to ask you now about The Devil, Probably because its
again about suicide.
How do you know?
Your producer, Stphane Tchalgadjieff, told me. Do you
pass judgment on the suicide of others?
First of all, there are thirty different kinds of suicides for
different reasons, and you could as well ask me if I could kill myself.
If I agree with suicide, thats what you are asking.
Yes.
I dont know if I agree, but you know that for Catholics suicide
was absolutely forbidden thirty or forty years ago. Priests would

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refuse the sacraments if the person committed suicide. But now that
has changed. I dont know if it comes from Rome, I am not sure, but I
know they are much easier on suicide now.

I try to understand

peoples sentiments aside from religion. For myself, there is something that makes suicide possiblenot even possible but absolutely
necessary: it is the vision of a void, the feeling of a void that is
impossible to bear. You want anything to stop your life. I dont know
so much about it, but I think two-thirds of the suicides come from this
impossible way of living. For that I would be very understanding.
There are still many other reasons. Because you are ill without any
hope. I think such suicides are very frequentsomebody who cant
bear the idea of dying on a certain date. Like Montelant, who was
going blind, who was alone, and he just couldnt bear it; he lived a
very lonely life. I dont know if I was going blind whether I wouldnt
commit suicide, but I think that the determination to kill yourself
comes when it is impossible to do otherwise. I have never thought
about suicide so deeply, but now I could tell you there is not one kind
of suicide that I could not agree with. Like the young boy of about

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twenty or twenty-two who murdered someone days ago in the street,

and then killed himself right after that.
Stphane told me that your new film was going to be about a
young man who kills himselfno, who arranges for his own death
by protest. And I replied, I find it very hard to believe that any
character in a film by Bresson would kill himself for anything
other than internal reasons.
You know, there are young people who kill themselves for the
same reason that he does in my film. I think in the whole world things
are going very badly.

People are becoming more and more ma-

terialistic and cruel, but cruel in another way than during the Middle
Ages. Cruel by laziness, by indifference, egotism, because they think
only about themselves and not at all about what is happening around
them, so that they let everything grow ugly, stupid. They are all interested in money only. Money is becoming their God. God doesnt
exist anymore for many. Money is becoming the thing you must live
for. You know, even your astronaut, the first one who put his foot on
the moon, said that when he first saw our earth, he felt that it is something so miraculous, so marvelous, dont spoil it, dont touch it. More

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deeply, I feel the rotten way in which so many people are spoiling the
earth. All the countries are doing it. Silence doesnt exist anymore;
you cant find it. That, for methe disappearance of silencewould
make it impossible to live. The way this young person wants to die in
The Devil, Probablyhe doesnt kill himself, by himself; he makes
himself be killed. The old Robin-Hood types used to commit suicide
with the help of friends. My character kills himself for a higher
purpose.
Does he kill himself for personal reasons or to make the
world better?
Yes, for both reasons. Yes, to be an example. And yes, to be
martyred.
I hope you will be able to see Taxi Driver because it is also
about a man who realizes the void in his own life, and knows that
life has no meaning. But he doesnt understand that he can kill
himself, so he tries to kill the President, thinking that he will be
killed in return. He fails, but the feeling is the same.
When we talked about a void, I didnt mean when somebody
thinks his life is nothing. The void is a total absence of something.

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You are talking about a feeling that I could very well imagine: if he
thinks his life is nothing, that what he does is absolutely uninteresting,
that he can ask for nothingthere is a void in that. But the void I was
talking about, with reference to people who commit suicide, is
something more terrible.
A spiritual void?
Yes. But, of course when I do write somethingI am not a
writer, my friend, at all, but I make a great effort to write because
making a film is not interesting if you dont write it yourself. Perhaps
I would have made a mistake had I become a novelist. In any event,
this way of wanting to die is many things: it is a disgust with life, with
people around you, with living only for money. To see everything for
which it is good to live, to see it disappear, to see that you cannot fall
in love with peoplenot only with a woman, but all the people
around youyou find yourself alone among people. I can imagine
living in disgust with so many things around you that are against you,
and then you feel like committing suicide.
Does the void come from within or does the void come from
without?

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Both. The void around you created the void within you.
In Notes, you quote da Vinci as saying that, in an artistic
context, all that matters is the end. The endings of your films are
very spareA Country Priest, Balthazar, Lancelotvery simple,
and, although Leonardo writes from the point of view of an
artistic context, what he says is also true in a religious context. In
religion we are taught the only thing that matters is the end: how
you die, like the thief on the cross. Which brings us back to the
whole question of suicide. You are a man who seeks to completely
control his artistic world, yet the most crucial decision, which is
the end of life, cannot be controlled because it is, most often, the
result of whim or accident. One never dies in the way one hopes
for oneself, and if the end is the most important, then suicide is an
artistic decision as well as a religious one.
Perhaps, perhaps not. Because quite often what is important in
the life of a man who creates, an artist, would not be the end of his
life, but the middle, so the way he dies does not count so much. Lets
take somebody I knew a little bit, Montelant. He thought that life was
finished for him so he made it a little shorter himself. I mean, his life

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was not in his death. His life was in his living. When he decided to
die, he said, my life is finished.
One can control ones life, yet the ultimate decision is never
ones own.
No, but if one day I would feel that all that is interesting in life is
finished and I cant work anymore, Im not sure what I would do. But
this has nothing to do with my new film. I am not twenty-two years
old. You know there are more suicides among young people; they
said this in the paper the other day. In FranceI dont know why
when they are young, about twenty or twenty-two, they are much
more fragile, more sensitive. They have nothing to live on, especially
not religion. The collapse of the Catholic religion, this reason and
others, can work very strongly on the mind of a young person.
The young man in my film is looking for something on top of
life, something more than life, but he doesnt find it. He goes to
church to seek it, and he doesnt find it. At night he goes to Notre
Dame, to find God, alone. He says lines like this, When you come
into a church, or into a cathedral, God is thereit is the line of his
deathbut if a priest happens to come, God is not there anymore.

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This is why, although I am very religiouswas very religious, more

or lessI havent been able to go to church in the last four or five
years since these people began making their new Mass. It is not possible. I go inside the cathedral and sit down. There I feel God, the
presence of something divine that doesnt exist anymore in the Mass.
The young man in The Devil, Probably cannot feel Gods presence in
the daytime with people moving about in the church and the priests
there. He goes to find something that he can rely on, but something
else happens. The police come. I am sure there are young people who
commit suicide because they cant find the presence of God anymore.
What will happen to you when you die?
(Laughter.) You know, I cant take my mind off the fact that I
believe you still feel things when you are dead.

You feel the

loneliness, you feel the darkness of your coffin, you feel the cold.
Resurrection is a most difficult thing to believe in. The resurrection of
the body: what is it? I dont know. But you know, I feel that I feel it.
I have this certitude that there is something different than earth, where
we live, which you cant imagine, but that you can imagine you could
imagine. Sometimes I have had in my life, not now, something like a

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presence. Of what, I dont know, but I have felt it. The sensation did
not last long, but I was very much impressed by it. This is something
that I cannot explain. I go very often to the country on weekends so
that I can feel the trees, the plants. I cant understand people who say
there is no God. What does it mean? That everything is natural or
purely earthly for them?
If you feel even for one moment that there is a presence of
something else, then it is hard to believe that when you die, you
will be completely lost.
Yes, except that one day you believe in the middle of the day,
and at night, you dont believe any longer. You know what I mean,
one day you believe and the next day you dont. Faith is a shock. It is
something you get; you dont know how. But belief is another thing
in which your intelligence tells you to do something. I think I am in
the middle, between faith and believing. In my film, when the woman
is going to die, I want it to appear that there is something else after
death. Thats why when people become so materialistic, religion is
not possible, because every religion is about poverty and poverty is

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the way of making contact with mystery and with God.

When

Catholicism starts getting materialistic, God is not there.

A good minister will say the same thing you say in Notes,
which is: I am only a way to the mystery.

Therefore, my

personality and the personality of the actors are not important; it

is only important that I enable you to see what there is. But then,
most ministers are like professional actors. They are very bad
and they are interested only in themselves.
I dont know what they are trying to do now, the Protestants.
They are trying to explain what is not explainable. That is why many
young people try to find something idealistic in Taobecause they
need something to live.
Have you seen any of Ozus films?
No, I dont go to see movies anymore. I may have seen one a
long time ago.
Ozus career is very much like yours. He was known as a
comedy director, but as he grew older, he stopped moving the
camera and he started closing in on the drama. Finally he made
films in which the camera doesnt move, very similar to your

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films. He concentrates on the face, on the composition, on the

flatness of life, and lets the intercutting of the events be the story.
It is interesting that both he and you began in light comedy.
It was completely bad, what I did in comedy.
When Antonioni saw his first Ozu film, he walked out and
said, What is there for me to do? So, perhaps it is better that
you have not seen his films.
The camera can move, but only with great discretion. I cant
bear it in a film when you see the camera used as a broom. There are
two things that are bad: when the camera moveslike this [making a
sweeping gesture]or when you shoot something that is impossible
for the human eye to see. Which is what all the directors do very
often.
You say in your book: make rules, but dont be afraid to
break them.
Yes, yes. I dont think much of technique, or making technique
a big part of things. If you find a new way to catch life, nature, this
could change details, but not the whole. I dont think so much of what
I do when I work, but I try to feel something, to see without

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explaining, to catch it as nearly as I canthats all. And thats why I

dont move the camera so much. Its like approaching a wild animal.
If you are too brusque about it, if you move too much or too quickly,
the animal will run away. I think you must think a lot in the intervals
between working and writing, but when you work, you mustnt think
anymore. Thinking is a terrible enemy. You should try to work not
with your intelligence, but with your senses and your heart, with your
intuition.
I absolutely agree.

Symptoms are universal, causes are

particular. Symptoms are more interesting because we all have

the symptoms, but we have different causes. Movies should be
about symptoms rather than about causes.
It is very difficult to see things. So many times you go walking
in the street, and you look at things, but you dont see them. If you
see the look in a mans eyes and at the same time you see the reason
why he is looking the way he is, you are not touchedyou have not
truly seen.
If movies provide the symptoms truly, the viewer will supply
the causes.

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I want people to guess, to think. But what I create must still be

very clean and sharp, not fuzzy and confusing. Today movies make
people want to know everything in advance, to be shown everything in
a way I dont understand.
What I love about movies is that if you and I are here talking
and if you re-cut so that we are now talking in New York, the
audience will assume that somehow we got from Paris to New
York. You can do the very same thing in spiritual ways. If you
show a situation and if you cut to another place, the audience will
make the leap with you. The audience will jump across the ocean
with you.
Yes, but if you dont show a succession of things exactly as they
are in life, people stop understanding. Pornography has brought that
to the cinema, the fact that you must see everything. So the public is
now conditioned to films where you show everything. This is terrible.
I cant work anymore under such conditions. If I cant make people
guess, if I am obliged to show everything, I am no longer interested in
working.

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I think that movies and pornography are different.

I,

personally, am not threatened by explicit movies. In Notes you

say that the nude, if it is not beautiful, is obscene. Do you feel
that the explicit is by its very nature wrong?
When it is explicit, it is not sexual. Mutatis mutandis, the same
is true of mystery. If you dont make people guess, there is nothing
there.
I believe that sex is mysterious whether you see it or not.
Yes, but when you see too much, it is not mysterious anymore.
Even if you see it all, it is still mysterious.
Only what is lovelysex life is beautifulbut how they do it in
pornographic films is ugly and dirty.
But could you not show pornographyshow people
fuckingand also be mysterious? It is no less mysterious than
watching me drink from a glass.
Not by showing things, but by my sensation of things, by
making people feel how I feel. The most important thing, the most
real, is my way of feelingto make people have the same sensation
that I have in the face of things.

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Would you not agree that you learn no more about sexual
feeling from seeing pornography than you learn about how cognac
tastes by watching me drink a glass?
You are quite right. There is no art in only showing things as
they are, in a filmed succession. An idiot could see what is in front of
his eyes, and thats all he will see. If you try to make people feel and
think instead of hearing and seeing, then it is artistic.
Do you oppose pornography on moral grounds or on artistic
grounds?
Not on moral grounds.
Artistic grounds?
Yes.
If you could use the new eroticism, would you?
No. Pornography is false sexual life.
But all films are false.
Not with a work of art. I tried to see a few pornographic films,
but I left because they turned sexual life into something horrible that
doesnt exist. Perhaps for some people, but not for me: theres no
love in it, and in a work of art there is love.

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Its like violence: it has to be used in a certain way. There is

a parody of violence in Four Nights of a Dreamer. The suicides in
your films are always non-violent. Why?
Because I do not like violence. When you see violence in a
movie, you know that it is false. It doesnt touch me at all.
Suicide is a very violent act.
Its very violent inside you, but its not very violent to watch.
For me, the notion of suicide is one of violence. Its the idea
of blasting things out of your head that are destroying you; you
dont really want to die, you want to destroy the way you are
thinking. Suicide involves a lot of violence, a lot of blood; its an
explosion inside your head. I see suicide much more violently
than you do. Im moved when Mouchette rolls, when the Femme
douce leaps, when Balthazar falls; Im moved when the cross
comes up in Country Priest. But, to me, giving oneself over to
death is a very violent act, and I would never kill myself in a nonviolent way.

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I couldnt show violence, blood, and all those terrible things,

because it would have been faked for the movie. People would say,
How did they do that?
I understand your objection.
Sometimes you see things of this sort well done, but it is not
movingbecause you know it is false, because it is forced. But what
you can do is have the sensation of death. You can be moved by death
if you dont show it, if you just suggest it. If you show it, its finished.
The same thing goes for love. You dont feel love if you see two
people making love.
I sense a progression in your films: from the exterior to the
interior life, from Amore to Thrse in Les Dames du Bois de
Boulougne, from the Countess to the Priest in Country Priest,
finally to the object itself in Balthazar, purely to the external like a
graphic object. Ozu did the same thing: he turned to a vase. So
many movies are based upon the two-dimensional image of the
facethe icon of the face. One thing that bothered me about
Lancelot is that you dont see the faces.
I dont know what you mean.

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This had to be a conscious decision on your part, because

many times in Lancelot the frame line is just below the face. Then
when you see the face, it is often covered by a helmet.
When he comes to pray in front of the cross, you see him
entirely: you see his face. I dont see what you mean.
In your other films, one always remembers the faces, but in
Lancelot, one doesnt.
Because the face is not special. It doesnt work. His face was a
very difficult face to take.
Are you saying that the reason the camera doesnt focus on
Lancelots face is that you werent happy with the actor?
No, I didnt say that. I say there are faces that are different from
others.
I think its very clear that you are not as interested in
Lancelots face as you were in Michels, or Fontaines, or even
Joan of Arcs.
I understand what you mean, but it is not proof for me. I dont
see how you can say that.
Are you less interested in faces?

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On the contrary. I am more and more interested in faces. You

say in Lancelot you dont see his face?
So often the mask is over it.
Thats the way it was photographed, perhaps. Maybe thats the
difference between black and white and color.
I also have a sense that in past films you did actions in
threes. In Lancelot, everything was done in fives.
I dont understand what you mean.
You usually did things five times.

If it was the jousting

combat, you would see the lance five times. Or the horses feet: in
past films you would see a shot of the feet three times, but in
Lancelot, you see the feet five times.
It was unconscious. I needed it five times. I dont know why.
Perhaps there was a hidden reason. I did not show it five times
instead of three on purpose.
Do you love iconography?
I like to start with a flat expression, as flat as possible, so that the
expression comes when all the shots are put together. The more flat it

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is when I am shooting, the more expressive is the editing. When you

come back from Cannes, are you going to pass by Paris?
No, unfortunately I have to get back. This is a strange trip
for me because I was too busy, actually, to make it.
But you are pleased with your film, Taxi Driver?
Extremely.
Are you going to win the big prize at Cannes?
I think so.
You are pleased with it?
Yes. Although it is not directed in the way I would direct it.
I wrote an austere film and it was directed in an expressionistic
manner. I think that the two qualities work together, though.
There is a tension in the film that is very interesting.
Why didnt you shoot it yourself?
I hope to direct shortly. I am still very young and it takes a
while. In Taxi Driver, I had great faith in the director and the
actor, who are friends. I believed in what they would do.
So I will see it and write to you.

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Consuming Passion: Bresson and The Devil, Probably, by

Richard Hell, from Mojo Collection magazine (U.K.), 2001.

Ive always loved movies. The great thing, though, is that after
all this time Ive finally discovered Robert Bresson. Id seen a couple
of his movies over the years and I certainly respected him and knew
how highly he was thought of with Godard himself admiring him
above all others. But it was seeing his retrospective in 1999 that blew
me away such that I couldnt watch an ordinary moviea Hollywood

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moviefor months afterwards, and I now consider Bresson both my

favorite and the greatest filmmaker of all.
If you dont know Bresson, Ill try to explain what sets him
apart. The first thing is, how apart he is. His method, his conception
of filmmaking, is so radical that this itself is probably the most
unusual thing about him; there seems to be practically no precedent
for him (Dreyer maybe) even though he comes midway in the history
of filmmaking (his filmography goes from 1943 to 1983). Some
things typical of his approach: 1) he does not use actorshe uses
deadpan non-actors that he refers to as models, none of whom he
ever used more than once, whom he rehearsed relentlessly to get all
taint of expressiveness out of their speech and faces, and who dont
even look each other in the eye during their scenes together (in fact
the star of one of his masterpieces is a donkey); 2) there are no special
effects, and he uses only one lens, a 50 millimeter (the single lens that
most closely approximates the view of the human eye), but every shot
is conspicuous for the commonplace, precise beauty of its composition
(Bresson originally studied painting); while 3) though he stringently
resists using any music that doesnt originate in the action on screen

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(such as a record being played in a scene), he devotes as much care to

the sound as he does to the shot, and whenever possible will convey
information on the soundtrack rather than via the image.
Ultimately, then, what Bressons doing is dispensing with all
elements of theater (acting) in film, and all manipulation of the
viewer, while still depicting a chain of events (a storyeven though
its always the moment-to-moment mechanics that are the focus,
rather than any artificial suspense or indulgence in sentiment).
Indeed, as Susan Sontag pointed out, theres no conventional suspense
in his movies. His movie about a prisoner trying to get away actually
reveals its dnouement in its title: Un Condamn mort sest
chapp, the literal translation of which is A Man Condemned to
Death Escapes. (The release title of this film in English was A Man
Escaped.) Practically the first shot of The Devil, Probably is a
newspaper headline shouting out the movies ending.
Theres no humor in Bresson, either. Well, it is pretty much
impossible for anything really good not to be a little funny, but theres
as little humor as you can imagine. Dostoyevsky seems to have been
an artistic brother for him, at least in terms of themesPickpocket and

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Une Femme douce and Four Nights of a Dreamer are all derived to
degrees from Dostoyevskyand maybe the incidental humor in
Bresson happens the way it does in Dostoyevsky, rooted in grotesque
pathos. Nobody ever even smiles in a Bresson movie. I didnt do an
absolutely thorough examination, but the only moment I noticed in
The Devil, Probably where there was a hint of upturned lips on a
character was during the most disturbing scene of the movie and
happened when the main character Charles realizes the bus hes on is
out of control.
I also detected exactly one joke. When Charles is in a
psychiatrists officewhere hes gone at the insistence of his
girlfriend, whos worried about his suicidal tendencieshe relates a
dream of being dead but of still being hit and trampled by his killers,
and the shrink, who looks like a rabid raccoon, asks him, Do you see
yourself as being a martyr [in French: uh mar-teer]? And Charles
replies, Only an amateur [ama-ter] . . . When I wanted to drown
myself or pull the trigger, I realized it wasnt all that easy.
Its kind of funny, too, that later on in that psychiatrist-scene,
when Charles in his endearingly sincere way describes again his

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problem of actually being able to carry out the deed (of suicide), the
psychiatristin what doesnt seem like some kind of reversepsychology but actually just fatuous, self-important pride in his own
eruditionpoints out, Thats why the ancient Romans entrusted a
servant or friend with the task. Which of course is exactly what
Charles needed to hear, as the movie moves to a close.
Nearly all movies made are not only essentially filmed theater,
but are confections intended only to be funny or to strike fear in
audience members hearts: to elicit audience saliva, to give them
reflexive thrills, to play to their weaknesses. Theyre fast food and
candy. Im not saying I dont like such movies: there are lots of them
that not only give me pleasure but that I respect. But Bresson is in a
class of his ownthe film lovers filmmaker and the filmmakers
filmmakerfor his heroic insistence on fidelity to the soul and to
truth of film as moving pictures in sequence with sound, rather than
mere filmed theater. (Filmed theater is characterized, for one thing,
by the acting, in which performers adopt facial expressions as signals
of emotions. But beyond eschewing filmed theater, Bresson doesnt
want a piece of film to have any significance apart from its

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relationship with another piece of film. He really means that and its
radicalif you isolate a shot of his theres hardly ever any narrative
information in it; if he has to tell you, for narrative purposes, that
something happened, hes likely just to have someone in the film say
it happened.) Doubtless this is partly why it took me so long to find
him: his films at first glance and in comparison to what were
barraged with in the way of audio-video can seem straight and
colorless and impossibly elliptical. In fact he tends not to show any
extreme moments, anything dramatic at all (for instance, the way he
handles the bus-crash scene I referred to in The Devil, Probably
which is partly whats so disturbing about it). He leaves out precisely
everything that Hollywood builds movies around. He likes to shoot
peoples feet, hands on doorknobs, and windows and doorways; he
also likes to record street noises. Above all it seems to me his movies
are like life. Not very much happens in life. But in life, as in
Bressons movies, that not-very-much that is happening is very
important: in fact its God.
Speaking of God, you have to when talking about Bresson. His
movies feel spiritual, in the least cornball way possible. My personal

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definition of God is the way things are, and thats what it seems to
me Bressons movies are about, as is just about all interesting art one
way or another. But once you start learning about Bresson, you
discover that hes a Catholic and much is made of his beliefs vis--vis
his films. Of course most French people are Catholics, but apparently
for at least a significant part of his life Bresson was what is called a
Jansenist. I know hardly anything about Catholicism though Ive been
doing a little research. And there are two things Ive found mentioned
most often about Jansenism. One is the belief that all of life is
predestined, and the other is that its possible to achieve grace but the
attainment of it, the gift of it, is gratuitousthat is, grace doesnt
necessarily go to the so-called good. Personally, as perverse as
Catholicism has always seemed to me, at this stage of my life I dont
find those beliefs strange at all. Naturally Bresson resisted being
classed as a Catholic artist in a way that pretended to explain his
movies. Theres an interview with Paul Schrader, in fact, where
Bresson gets very impatient with Calvinist Schraders presumptions
about the relationship of Bressons religion to his art. But Bresson
doesnt make a secret of his belief that life is made up of

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predestination and chance. At first glance, to many this will seem

impossibly strange, but I think it can also be seen as something simple
and clear and ordinary, namely a kind of humility and mercy, of
forgiveness and compassion, and also even as something obviously
true. Look at history. Has all the talk, or rather all the doctrine,
changed anything? No, people are who they are, and things happen as
they must. Its nobodys fault and it doesnt change. Its nobodys
fault. Its God. Or the devil, probably. Its just how things are.
Another quick thing about religion in relation to Bressons
uncompromising casting of his movies. I think its interesting that
even though Bresson utterly opposes falsity of Hollywood values, his
models are really good-looking. When I first considered this, my
reasoning went, a little pettily, ah-ha, so he isnt perfectly pure: he still
cant resist attractive people as his stars even if they arent the preestablished, commercial-draw type. Then I thought, but thats not
necessarily corrupt in any wayhe naturally wants the people who
inhabit his stories to be people we care to look at. Finally I came to
the sense that what his models appearances have in common is the
same quality of the models used in medieval and Renaissance

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religious of saints and martyrs: the faces are hardly ever merely
beautiful in the insipid manner of the fashion model or porn star;
theyre oddly beautiful, theyre emphatically but eccentrically
beautiful (like Dominique Sanda of Un Femme douce and Anne
Wiazemsky, the co-star of Au hasard, Balthazar). Above all they feel
soulful; they read as having an inner life, a depth, even when
inhabiting the most deprived of characters like Mouchette.
And then there is the astonishment of his The Devil, Probably to
top it all off for me. Id watched amazing movie after movie of his in
black and white, telling stories of peasants, priests, thieves, prisoners,
and farm animals in a more or less timeless zone. (They all felt like
30s movies to me, though none were.) The Devil, Probably, though,
is a 70s movie (1977, to be exact), in color, and its about intellectual
urban street youth. Bresson was in his seventies when he made it and
Ill bet hed never heard of punk, but this is by far the most punk
movie ever made, if I am a judge. Its about a kid who rejects the
idealism of his activist contemporariesthe movie is full of
harrowing stock footage of the destruction of the world by humans by
means of everything from mercury poisoning of the oceans to nuclear

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explosionsbecause he has come to feel that all is hopeless and no

action is possible. His only solace is sex, but its not enough. In the
end he pays a junkie friend to kill him. Of course, as always in
Bresson, the movies really about the succession of moments it
presents, the sounds and images.
I have to admit I have no idea what the significance of the line in
the movie that gives it its title is supposed to be. The three words are
heard during that bus scene which I described earlier as the most
disturbing and ominous of the film. I dont know the significance
because I have no idea where Bresson is coming from when he brings
up the devil. In the scene, which is full of mirrors and push-buttons
and levers, as well as the tops of heads and peoples separated
midsections, Charles says to his traveling companion, Governments
are shortsighted, and suddenly everybody in the bus is chipping in.
The first says not to blame governments, its the masses who
determine events, obscure forces whose laws are unfathomable. A
woman adds, Yes, something is driving us against our will.
Someone else: Yes, you have to go along with it, and people
continue until someone asks, So who is it that makes a mockery of

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humanity? Whos leading us by the nose? And then one guy who
spoke goes, The devil, probably, and the bus crashes as the
soundtrack degenerates into horrible honking horns. . . . Its amazing
the way everything about the scene builds to this crescendo of
ghastliness.
There are many such scenes in the film. In fact, looking at the
movie I sometimes get a feeling of the world as a horrible prison, or
some kind of Gnostic-type, third-rate universe made by degenerate
gods. The continuous sharp clicking of the footsteps and the noise of
traffic, the evident poisoning of the world by money-mad humans,
everyones inability to help one another in any way, the tedious
deliberation with which every motion is taken . . .
Though my description of The Devil, Probably may make it
sound extreme and sensationalisticwhat with suicide and
predestination and political horror as some of its subjectsthe truly
notable thing about it and all other Bresson films is its absolute
simplicity and its commitment to ordinary moments of everyday life.
Its just an everyday life that is lived with open eyes and with a desire
to know reality fully. Bresson was a painter before he made movies

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and, though he described true filmmaking as writingjust as he

reconceived the people of his films as models, rather than actors, he
reconceived cinema as cinematography, his term used not in the
familiar meaning in English of camera-wielding (the job of the
camera-man on a movie), but in his own sense of writing with a
motion-picture camerahe also always referred to himself as a
painter, with a painters eyes and sensitivities to the ordinary, the
familiar, the everyday. (In fact, in a late 60s interview with Godard
where the origin of Bressons Au hasard, Balthazar comes up,
Bresson says, The idea came perhaps visually. For I am a painter.
The head of a donkey seems to me something admirable. Visual art,
no doubt. Then all at once, I believed I saw the film.)
Bressons filmmaking gives a dignity and tremendous power to
ordinary life, the truth of life that hardly any other films acknowledge
at all. Other films dont trust life or people; they have to give a false
drama to everything, make a spectacle of pointless, dishonest overstimulation. In Bresson, the quiet becomes excruciatingly rich. I
think, finally, the reason his films have the spiritual feeling they do is
precisely that their whole purpose is to try to avoid lyingto try to

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avoid being misled and to try not to mislead anyoneand instead just
see and listen and reflect. It is such an achievement just to notice
and to hear and to consider, so much so that the experience becomes
far more intense than anything you could find in an action film like
Star Warsreleased, coincidentally, in the same year as The Devil,
Probably. Now what would Bresson make of that?

The Poetry of Paucity, the Art of Elision: Robert Bresson in

Conversation, by Bert Cardullo.
This is Part I of an interview that took place at Bressons home on Ile St.
Louis in Paris, shortly after LArgent (Money) shared the 1983 Grand Prize

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for creative cinema at the Cannes Film Festival. It was conducted in both
English and French, all of which I myself later translated.
Bert Cardullo: If its all right with you, M. Bresson, Id like to organize this
interview around four films of yours: your latest, LArgent, and three others of
which I myself am particularly fondAu hasard, Balthazar, Pickpocket, and
The Trial of Joan of Arc. We can digress as we like, of course, but our
discussion will revolve around these four films. O.K.?
Robert Bresson: Yes, thats fine. Why not?
BC: Lets go back in time to 1966, the year in which Au hasard, Balthazar was
released, and then gradually, in Part II of our conversation, return to the present
with LArgent. Where did you get the title Au hasard, Balthazar, anyway?
RB: The title came from my desire to give the donkey a Biblical name. So I
named him after one of the Three Wise Men. The title itself is the motto of the
nobles of Baux, who claimed to be heirs of the Magus Balthazar; their motto
was indeed Au hasard, Balthazar. I like the rhyme in this title, and I like the
way it fits the subject of the film exactly.
BC: What is that subject? What is Au hasard, Balthazar about?
RB: Its about our anxieties and desires when we are faced with a living
creature whos completely humble, completely holy, and happens to be a
donkey: namely, Balthazar. The film is about pride, greed, lust, and cruelty
the need to inflict sufferingin the measure found in each of the various owners
at whose hands he suffers and finally dies. This character resembles the Tramp

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in Charlie Chaplins early films, but its still an animal, a donkeyan animal
that evokes eroticism yet at the same time evokes spirituality or Christian
mysticism, because the donkey is of such importance in the Old and New
Testaments as well as in the ancient Roman Church. Au hasard, Balthazar is
also about two lines that sometimes run parallel and sometimes cross or
converge. The first line goes as follows: in a donkeys life, we see the same
stages as in a mansa childhood of tender caresses; adult years spent in work,
for both man and donkey; a little later during this work period, the blossoming
of talent and even genius; and, finally, the stage of mysticism that precedes
death. The other line is that of the donkey at the mercy of his different owners,
who represent the various vices that bring about Balthazars suffering and
ultimate death.
BC: What was your chief aesthetic concern while making Au hasard,
Balthazar?
RB: It was that the central character, who wasnt always present but was
always the focus of the main storylineglimpsed only from time to time and yet
still the chief subjectwas the donkey. It had to be clear that the donkey was
the main concern, the main character, despite the fact that all the events didnt
happen in his presence or that he only got a glimpse of some of them.
BC: How did the characters other than the donkey originate in this, your first
film to be based entirely on your own idea?

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RB: Its hard to say where the other characters came from: they just appeared to
me. I cant really explain their provenance. I simply saw them, and then I drew
them in like portraits. I cannot explain these characters the way a novelist could
his.
BC: Louis Malle once said that Au hasard, Balthazar was essentially a film
about pride. What drives absolutely all the characters is pridea kind of
haughtiness about their condition and their fellow mans and even about the
world, about who they are and where they stand. Whats your response to
Malles statement?
RB: This pride, if you really take a look at the people around youthis pride,
isnt it essentially a good and useful thing? If we werent proud of ourselves,
what would become of us? This humanity of ours, which some people find so
bleak, I dont find any less lovable than a humanity that would be less dark, less
bleak.
BC: Lets talk for a moment about the script of Au hasard, Balthazar. Its
admirably constructed, but it is also full of ellipses and question marks. For
example, at one point Grard is summoned by the police, yet no one in the
audience knows why he has been summoned.
RB: And neither do I. Im kidding, of course. I do want, however, to eliminate
all details of the back-story. If someone has been summoned by the police,
well just see what happens. But I do think this is a good rulethough I also
think that rules are made to be brokenalways to show the effect before the

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cause. The cause must be passionately desired on the part of the audience so
that the images of ones film grab its interest.
This young man, Grard, is summoned and we dont know why. We
believe we do: someones been murdered. But it doesnt really matter who did
it. We think it was he, and then we see that were wrong. Next we think it was
the tramp, Arnold, but he didnt do it, either. Again, it doesnt matter as far as
the story is concerned. Maybe the police will never know what happened.
Maybe the death wasnt the result of a murder but only an accident. Yet
whether it was a murder or an accident has absolutely nothing to do with my
story, or the point of my story, and I always try categorically to eliminate
whatevers not essential to my meaning.
BC: Can you say something about the relationship between Grard and Marie
in Au hasard, Balthazar?
RB: I dont think either one loves the other. Its their lust, or sensual love, that
finds a niche in this film. The scene between these two characters is about
sensuality, not real love. I wont say eroticism, because the term has been
overused to the point of becoming meaningless. Its only by chancewhich is
responsible for so much in our livesthat this young man, Grard, is at Maries
side and causes something to stir in her. Its spring, the birds are singing, and
sensual love is born at this particular moment. Maybe Marie believes that this
love is specifically for Grard, but it could easily be for someone else as well.

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BC: Was that scene written in detail in the script or was it improvised during
the filming?
RB: No, it was on paper. But theres a world of difference between writing a
scene and filming it. To me, the most important part of a film is its rhythm, not
its writing. Everything is expressed by the rhythm; without rhythm, theres
nothing. Theres nothing without form, either, but there is also nothing without
rhythm.
To me, the scene between Grard and Marie is about taking two
characters, and their attitudes, and finding the connection between them. But
everything that happens during this scene, happened more during the editing
than during the actual filming. Its the editing that creates everything, that
brings it all forth. The camera simply records. Its precise and, fortunately,
unbiased. But the drama itself is created in the cutting room. When images are
juxtaposed and sound is added, thats when love blossoms, so to speak.
BC: There is something quite troubling, dark, and ambiguous about Maries
relationship with Balthazar.
RB: That is love, but without a clearly defined object. Adolescents can be in
love with something very vague, very undefined; yet love must have a definite
object in order truly to exist. And the object of Maries love isnt the donkey.
The donkeys just an intermediary, thats what I think.
The difficulty here is that all art is both concrete and abstract or
suggestive at the same time. You cant show everything; if you do, its no

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longer art. Art lies in suggestion. And the great difficulty for filmmakers is
precisely not to show everything. Ideally, nothing should be shown, but thats
impossible. So things must be shown from a single angle that evokes all other
angles without showing them. We must let the viewer gradually imagine and, at
the same time, keep him in a constant state of anticipation. This is something
akin to what I described earlier as showing the cause after the effect. It is in this
way that we let the mystery remain. Life itself is mysterious, and we must let
that show through on the screen. The effects of things must always be shown
before their cause, as in real life, where we are unaware of the causes of most of
the events we witness. We see the effect and only laterif everdo we
discover the cause.
BC: Speaking of causes or reasons, why does Marie hide in that mans house in
Au hasard, Balthazar?
RB: Because its her final refuge. Through experience, shes become clever
and skillful and cunning enough to titillate him, so hell let her sleep in the hay.
BC: What exactly happens between them that night?
RB: Certain extremely contradictory currents pass between them, at the end of
which the girls fundamental honesty prevails. At first she accepts his money,
because she really needs it. Or maybe shes thinking of giving it to her father,
who is penniless after being swindled by this miser. But after hearing the
misers cynical speech, which makes her very sad, Marie realizes that money
isnt everything he claims it is, and she returns it. Thats her moment of

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greatness. As to what happens afterwards, your guess is as good as mine. I

dont know if she spends the night with the miser, or if she simply spends the
night in a chair waiting for daylight. Whatever the case, in the end she treats
this man with contempt.
BC: From Diary of a Country Priest in 1951 up until Au hasard, Balthazar,
God is explicitly present in your films. God the Redeemer is there. But Au
hasard, Balthazar gives the impression of a world without God, or, let us say, a
world uninterested in God.
RB: First, I dont think that just speaking of God or saying the word God
indicates his presence. If I use a filmmakers tools to represent a human being
by which I mean someone with a soul, not just a jiggling puppetthen if the
human is present, so too is the divine. Merely pronouncing the name of God
isnt what makes God present.
BC: No, but, to my knowledge, Au hasard, Balthazar is your first film where a
characterMaries father, to be exactrejects God.
RB: If he rejects God, then God exists, and therefore God is present. Surely
you know this, since you yourself are a Roman Catholicand one who, as you
have told me, received his secondary education from Jesuits.
BC: But suddenly God is no longer good. Hes not involved with or concerned
about mankind, which is something that, until Au hasard, Balthazar, you had
never demonstrated.

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RB: I dont share your impression that God is absent from this film, for the
reasons Ive just given.
BC: O.K., since we disagree about Gods place in Au hasard, Balthazar, lets
move to a different place: the one you give to cinema among all the arts. What
is it, in your opinion?
RB: I dont know the cinemas position. But it may be able to capture this
thing that words cant describe, that shapes and colors alone cant render, by
using several combined means.
BC: What do you think of the state of the arts in general?
RB: I thinkmaybe Im wrongthat the arts are on the decline. Theyre
dying, perhaps from too much freedom, perhaps due to their incredibly wide
distribution, like everything today. I believe that movies, radio, and television
are killing the arts. But I also believe that, oddly enough, its precisely through
cinema, radio, and television that the other arts will be reborn, perhaps in a
completely different form. The word art one day may no longer even mean
what it does now. Yet it seems to me that theres hope. And thats because I
believe in the cinema in particular as a completely new art, one that we really
dont even quite grasp yet. I believe in the muse of cinema. Degas once said,
The muses dont speak to each another. They dance together. But actually I
believe that the cinema is, or will soon be, a completely independent art, and
that it is not, as many people imagine, a synthesis or dance of the other arts.
Its an art completely apart and autonomous.

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BC: Do you think that it will be limited by its beginnings as simple

entertainment?
RB: Its very possible that movies as entertainment will continue to exist;
theres no reason why such movies shouldnt continue to exist. But I firmly
believe in the cinema as serious art. Not as entertainment, but, on the contrary,
as a way of taking a deeper look at things, as a kind of aid to mankind in
discovering hidden aspects of itself.
BC: Speaking of taking a deeper look at things, what gave you the idea, in
1962, of making a film about Jeanne dArc?
RB: I had read the transcript of the trial and was captivated by it, and when I
reread it, I immediately wanted to make a film out of it; but it had to be a film
that was as accurate as possible, because of the respect I have for Jeanne dArc
and the care that was therefore required.
BC: Your Trial of Joan of Arc was not the first time a film was made about her,
as you of course know. The most recent one before it was the 1957 picture
directed by Otto Preminger, from the play by George Bernard Shaw, and prior to
this film there were Georges Mliss in 1900, Cecil B. De Milles in 1917, and
Carl Dreyers in 1928. Yet you wanted to make your own such film. Is that
because you believed that the others didnt address the subject of Jeanne
correctly, or was there another reason?
RB: In her book on the life and death of Jeanne dArc, Rgine Pernoud states
that in 1840 a scholar calculated that there were already 500 works about

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Jeanne; fifty years later, Pernoud says, this figure had increased fivefold, and
there has never been more interest in her than since the start of the twentieth
century. Now I also believe that Jeanne dArc is an inexhaustible treasure trove.
But there was a special reason why I was drawn to the idea of making a film
about her: I hoped to make her present. That is, we are kidding ourselves if
we see Jeanne merely as the little peasant girl of the legends. Witnesses, people
around her at the same, said the oppositethat in fact she was very elegant. I
think so, too, and I see her as a modern young woman.
BC: She is resurrected in your film through the minutes of the trial, because
you have used only the judges questions and Jeannes responses. Actually, you
were faithful not only to the transcript of the trial, but also to the transcript of
her later rehabilitation trial.
RB: My only sources were the minutes of the cross-examination, which history
has preserved for us, as it has the minutes of the sentencing; for the final
moments of my film, I used the testimonies and depositions from the
posthumous appealwhat you have called the rehabilitation trial, and which
took place twenty-five years later.
Just by reading the transcript of the trial, one can sense its simplicity.
Indeed, the trial of Jeanne dArc is a kind of fifth gospelso much so that the
poet Charles Pguy compared the passion of Jeanne to that of Jesus. I wanted to
translate to the screen something that, in my view, no one had previously
captured about the trial, or about Jeannes life, for that matter: again, its extreme

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simplicity. There are only the two basic colors of black and white in the film,
and Jeannes words themselves are strong and direct, as piercing as arrows; they
give us the extraordinary impression of purity, because nothing incidental,
nothing romantic, nothing dramatic, nothing tragic intervenes. If you like, the
tragedy and the drama come out of the events themselves, not any artistic
arranging of those events.
BC: Werent you afraid that your characteristic sobriety, your manner of going
for the very essence of a subject, could run counter to the emotion that people
often feel towards or for Jeanne?
RB: I dont think that aesthetic complication and disorder themselves have ever
been sources of emotion. On the contrary, when you want to create a work that
arouses emotion by linking several strands, you must clean up those strands,
lay them completely bare. When an electrician wants to join two wires, he
himself starts by stripping them, doesnt he?
BC: You stripped the trials wires, then?
RB: Exactly.
BC: For the first time in history, or at least film history, Bishop Cauchon is
represented in The Trial of Joan of Arc in an almost sympathetic way.
RB: He is a bishop like almost any other, and from this point of view I have
tried to be truthful. We condemn Cauchon and I think we are right to do so, but
let us also see how Cauchon could have viewed the historical character of
Jeanne dArc. I dont want to excuse him in the film, but only to explain his

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behavior. Jeanne herself is quite admirable in my version because she doesnt

try to be. That is, she doesnt realize she is admirable.
BC: How did you find the woman to play your heroine?
RB: Sheer chance, which often helps us out, in art as in life. A friend of
Florence Delay was kind enough to bring her along to me one day. And I saw
right away that there was a great similarity between her and the Jeanne dArc
that I had imagined.
BC: Delay was just as you had imagined Jeanne?
RB: Just as I had imagined. And just as she was, I believe. Florence Delay
herself is not an actress; there are no actors in the film. Delay is the daughter of
Jean Delay, at the time a professor and a member of the French Academy; and
Bishop Cauchon is Jean-Claude Fourneau, who was a well-known painter in
Paris; the judges and their assistants were, in real life, university lecturers,
lawyers, doctors. Again, there are no professional actors in the film; ever since
1945, with Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, I have not used any such actors.
BC: Could you we move the discussion now to what you have called your, or
the cinemas, separation from the theater?
RB: Yes, certainly. Let me begin by saying that I think the cinema is
misguided, that it has its own language, its own means, and that it has gone
wrong since its birth. That is to say, its trying to express itself by using tools
that are those of the theater. Now there are wonderful actors in the theater.
Believe me, I get such a hard time because I dont use them; but such performers

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are not really my pleasure. I believe in the very special language of cinema, and
I think that, once you try to express something through mimicry, through
gestures, through words and vocal qualities, you can no longer have cinema. It
becomes filmed theater.
Cinema is not that, however: it has to express itself not through talking
images alone, but through their relationship to one another, which is not the
same thing at all. This is also the case for a painter, who does not use colors by
themselves but in their correlation to each other. Blue is blue in itself, but next
to green, red, or yellow, it is not the same blue anymore: it changes. The aim of
a film should be just such a correlation of images. You take two images, and
each of them is neutral; but all of a sudden, next to each other, they vibrate as a
new kind of life enters them. And its not really the life of the story or of the
characters; its the life of the film.
So what I am looking for is expression through rhythm and a combination
of images, through their positioning, their relationship, and their number.
Before anything else, the purpose of an image must be some kind of exchange.
But for that exchange to be possible, it is necessary that this image have
something in common with other images, that they participate together in a sort
of union. That is why I try to give to my characters what amounts to linkage,
and I do this by asking my actorsI call them modelsto speak in a certain
way, to behave in a certain way, which is always the same way.

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Yes, for me, the image is like a word in a sentence. Poets themselves use
desperately common wordsas I use common actors (or everyday people
who are not actors by profession)despite their ability to elaborate immensely
on the vocabulary we all use. But its precisely the common word, the most
commonly used one, which, because its in the right place, all of a sudden shines
through extraordinarily in sound and meaning.
BC: Doesnt your description of cinema border on mysticism?
RB: I dont know what you mean by mysticism. To summarize something I
said a little while ago, I think that in a film there is also what you did not put in
it. You have to put things in without actually doing so; I mean that everything
thats important must not be there at the start, but end up being there in the end,
or beyond the ending.
So what you just called mysticism must come from what the feeling I
have inside a prison, as the subtitle of my 1956 film, A Man Escaped, indicates:
The Wind Blows Where It Wishes. Im talking about those extraordinary
currents, the presence of something or somebodycall it what you wantor of
a hand that controls everything. Prisoners are very sensitive to this strange
atmosphere, which is not a dramatic one: it is on a higher level that some have
called symbolist. There is no apparent drama in prison: you may hear someone
getting shot, but this is normal, part of life in a prison. That is, the subject is not
in the finger that pulls the trigger or the hands that strangle; its somewhere else,
in the currents that are flowing beyond these actions. At such a moment,

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something quite odd occurs: objects become more important than characters.
That terrace up there, this wall over here, a curtain, the sound of a trainall are
more important than what is happening in the inmates midst. Objects and
noises, thenin a mystical sense, if you willexist in intimate union with man.
And its a much more serious union, a much more significant one, than the
union of a mans hands with the neck of the guard he is strangling.
BC: So, paradoxically, in an art that is all about the outsideabout things or
objectsit is the inside that counts or commands.
RB: Yes, exactly. Only the conflicts that take place inside the characters give a
film its movement, its real movement. A film is the kind of creation that
demands an inner style: it needs an author, a writer, whose goal is to produce an
internal effect or series of effects. If he is conscientious, his preliminary work
will consist precisely in going back from the effect desired to the cause. Starting
from what he wants to engage, the emotions of the audience, he looks for the
best combinations of images and words to elicit those emotions. Its a path
walked backwards, with selections and rejections, mistakes and interpolations,
all of which lead him fatefully to the origins of his compositionthat is to say,
to the composition itself.
BC: If you dont mind, Id like to digress for a moment to the subject of
painting. Isnt there a part of you that is plagued by a recurrent, nagging pain?
What I mean is, if we look at your work as a whole, wouldnt you rather see it in
a gallery than on the shelves of a film archive?

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RB: No, I love the cinema because I know its perishable. I enjoy making
something that wont last; its precisely this immediate, perishable aspect of film
that appeals to me so much. I dont believe in the immortality of works of art, I
absolutely do not.
BC: But painting
RB: The cinema is there at one point in time and, after a relatively small
number of years, its products will be gone. Painting is something else entirely.
But fame, immortality through art, is something I never think about. To begin
with, Im far from being famous; Im fairly unknown, more or less unknown.
And this doesnt concern me at all. I think instead about the pleasure of filming,
the pleasure of a job well done.
BC: But isnt a small part of you still the painter you once were, before you
started making films?
RB: Not a moment goes by, its true, when I dont think about painting. I tell
my eye to paint, never to stop painting. Like a composers, my ear, too, is
constantly hearing things in the sense of re-creating them in an aural mode. But
all this is a good thing. At a time when painting itself is in a state of flux, when
the arts as a whole are unstable, I find that its great to be a filmmaker. The
cinema encourages me; it buoys me up. I believe in cinematographic writing; I
believe its the writing of tomorrow.
BC: What kind of value do you place on a particular form of cinematographic
writing, voice-over commentary, as you have used it in certain films of yours?

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RB: Its a rhythmic element, another element that interacts with of all the other
elements in the picture and modifies them. I would maintain that in A Man
Escaped, for example, the drama unfolded from the meeting of the tone of the
films voice-over commentary with the tone of its actual dialogue.
BC: What role do words in themselves have in a film?
RB: I think words should say everything an image cant say. Before having
characters speak, we should examine everything they could express with their
eyes and with body languagecertain kinds of interaction, certain ways of
behaving that do not use words. Words should only be used when we need to
delve deeper into the heart of things. In short, ideas must be expressed on film
using appropriate images and sounds, and dialogue should only be used as a last
resort.
I dont like talking about technique in this way. I dont feel I have one, in
any event. Its more an obsession I have with flattening out images. Let me
explain. I believerather, Im certainthat without transformation, there is no
art, and without transforming the imageflattening it and then positioning
itthere is no cinema. If the image remains isolated on the screen, just as it was
filmed, if it doesnt change when juxtaposed against other images, there is no
transformation and you dont have cinema. Images bearing the rounded seal
of the dramatic arts cant be transformed because theyre indelibly identified by
that seal, like a table made out of wood thats refinished yet nonetheless still
clearly bears the mark of its original carving. You must therefore create images

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free from all other arts, especially the dramatic arts, so that they can be
transformed into cinema through what I have called flattening, and then through
contact with other images and with sound.
BC: Of course, you write or adapt everything for the screen yourself.
RB: Because, from a films origin, I need to be the absolute master of its ideas.
All the more so if one wants to improvise.
BC: Have you improvised a great deal in your films?
RB: Im believing more and more in the necessity of improvisation.
BC: Watching your films, I dont find it obvious that a great deal is left to
improvisation. Everything seems foreseen, as if you knew precisely where you
were headed. Everything seems very carefully graduated and finely tuned.
RB: Ill try to clarify my point. I deliberately dont want to know what Im
going to be doing the next day when I am shooting a film, so that I can get very
strong impressions or stimulationseven enormous difficultiesspontaneously,
on location. I want to be inspired, but if I prepare too much in advance, I wont
be; I wont be surprised with an inspiration. In addition, I want to capture the
feeling aroused by what I see before me at the moment that it occurs. So the
experience must be immediate; its not the past or the future, its the present,
now. I believe in the immediacy of cinematographic creationjust as a pen
writes when the thought arrives in the writers mind. You dont see painters
knowing exactly what their canvases will look like when they are finished. That
would no longer be a picture: it would be something amorphous, vacuous,

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uninteresting. Similarly, you dont see writers preparing in advance what

theyre going to write. When a writer sits down at his desk, or scribbles away
on his knees, he writes one word first, but he cannot know at that point how the
sentence will turn out. He has a vague idea, but perhaps nothing more than that.
His hand simply leads him on, helping him to continue, and his state of artistic
gracelet us call ithelps him to continue, too. But the writer absolutely
cannot, and must not, know in advance what exactly he is going to say.
Something I found shocking from the moment I started making films was
some directors habit of preparing everything, including the actors. These
filmmakers know more or less exactly what they will be doing at every step, so
theres no surprise element, no element of chance or change. And I believe that
art which has been so prepared is not art. Toulouse-Lautrec himself declared, I
no longer know how to draw. He meant that, when you work, you must forget
everything. Its afterwards that things come together and the film appears,
which is why editing is so fascinating. Of course you can have a general idea in
advance of how your film is going to turn out, of its pace and rhythm. In fact,
you edit it once in your head, while youre filming, and once with the film in
your hand, when you put it together all over again at the editing table.
BC: How do you combine the element of chance or spontaneity with the
composed shots that typify you?
RB: Its not that I havent thought about the film. Ill already have made a
storyboard, a plan on paper, before I begin shooting. I shut myself up all alone

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to do this and, in my mind, I make the film. After that, I put the storyboard
aside; I dont look at it again, and I go to make the film. Theres an enormous
gulf between the film as it exists on paper and the real, finished film. Theyre
not the same thing at all. In fact, its surprising how different the celluloid and
paper versions are.
BC: Let me get this clear, then: when you come on the set in the morning, do
you, as Jean Renoir said, let the unforeseen come into a shot? Or do you prevent
it from doing so?
RB: Renoir said a lot of things that werent true, but some of what he said was
what I said. He used professional actors, however. And he tried to give the
impression that he was using them, not as actors who were acting, but as actors
who werent acting. Im not really sure what that is all about because an actor
cant go back, cant be natural. He just cant.

So . . . what was your question?

BC: Renoir aside, you arrive on the set to film, and. . . Lets get back to this
subject, if you dont mind.
RB: No, I dont mind. I dont know whats ahead of me when I arrive on the
set in the morning. Not at all. I dont want to know what Ill be doing that day
or the next; I want spontaneity. I dont even know the day before where Ill be
filming. And set is not the right word, though I just used it. The setting is
always somewhere real and the objects are real; I dont add anything special to
the place. And, again, above all I try not to think about what Im going to be
doing the next day. Its no different from painting, as Ive already indicated: a

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painter doesnt know what his next brush stroke is going to be, let alone how his
picture will end up. He cant know that. Art cannot exist without this kind of
surprise, or without change. I myself try to let ideas emerge spontaneously.
Sometimes you have to wait for the ideas, but its the only way I can work. I
would get terribly bored if I knew in advance what I was going to do. For me
nothing is written in cement, as you Americans like to say. Especially in a
film like LArgent, where there were a lot of actors, a lot of models, and often I
wouldnt know who was going to be coming to work that day. I didnt know
how people would look under the lights, for examplehow I would be lighting
them. So, no, I dont know anything when I come to the set. And I dont want
to. I want everything to be as spontaneous as possible. I want spontaneity
present. To repeat, its not the past or the future, its the present: now.

Franois Truffaut, review of A Man Escaped, published in the Paris weekly

Arts in 1956.
Translated from the French by Bert Cardullo.
To the extent that A Man Escaped is radically opposed to every
conventional directorial style, it will, in my view, be better appreciated by
audiences who go to the movies only occasionallysay, once a monthrather
than by the assiduously movie-going (but nevertheless nonmovie-loving) public
whose sensibilities are often confused by the peculiar rhythm of American films.
What is striking, in fact, when one sees this film for the first time is the

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continuous contrast between what the work is and what it would be, or would
have been, had it been made by another director.
At first all that one sees are its deficiencies, and for a while one is tempted
to redo the editing and insert additional shots so that A Man Escaped would
resemble what a film is supposed to be. Indeed, everyone has pointed out this
pictures lack of any establishing shots, such that one can never know what
Fontaine saw through his tiny window or from the roof of the prison. As a
result, after seeing the film for the first time, one might feel surprise rather than
admiration. Andr Bazin himself felt moved to assert that it was easier to
describe what the film was not than what it was.
But A Man Escaped really must be seen again to appreciate its beauty
fully. On second viewing, nothing gets in the way anymore of our keeping up,
second by second, with the films movementit is incredibly swiftand
walking in Franois Leterriers or Robert Bressons footprints, whichever of the
two left them. Bressons film could even be called pure music, for its essential
richness is in its rhythm. A film starts at one point and arrives ultimately at
another. But some films make detours, others linger calmly for the purpose of
drawing out our satisfaction at the sight of a pleasant scene, and still others have
noticeable gaps; this film, however, once it is set on its perfectly straight path,
rushes into the night with the same tempo as a windshield wiper: its dissolves
regularly wipe off the screen the rain of images at the end of each scene. A Man
Escaped is one of those films that does not contain a single useless shot or even

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one scene that could be cut or shortened. Its the very opposite of those films
that seem like a montage, or one big surfeit of images.
Nonetheless, A Man Escaped is as free-style and non-systematic as it is
rigorous. Bresson has imposed on it only the unities of place and action; and it
isnt simply that he has not tried to make his public identify with Leterrier-asFontaine, he has made such identification impossible. We are with Leterrier, we
are at his side, its true; but not only do we never see anything more than he
does, but we also do not see everything that he sees. (We see solely what relates
to his escape.)
What all this amounts to is that Bresson has pulverized classical cutting
where a shot of someone looking at something is valid only in relation to the
next shot showing what he is looking atthe form of cutting that made cinema a
dramatic art, or a species of photographed theater. Bresson explodes such
classical cinema, and if in A Man Escaped the close-ups of hands and objects
nevertheless lead to close-ups of the face, their succession is no longer ordered
in terms of stage dramaturgy. Instead, that succession is placed in the service of
a pre-established harmony of subtle relations among visual and aural elements.
Each shot of hands, or of a face, thereby becomes autonomous.
Yet our admiration for Bressons film is not limited to his artistic gamble,
to his resting of the entire enterprise on a single character in a cell for ninety
minutes. The tour de force is thus not one at all. Any number of filmmakers
Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jules Dassin, Jacques Beckercould have made a

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movie that was ten times more thrilling and humane than Bressons. Whats
important here is that the emotion, even if it is to be felt by only one viewer out
of twenty, is rarer and purer; and, as a consequence, far from detracting from the
works nobility, such rarefied emotion confers a grandeur on the film that was
not intimated at the outset. The high points of A Man Escaped even rival
Mozart (on the soundtrack) for a few moments. In this film, the first chords of
the Mass in C Minor, far from symbolizing liberty, as they are usually said to
do, manage to give a liturgical aspect to the daily flushing of waste buckets.
Let me add here that I dont imagine that Fontaine is a very likable person
in Bressons mind. It isnt courage that incites Fontaine to escape as much as it
is simple idleness and boredom. A prison, after all, is a place to escape from,
besides which our hero owes his success to luck. Moreover, this is a hero about
whom we shall learn nothing more than that he is Lieutenant Fontaine. He
himself talks about the act of escape with a certain reserve, a bit like a lecturer
telling us about his far-off expedition as he comments on the movies of it he has
brought back with him: On the fourth day of the month in question, in the
evening, we left the camp, and . . .
Bressons great contribution in A Man Escaped clearly is his work with
the actors. Certainly James Deans and Anna Magnanis acting, which move us
so much in the present, may elicit our laughter in a few years, just as PierreRichard Wilms acting makes us laugh today; whereas the acting of Claude
Laydu in Diary of a Country Priest and of Leterrier in A Man Escaped will grow

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more forceful with time. Time is always on the side of an artist like Bresson,
and it will ultimately show that his style of directing achieved its finest results in
A Man Escaped. We are offered here not the quiet little voice of the country
priest of Ambricourt, not even the gentle look of such a prisoner of the Holy
Agony, but instead the clear, dry diction of Lieutenant Fontaine, who, with a
gaze as unflinching as a bird of prey, pounces on a sacrificial sentinel like a
vulture. Leterriers acting thus owes nothing to Laydus. Speak as if you were
talking to yourself, the director had commanded him, and Bresson expended all
his efforts on filming Leterriers face, or, more accurately, on capturing the utter
seriousness of the human countenance more than he did on recording the actors
words.
The artist owes a great deal to the countenance of man, Joseph von
Sternberg once declared. And if he cannot manage to evoke its natural dignity,
he should at least attempt to conceal its superficiality and foolishness. Perhaps
theres not a single foolish or superficial person on this earth, but simply some
who give that impression because they are ill at ease, or because they have not
found a corner of the universe in which they feel comfortable. This marvelous
reflection of von Sternbergs is, to my mind, the single most apt comment on the
acting in A Man Escaped, if not on the film as a whole.
That Bresson will have an influence on French and foreign filmmakers
seems highly unlikely, however. Still, we can certainly see the limitations of the
other cinema to the advantage of this particular film. The risk is that A Man

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Escaped may make us even more demanding of the cruelty of Clouzot, the wit
of Ren Clair, the carefulness of Ren Clment. Between traditional directing
and Bressons, alas, there lies the same space as between dialogue and interior
monologue. And, though much remains to be discovered about film art, some of
it is there for the watching in A Man Escaped.

Bresson and Lumire, by David Thomson, from Time Out,

#889 (September 2, 1987).
Perhaps eighty this monththere is some doubtFrench director Robert
Bresson has created a body of work unique in the history of cinema. Here, in a
rare interview, the most visionary and uncompromising of filmmakers discusses
his films and career.

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Once, in the course of a conversation with a young French film director, I

mentioned that I had visited Robert Bresson in Paris. But that is like an
audience with the Pope! she exclaimed.
It is a terrible misunderstanding that Bressons thirteen films made in
forty-five years are as unapproachable as the man himself. His films have
encompassed such subjects as a spurned servant of God (Diary Of A Country
Priest, from the Bernanos novel), a POWs elaborate break for freedom (A Man
Escaped, based on a true story), and a man who finds sensual gratification in
crime (Pickpocket, clearly influenced by Dostoyevsky). In Bressons highly
personal interpretation of the Arthurian legend, Lancelot du Lac, an entire
society crumbles in a heap of armor and blood as the spirit of love is ruthlessly
crushed.
At his apartment on LIle St Louis, just behind Notre Dame, where the
most recognizable sounds are purring bateaux mouches plying the Seine,
Bresson has courteously welcomed filmmakers, artists, and enthusiasts alike.
But interviews are another matter. Although he constantly refers to the instruments of filmmaking (the camera and the tape recorder) as those two sublime
machines, he dislikes them near his person. As he speaks (often in English,
learned from his first wife, who was Dutch), he continually strives to make his
ideas clear, often returning to particular themes with a renewed, obsessive vigor.
For a man now purportedly (unbelievably) eight years old, his intensity and

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vitality seem undiminished; I found two hours in his presence highly

stimulating, exhausting, even seductivea true artist, no less.
And so, some five years after our first encounter, I am again warmly
greeted by Monsieur Bresson. He is much as I remember him, slight of build
and sporting a proud, wavy shock of white hair. Apologizing for the state of the
buildingrecent floods, builders moving in and out, lawsuits flying in all
directionswe make the journey upstairs to a small room furnished sparsely
with a sofa, a few chairs, a writing desk, and tidy piles of books, magazines, and
records. Once seated, he anxiously asks me where I want to begin.
To begin at the beginning, the most unexpected news is the discovery of
his very first foray into cinema, the twenty-five-minute Les Affaires Publiques
from 1934. The film, long thought lost, was recently found (wrongly labeled) at
the Paris Cinmathque, and he was, he admits, pleased to see it again after fifty
years.

In his own words, Its a film composed of three ceremonies.

Following a dispute between two mythical countries (shades of Duck Soup),

objects refuse to carry out their expected functions; a statue with an open mouth
induces sleep in the crowd assembled at its inauguration, and a ship is launched
with a champagne bottle that wont break and descends completely below water.
Its not a real comedy, just three crazy sequences. I made it without knowing
anything about filmmaking, and I didnt take any advice either. So I must beg
the indulgence of the audience. Although preferring the film not to go on

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general release, he has approved its screening for the National Film Theatre
retrospective.
Before Bressons cinema career could develop, World War II intervened
and he served time as a prisoner of war in Germanyclearly a formative
experience given the recurrence of prisons in his films. We received many
food parcels, including chocolate that made me sick. Then, luckily for me, I
contracted fever just at the time the French government was insisting that some
of us be returned, so I found myself back in Paris. Fate also had it that there
was a general call to revitalize French film production, and so was born
Bressons astonishing feature debut, Les Anges du pch (a terrible title), only
now receiving its official release in Great Britain.
Bresson had encountered a Catholic priest called Brckberger, who
proposed the subject of these Sisters at Bethany who took in women from
prisons. I wrote a script, and so did he, but it was not a collaboration. I needed
to have a name on the screenplay, and I approached Giraudoux (then Frances
most eminent playwright), whose contribution was very small.

Because of

Bressons belief in the filmmaker as total auteur (directors should always write
their own films), he is at pains to point out that he had his independence from
the beginning. Later Brckberger claimed he was the author of the film. I
even went to a tribunal to make the situation clear. But I was innocent then.
He recalls with a smile how he visited a cinema near his studio when the film

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opened, and a man came out, muttering What imbecile made this rubbish?
That was my first contact with my public.
Bressons methods were developing fast, even though he had to accept a
cast of professional actors. I suppressed their acting, and they became very
depressed.

The producer would say to them in the evenings, Whats the

matter? Why arent you acting? By his fourth film Bresson was able to
engage entirely non-actors, or models as he prefers to call them. I felt then
that the style of theater was wrong for cinema. I dont know why I decided this;
I just felt it. Stories have often circulated as to how Bresson would take his
models and make them repeat lines ad nauseam until all the false emotion was
drained away. I dont do that anymore. I just ask them to say the lines and
move as I direct them.
He finds his modelsgenerally possessed of a grave beauty and
androgynous demeanoreverywhere. On the Metro, in parks, by the Seine.
Christian Patey (the lead in LArgent) just happened to be living in the house of
a friend. Dominique Sanda (the only Bresson model to become something of
an international star) was chosen because I needed a young woman who would
appear naked, but it was her voice that attracted me mostthe quality of her
voiceand this is the reason I cast Sanda.
Although Bresson ruefully acknowledges that the public has come to
expect grand gestures and emoting from stars, he religiously follows his own
path in the development of what he has described as cinematography. Film,

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he believes, is closer to painting and music than to the theater, so what is paramount is to tell a story through the precise juxtaposition of images and sounds.
He has vigorously adopted only one lens (50mm), believing any change would
be like looking through a different pair of eyes each time.
Sound has become more dominant in Bressons later films, often
replacing images, and with music used only where the source may be identified.
I think the ear is so much more imaginative than the eye; when you hear
sounds, the possibilities are endless. I created the tournament scene in Lancelot
du Lac from the sounds. And in A Man Escaped, the noises such as the train
passing are the important aspect of the story. In making A Man Escaped
(1956), such was Bressons concern for the Truth, that one Franois Mitterand
cleared an entire prison for the shooting.
Conscious of his Catholic background and frequent use of religious
subjects, critics have loaded theories and doctrines on Bressons filmsin
particular grace and redemption, and the Jansenist concept of predestination
and made them seem quite forbidding and austere. But for the man himself, the
reward is the knowledge that his films move people. I mustnt think about my
work; I just have to feel it. And being an artista word I really dont likeis
about feeling. I feel, therefore I am. Recently Bresson entertained some
students from the British National Film and Television School, but wonders
about the relative success of the exercise. They should be painting, learning to
create their own images. And listening to musicit is music that has pushed me

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to greater achievements. But so many young people making films now have no
cultural background.
Cest lge becomes an inevitable refrain as the last matre of French
cinema is frustrated in his search for contemporary artists comparable to those of
the past. Recently, he confesses to me, he has felt depressed that the cinema will
not achieve what he sees as its true potential. But I have had some letters from
young peoplefrom Hungary, even from Texas!saying they are moved by
my films, that cinematography is the way. And he is clearly pleased that,
after the awkward reception accorded to The Devil, Probably (banned to those
under eighteen in France because of its alleged incitement to suicide),
LArgent was rightfully acknowledged as a masterpiece. For me, I tell him, the
abiding images are the final scenes in the country. (Bresson has a country
retreat, and has admitted to finding God more closely through nature.) This is a
sublime moment of repose between the two acts of mass murder, which are
shownin characteristic Bresson styleonly through linking action. And you
liked the dog that runs from room to room?

Good.

That movement was

wonderful to me. A true surprise.

Surprise is a word that Bresson now employs a great deal, it being the
pleasure in creativity. I use models because I want the experience of my
films to be like meeting people for the first time. What is surprising about a
famous actor one has seen countless times before?

My models give of

themselves. I said to Florence Carrez (Bressons Joan of Arc), You are not

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Joan, you are Florence, a country girl.

He remembers Dreyers film on the

same subject as idiotic. All those grimaces and mouths opening with no sound
emergingI didnt know what to make of it.
If Bressons way seems ungenerous to cinephiles, then the miraculous
films stand as testament to his one-lane road to Rome. Currently writing a
second book on his ideas of cinematography, he has recently had to abandon a
lighter script about two girls on the run in Monte Carlo because that smug
municipality fears it will harm their prestige. But plans are under way for the
realization of Genesis, a long-nurtured project that was once to be part of the De
Laurentiis fiasco The Bible in the early 1960s. But I am having difficulties in
finding animals that I can direct. And then, of course, there is the Flood . . . just
like today.
I am still not sure whether he was referring to the state of the building or
something considerably wider.

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The Earrings of Robert Bresson, by David Thomson.

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is fixed in history as not just the second
feature film by Robert Bresson, but as one of those movies that heralded an
austere, modernistic way of seeing and feeling. But not even Bresson, in 1944,
knew that he was bound to become the author of Diary of a Country Priest, A
Man Escaped, Pickpocket, Au hasard, Balthazar, Mouchette, and so on. No one
knew which way the wind would blow. And close attention to Les Dames
reveals much that is unexpected or uncharacteristicat the 1977 Bresson tribute
at Londons National Film Theatre, it was seen as an un-Bressonian film. So
its worth concentrating on the reality of 1944 if one wants to get the most out of
this extraordinary filmand to see where Bresson was going.
Robert Bresson then was in the prime of life. Putting it that way is not
just to get past the image of the ancient, white-haired ascetic (the dead master
even); its a way of noting that the women in Les Dames are photographed with
something like the affection, or the sensuality even, that one knows from Max
Ophls, from Renoir, or Howard Hawks. There is even a shot of Agns (lina
Labourdette) trying on earrings, looking at herself in the mirror, watched by her
mother (Lucienne Bogaert), that has a heady, casual eroticism in the faces, the
jewels, the bits of dcor, the glamour of reflection, and the soft focus of the
burnished glass. It could be a moment from Max Ophlsor Jacques Demy.
(Labourdette, ravishing as the mothered Agns in Les Dames, would be just as

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glorious and insecure as the mother in Lola, and surely Demy felt that in his
casting.)
Another way of stressing how up-to-date Bresson was in 1944 is to
observe that the cinematography (by Philippe Agostini) feels so fresh, so
pearlylike the caramel crisp on top of a crme brle. In other wordsand
this is to depart from the legend of Bresson as far as possiblethis is a film full
of sensationalism and emotion.

It can only have been the obstacles of an

ongoing war that stopped Hollywood from scooping up that Bresson guy to do
the next Joan Crawford picture.
Unthinkable? Look at this movie, feel the passion for melodrama in its
glimpse of the real Bois de Boulogne. Absorb the rain and treasure the moods
of a real Paris in that moment between Boudu Saved from Drowning and Bob le
Flambeur. Consider the story, lifted intact from Diderots novel, Jacques le
fataliste, made into a scenario by Bresson, but given elegance in the aphoristic
dialogue by Jean Cocteau. Hlne (Maria Casars) loves Jean (Paul Bernard).
Indeed, she is obsessed with him, as Maria Casars stare tells everyone except
Jean.

He has grown bored with her (Bored with me?!you can see

Crawfords eyes flare). So Hlne plots vengeance. She finds Agns, a cabaret
dancer (just as, in Hollywood of that age, that occupation, and Labourdettes
bare-legged somersaults in a froth of tulle and silk, are metaphors for
prostitution).

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She sets Agns and her mother up so Jean will meet her. He falls for her.
There is a marriagea society affairfor Paul and Hlne are clearly classy
figures. Only then does Hlne tell Paul, youve married a slut. He should have
measured a womans scorn. He is devastatedbut as you see and feel the film
dont be surprised if theres a sublime vindication of love, more typical of
Paramount than real life.
On the other hand, just notice how stark this film can be when it comes to
its climax, the moment at which Hlne reveals her subterfuge and her malice
and Paul is overwhelmed by it. The entire scene is kept fiercely confined.
Pauls car cannot quite escape from the grisly marriagefor Hlne cuts off his
escape. There is then a superb, distilled set-up, seen from one side of Pauls car,
looking out through the far window at the balefully triumphant Hlne. Again,
Paul tries to escape; he maneuvers his car but he keeps coming back to the same
bleak confrontation.

This happens several times, with a dreadful sense of

claustrophobia, of nightmare even. An Ophls, a Michael Curtiz, would have

flung the camera, the cars, the stars, and the music aroundthink of Lana
Turner cracking up in her car in The Bad and the Beautiful. But already, in
1944, the sensualist in Bresson has seen the power in distillation, enclosure, and
a simplification that might become habit. The sound of the cars engine, the
frantic moves, and the implacable composition are all working towards a greater
concentration still.

In other words, the idea of being morally trapped or

confinedof imprisonmentis coming to the surface.

And that growing

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enclosure, as well as the framework of cars, will be dominant themes in the

Bresson we now know from what was still his future
And here, I think, we come to the stunning novelty of Les Dames du Bois
de Boulogne in 1944. For this is a movie in which one can feel the urge of
melodrama to turn into abstraction. So, every time Bresson uses mood music (a
very romantic score by Jean-Jacques Grnenwald), tracking shots and pans to
open up that off-screen space he will be so famous for omitting, and every time
he resorts to the conventions of terrific acting, you can feel him identifying line,
form, and self-denial within the scene. Theres a moment when Paul visits
Agnss apartment. In her absence, he looks at the rooms and the places as
shrines of her emotional life.

This is fulsomely donein Pauls dialogue,

camera moves, music, and dcor. And you can feel the film flinching, as if to
saytoo much, just Paul, his glance, the place, leave out the words and the
music. Its as if we were watching Picasso still working in the Blue period, but
beginning to be possessed by Cubism.
There are those who have said they prefer the richness of Les Dames du
Bois de Boulogne to later Bresson. Thats going far too far: this is a melodrama
in the end, a kind of Les Liaisons dangereuses update before that ploy was
fashionable.

The spirituality of the ending here is a little applied, a little

notional. For that to work, Bresson had to find the distilled style of the later,
greater works. But Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is a fascinating turning
point, one on which you can hear a great artists mind creakingwith alteration,

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but with discovery, too. Its a moment in which the necessity of doing less
begins to be imperative.

Spirituality as Style: Robert Bresson in Conversation, by Bert Cardullo.

This is Part II of an interview that took place at Bressons home on Ile St.
Louis in Paris, shortly after LArgent (Money) shared the 1983 Grand Prize
for creative cinema at the Cannes Film Festival. It was conducted in both
English and French, all of which I myself later translated.
Bert Cardullo: When you were filming LArgent, were you aware of what you
have described as a sense of the now or the new, of spontaneity and immediacy
in your work on the set?
Robert Bresson: Yes, I felt that I was doing things more intuitively, flinging
myself into the process. When I film, naturally I think about how each image
will be embedded between two other images, the preceding one and the

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following one. But, as Ive described it, chance plays a part, too. Basically, my
film is a product of chance, just as any work of art is a product of chance.
LArgent itself is a simple enough tale. A deliveryman, wrongly accused
of passing counterfeit money, gets into trouble with the police. This incident,
which might have been so easily settled, ends up turning his whole life upside
down. One thing leads to another in a downward spiral that culminates in the
drastic act of murder. Thats a brief summary of the written script of my film,
but my cinematographic writing of this picture is another matter altogether.
And it has to be. It has to be a surpriseor the result of chance, spontaneity,
and changeand I want that surprise to be total. You have to come face to face
with the new. Thats very important to me: novelty and nature. Not the natural,
but nature. I want such momentsin which the script becomes something else
by being immersed in its setting, in a real place among real thingsto create
something within me, and what is created I want to commit to film. I have great
faith in beauty, you see, but beauty is only beauty when it is new.
Let me add that, strangely enough, some of my films seem to have been
very planned and werent at all, like 1959s Pickpocket, which was written in
three months and shot in the midst of crowds in a minimal amount of time. For
LArgent itself, I dreaded that the frequent changes in location, with their
different groupings of people, would cause me to lose the pictures thread, for
allindeed, on account ofits newness. But I managed to pass from one
sequence to another by means of sonorous, I should say musical, transitions.

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BC: Why did you choose Johann Sebastian Bachs Fantasie Chromatique for
LArgent?
RB: Because I didnt want my pianist to play sentimental music. But, then,
Bachs music is always sentimental, so I fooled myself a bit.
BC: As you know, some critics took exception to your having shown the
bottom of pants legs in LArgent.
RB: You must be referring to the pants of the passersby in front of the terrace
of a caf on one of the grands boulevards. The impression one has, on
arriving at one of these boulevards where there is a crowd, is that of a jumble of
legs on the sidewalk making a brisk sound. I tried to impart this impression
through the use of sound as well as image. I was similarly reproached, you may
recall, about showing the legs of horses in Lancelot du Lac, my film from 1974.
But I photographed the legs of the horses, without showing their riders, in order
to draw attention to the muscular power of these animals hindquarters when
they braced themselves before taking off during the tournament.
BC: Even in D. W. Griffiths time, legend has it, producers complained about
filmmakers shooting close-ups, because they had paid for the whole body of the
actor.
RB: To show all in a film comes from the habits of the theater, in the same way
as the acting of film actors does.
BC: Didnt you begin your work on Pickpocket, incidentally, by shooting freely
in the streets, only to change your method of filming?

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RB: Yes. I had been told, Hide, its easy. I hid. But I quickly discovered I
had to use tricks to get what I wanted, because a hidden camera is not precise.
Crowds are a mess, for example, though I wound up using some of that mess in
a few shots.
BC: What about the sequence at the Gare de Lyon?
RB: It was shot entirely amidst crowds, in July, during the annual vacation
departures. I needed the camera to be very mobile, so rails, a dolly, and marks
on the floor were required. Nothing like that could be hidden. On top of all this,
there was the din and the jostling.
BC: Yet the camera movements in this film are not really visible.
RB: No more than in my other films where the camera constantly moves.
BC: You dont want the movement to be seen?
RB: The camera is not a moving eye but an encompassing vision.
BC: Did you use these dolly shots in Pickpocket so that you could more easily
maintain the same distance from the subject?
RB: Not the same distance. On the contrary, its never the same distance. Its
the necessary distance. There is only one place in space where something, at a
precise moment, asks to be seen.
BC: What did you want people to feel in Pickpocket?
RB: Rather than having a story I wanted to tell, I wanted people to get a feeling
of the atmosphere that surrounds a thief, the particular atmosphere that makes
people feel anxious and uncomfortable.

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BC: Have you ever met any thieves?

RB: I think Ive met several thieves, but you dont really know until after
youve been robbed.
BC: You felt nothing at the time, in the presence of a thief?
RB: Yes, I did. I remember one time when I was out in the country. I was in a
room with my host and a third person, and we both felt that this third person
either was going to steal something or had already stolen it.
BC: What made you feel that?
RB: It was something very mysterious that I cant put into words. This was the
same feeling I wanted to express in Pickpocket. That, and the terrible solitude of
the thief, the solitude which shuts him in.
BC: Was that the starting point for this film?
RB: I dont really know what a films starting point is, but theres no doubt that
in Pickpocket there is a solitude, which I didnt want to show directly; and the
film is driven by that solitude.
BC: Pickpocket is quite unlike most other films on the subject of stealing. Is
that something you were, or are, aware of?
RB: No, not one bit.
BC: But, from what I know of you, you dont much like the cinema of
Pickpockets time or any other. That is, you yourself dont want to film nicely
structured stories, about thieves and thieving or anything else. How in fact do
you see the cinema of today?

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RB: There are some films that I like, even though they may not be made
according to my methods. But, the fact that they are made in such a way,
contrary to mine, may be why I go to the cinema less often than I used to. There
are certain things that annoy me when I see them, things that I wouldnt do,
techniques used today that I wouldnt use. Its quite natural, of course, for me to
think that the others are wrong and not I.
BC: One essential characteristic of your films, as weve discussed, is your
rejection of the theatrical.
RB: The theatricality that I reject, or, rather, that I try to reject, because its not
so easy, is expression by means of different or varying facial expressions,
physical gestures, vocal qualities.
BC: So you are looking for some kind of anti-expression. You push to
extremes in which not only do you not want acting, but you also dont even want
realism. Its as if you make the actors blank, or less expressive than in real life.
RB: I dont think so. I try to draw them towards automatism, which is
something quite different from what you describe, and which occupies such a
large part of our daily lives.
BC: But can you see how people might think youre turning your back on what
audiences want to see?
RB: Again, I dont think so. Its not something Im aware of, in any event. I
dont think Im turning my back on audiences, or that theyre turning their backs
on me, because I work from my own experienceof audiences as well as of life.

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After making a film, I sit in the audience and try to feel what theyre feeling, and
to experience my own original feelings while making the picture. I would say
that audience members generally seem happy or satisfied with what they see;
they end up feeling exactly as I did and being very moved.
BC: Why do you think that audiences found it easy to feel what you wanted
them to feel in A Man Escaped, for one salient example, but were less sensitive
to those feelings in Pickpocket? Or do you disagree that audiences were less
sensitive to Pickpocket?
RB: No, I agree with you. Its probably because the story itself, the story of the
escape, is much more, maybe not dramatic, but certainly more heroic; and the
character of the escaped prisoner is much more sympathetic, far more accessible
to many more people.
BC: Everyone wants to escape, you mean, but no one wants to be a thief.
RB: Exactly. And the story of the escaped prisoner ends in freedom, whereas
Pickpocket ends in prison.
BC: After all Ive heard you say thus far, may I ask why you impose such
difficulties on yourself during the making of your films?
RB: So that I capture only reality. In any event, difficulty clings to me, in the
same way as speed does. Ive often noticed, for example, that anything Ive not
been able to resolve on paper, if I resolve it on location, while filming, thats the
thing I do best and fastest.

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BC: Was it difficult, in Lancelot du Lac, to film with horses, knights in armor,
and an enormous cast of extras? You had not previously done anything like this.
RB: Contrary to what people may think, when you can do it with a little, you
can do it with a lot. Besides, having bigger means doesnt relieve you of the
responsibility of capturing details, suggesting rather than showing, and giving
prominence to sound. The tournament sequence in this picture, for instance,
was staged for the ear, as were virtually all the other sequences.
BC: But the sound isnt realistic in your films. You dont use sound effects so
much as you exaggerate the sound that is otherwise natural to the scene. You
exaggerate the noise of objects or things at the same time as you lower the
volume of the dialogue.
RB: Sometimes I reduce the volume of dialogue, its true. Yet at other times I
do the opposite and exaggerate its importance. It depends on what I feel
intuitively and on how the film is unfolding. Since I didnt have the luxury of
enormous amounts of money in the making of Lancelot du Lac, I concentrated
on sound rather than spectacle. Usually, such huge budgets dont bring good
luck to the cinema, anyway.
BC: Still, for you, this film was a super production.
RB: But as anachronistic as possible.
BC: Anachronistic?
RB: You need to remove the past to the present if you want to make it
believable. And, dont forget, the Holy Grail, the Christian symbol that the

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knights seek but do not findthe Grail, which represents the absolute in God
already figures in pagan Celtic legends. So why cant we extend the quest for
this holy cup or platter into contemporary life as you and I know it, whether I do
this literally or metaphorically?
BC: What is piquant in Tolstoys novella The Counterfeit Notefrom which
you adapted LArgentis its own contemporary detail: the high school students,
the seller of picture frames, and so on.
RB: I wanted to keep this point of departure because it is apt. But I Gallicized
it in LArgent: I made it Parisian and modern.
BC: A Man Escaped is also modernized, like a new version of Robinson
Crusoe. The hero sets himself technical problems, so as not to let himself be led
to metaphysical despair; he tries to find within himself the spiritual resources
necessary for survival.
RB: My heroes seem like shipwrecked men, leaving to discover an unknown
island, a story idea you can find even as early as the creation of Adam. My
next film happens to be Genesis, for which I will be undertaking preparations
over the next few months. [Interviewers note: Genesis in fact was never
filmed.]
BC: After whats happened with LArgent, do you suddenly find that the desire
to keep on making films is somehow stronger? Youve been praised by some
for LArgent but strongly criticized by others; the film has certainly received

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mixed reactions. So much so that when it was presented at Cannes, you refused
to talk to the press.
RB: The critics dont affect me so much, one way or the other. So, despite
them, there is another film Im going to makeGenesis, to which I just
referredand which Ive been thinking about for a long time. I might have
done it had I not been able to make LArgent. The advance funding for LArgent
was rejected outright three or four years ago, by the subsidy selection committee
under the last French government. And, at the time, I didnt think Id be able to
make it without that financial support. Ive written quite a lot about Genesis, the
beginning of Genesis, which is a subject Im very much interested in, but it will
be a much more difficult film to make than LArgentmuch longer, and
therefore more expensive.
BC: Where will you shoot your Genesis?
RB: I dont know yet. Not in Palestine or in any of the Middle Eastern
countries. I dont want to typecast countriesand, besides, landscapes have
never been very important to me. Animals themselves are animals all over the
world.
BC: Now that you bring up animals again, what is affecting in the quadruple
murder sequence in LArgent is that the emotion comes from the cry of the
victims dog.

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RB: Many animals have an exquisite sensitivity that we dont try hard enough
to know. I myself would like to make more use of it. Its like a doubling, an
extension, of our own joys and sufferings.
BC: In LArgent you have a very harsh view of the bourgeois world. The
likable characters are Yvonthe fuel-oil deliverymanand the exploited old
woman.
RB: LArgent is not an anti-bourgeois film, though. Its not a question of the,
or of a, bourgeois world, but of particular instances in it.
BC: Yet Yvon is to some extent the exterminating angel of this world.
RB: Society abandons him, and his carnage is therefore like the explosion of his
despair.
BC: To move to another subject, how did it come about that you dropped actors
in the conventional sense and began to use in their place modelsor, as you
say, people taken from everyday life?
RB: From the first seconds of my first full-length film, Les Anges du pch in
1943, my actressesthere were only women in this picturesuddenly were no
longer people and there was nothing left, absolutely nothing, of what I had
imagined.
BC: How so?
RB: Because, I suppose, of their very exterior or external way of speaking and
their useless gesticulating.

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BC: A question related to the one about the use of the term models instead of
actors: why does it irritate you when people describe your films as works,
which is a standard or general term to which almost no one else objects?
RB: Because that word simply doesnt describe my films. What they areI
know Jean-Luc Godard said this, but I said it long before him, and Bertolt
Brecht said it before meare attempts, strivings. They are striving towards
something that I know to be the ultimate truth of the screenwriter-director. Im
following a path that I can see quite clearly, and Im still traveling it, without yet
having reached perfection. But I think Ill get there. What I do now, the artistic
path on which I continue to find myself, is simply a consequence of my early
experiences as a director. It wasnt some idea that I already had in my head,
since I was surprised myself by what came to be my filmmaking practice.
BC: What are you striving for, again? The ultimate truth, you say?
RB: I am striving towards the truththeres a difference. But perhaps I should
qualify the phrase ultimate truth and simply say the impression of truth.
BC: You dont believe, do you, that the cinema represents reality truthfully or
realistically? You said earlier in our conversation that you wanted to capture
only reality.
RB: What we take in through our eyes and ears has come from two machines
that are said to reproduce the real world perfectly. But one of these machines is
only capable of representing things in a misleading fashion, via the lie that is
photography; while the other produces a truthful representation of the elements

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that constitute sound. How can one ignore this dichotomy, the fact that the
sound is true but the image false? From this dialectical starting point, you must
work hard, not always knowing where youre headed, to achieve what I think
cinematographic writing should encompass, which is the indefinable
combination of the aural and the visualthe impression of truth, as I have
described it.
BC: Its been said, to return to the subject of performance, that you hate actors.
RB: Thats absurd. Its as if one were to say, Hes a painter, therefore he
doesnt like sculptors. I like the theater and I like actorssome are good
friends of mine. But I wouldnt be able to work with them, as I indicated to you
before. I dont ask anyone to follow me, nor do I wish to follow the way of
theater and dramatic acting.
BC: What exactly do you dislike about actors? The fact that they are poor
machines?
RB: They are excellent machines for whom I have a lot of respect, as machines.
I love watching them at the theater, and go there often. But its not the same
thing at all: I trust that Ive made this clear by now. Its not the same workor
shouldnt beas acting in the cinema. It just isnt. The two have been equated
simply because its more convenient financially to do so. This is one of the evil
effects of money. And this is why I say cinema to distinguish films from
movies; by movies, I mean conventional ones, which to me are just filmed
plays. The director has the actors, from stage or film or both, perform a piece,

426

and he films it. To me, cinema is something entirely different. To elaborate on

something I said earlier, its an independent art born of the juxtaposition of
image with image, image with sound, and sound with soundimages, and
sound, which are thereby transformed. But the images themselves must have a
certain quality that might be called neutrality, and that earlier I termed
flattening. They mustnt haveand this is very difficult to avoidtoo much
fullness or roundedness of dramatic meaning. Their dramatic meaning, as I say,
must come from their juxtaposition with other images and with the sound.
Thats what is extremely difficult: to know how a particular image should
be shot, and from what angle, in order to allow it to interact with other images.
This is true creation, not reproduction. When you film actors performing a play,
the camera reproduces the scene; it doesnt create that scene. To the degree that
theater is thus an external and decorative artwhich is not an insult in my
mindthe contrasting aim or goal of cinema is to depict interiority, intimacy,
isolation. In other words, the innermost depths. To me, cinema is the art of
having each thing in its place. Only in this does it resembles all other arts. You
know the anecdote about Bach playing for a student: the student gushes with
admiration, but Bach says, Theres nothing to admire. You just have to hit the
note at the right time, and the organ does the rest.
To sum up, and to reiterate a point worth repeating, I believe that the
cinema is not the theater and the theater is not the cinema; and that in a film, one
should believe in the character, not sometimes in the actor and sometimes in the

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character. An actor is someone who continuously hides behind his acting,

behind his art, as if he were hiding himself behind a screen.
BC: So the character must be new, authentic, which explains why some stars of
your films, to use an expression you dislike, havent had a career.
RB: Exactly.
BC: They are the stars or actors or modelers of a role.
RB: Of a particular role.
BC: Do you think they are incapable of acting another role?
RB: If you use them as I use them, with no messing about or special effects, its
better that I dont use them again.
BC: Youre so strict that they wont often get the chance to act in any
conventional way, at least under your direction.
RB: You know, I never show them the previous days work, as one normally
would, and I believe strongly that they must be totally unaware of what they are
doing. I believe that this method draws from them the deepest things, which you
could not draw from an actor, because, as I said to you, normally they hide
behind their science, their art. Whereas one could say, if you like, that the
cinema is a means of psychological discovery, rather than being a form of
photographed theater.
BC: How do you look for the people you call your models? Do you choose
them because, when you look at them, they seem to be interesting people? Do
you hope that more of this interesting quality will be revealed during filming?

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RB: Formerly, I looked for my models and chose them on the basis of their
moral resemblance to my characters. But this approach cost me a great deal of
time. I think that menand women, too, of courseare too strange, too
contradictory, for me to know in advance what is going to come out during the
filming. Maybe the more contradictory someone is, the more internal
contradictions he seems to have, and for this reason the more he interests me.
And, as far as casting goes, theres something that tempts meperhaps some
demon within methat tempts me not to take the person who would be the
obvious choice. At some point, I ignore my obvious choice and say, Lets just
see what happens if we go with this other person. I find that interesting.
Indeed, these days, as long as nothing appears in a potential model that is
contrary to my general conception of the character, my decision is made.
BC: Why?
RB: Because characters of our own invention are all too much of a piece. As
you well know, people themselves are full of eccentricities, or character traits,
that often dont appear until they are shone in, or exposed to, a particular light.
Above all, I rely in casting on my flair for doing it and on chancean element
that, like surprise, I treasure. Nonetheless, there is something else to consider:
the voice, which is a divine thing. Taken apart, separately from any physical
aspect, it doesnt permit you, or nearly doesnt permit you, to be misled. So I
have to choose very carefully when it comes to the vocal quality of anybody
who is to appear in one of my films.

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BC: What about your direction of actorsor I suppose I should say models?
RB: It isnt a question of directing someone, but of directing oneself. The rest
is telepathy.
BC: Nonetheless, I know that you ask your actors to express themselves
through body language and physical gesture. Yet you also restrict those very
elements.
RB: We are back to talking about technique again, or rather my obsession with
mechanical behavior. I think that most of our gestures, and even our words, are
automatic. If your hand is on your knee, you didnt put it there; it put itself
there. Montaigne wrote a wonderful chapter on this subject, about how our
hands go where we dont tell them to go. Our hands are autonomous, you see.
Our gestures, our limbs, themselves are autonomous; theyre not under our
command. Thats the cinema as well, or what I conceive of as acting thats
suited to the cinema. What filmic acting is not is thinking out a gesture,
thinking out words. In reality, we dont think of what were going to say; the
words come even as we think, and perhaps they even make us think. Looked at
this way, theater acting is unrealistic and unnatural. What I attempt with my
films is to touch on whats real about human speech, behavior, action.
BC: Id like to get your response to the charge that you transform your
characters into your desired form rather than letting them evolve in their own
way. Is that true?

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RB: Not really. Its a strange combination, a combination of them and me, a
transfer of energy between us. Its a kind of mixture obtained, not from my
directing or staging, but from a kind of divination, a shared assent, a kind of
friendship or affinity in all matters. This mixture absolutely does not come
from merely directing the actors or from staging things. Staging is an apt
expression here. This word shows that todays moviesyet again, I emphasize
the difference between movies and cinemathey are filmed plays. I apologize
for repeating this distinction once more.
BC: You dont consider yourself a director, then?
RB: Not in the least. I am not even a cinephile.
BC: What is Robert Bressons profession?
RB: Someone once said that Im one who imposes order. I prefer that to
director, as on the stage, because I dont see a stage anywhere.
BC: In that case, why dont you ever let your actors improvise, in contrast to
your own improvisation with regard to scripting, locations, and shooting?
RB: They improvise, but not in the way you think. By that I mean I like the
actors mind to be completely uninvolved in whats happening. We keep
repeating lines, fifty times if necessary, until the mind no longer intervenes in
the dialogue or the gestures. Once things become automatic, I throw the actor
into the action of the film, and then completely unexpected things happen that
are a hundred times more real than theatrical acting, where the actor has

431

memorized his lines and thinks out his every movement, sound, and gesture.
Theres no way acting of this kind can seem real.
BC: So using this method, your actors sometimes do unexpected things?
RB: All the time, not just sometimes. Thats the improvisation I speak of. We
shouldnt imitate life; we have to find a way to reproduce it without imitating it.
If we imitate life, its not real. Its fake. I think using a mechanism, or method,
like mine can lead to something lifelike and even real. May I ask you a question
now?
BC: Yes, of course.
RB: You study film and write about it at present, yes; but much, if not all, of
your formal education beyond high school was in the theater, both as a
performer and later as a critic. Am I wrong?
BC: No, you are right.
RB: It shows. I mean no disrespect, but it shows.
BC: Lets talk about acting of a subhumanor perhaps superhumankind.
Did the donkey cause you any problems in Au hasard, Balthazar?
RB: The donkey was a big problem, because I didnt want a performing
donkey. Even while writing the film, I was wary of using a trained donkey. I
didnt want the animal to be professional. The circus scene where the donkey
does math tricks was shot much later than the rest of the film, to give the trainer
time to train the donkey to do math. I waited two months to shoot that scene and
then add it to the other footage, so that the donkey would be completely free of

432

training, free of any artificiality. But this created a situation where the donkey
never did what we expected.
BC: It seems to me that what you ask of your human performers resembles a
psychiatric exercise called psychodrama, which people have often attempted
to transform into art. You put your actors in a particular situation and ask them
to test their inner limits.
RB: What interests me is not what they show but what they conceal.
BC: And you manage to film what they conceal?
RB: Yes, thanks to that extraordinary device, the miraculous machine called a
camera. As a matter of fact, what surprises me is that such an incredible device,
capable of recording what our eye cannot, or more precisely what our mind does
not, is only used to show us tricks and falsehoods. Thats what surprises me.
BC: And you believe, as youve made clear, that professional acting contributes
to these tricks and falsehoods.
RB: Of course, because its difficult, if not impossible, to change an actors
nature. Theres something Chateaubriand said about seventeenth-century poets
that goes something like, They dont lack naturalness. They lack Nature. In
the theater, being natural is a learned skill based on the careful study of feelings
from life. Thats the theaters raw material. In the cinema, the raw material
isnt the actor, its the personits life itself, as opposed to life from a distance.

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BC: Without putting anyone on the spot, Id like you to name some actors who
are natural in the way you describe. For example, in France, Michel Simon was
very natural.
RB: Yes, but once again, youll make me go too far
BC: Please do.
RB: and speak my mind about acting. Traditional stage acting is simply
projection. An actor projects himself into the character hes imagined and, at
the same time, hes watching himself. In a conventional film its the same thing.
If an actor happens to lose focus or daydream and project himself elsewhere,
whats left? Nothing. The character is hollow. You can often see this in closeups, where the actor seems absent, absent even from his own image.
BC: So when you hire people who arent actors, who havent been distorted
through training and who watch themselves less, the results are more real, in
your view.
RB: The greatest talent, and the greatest difficultyisnt it to be charming, as
we commonly call this quality in everyday life? In reality, people are
charmingthey attract ones eye, if you willbecause they arent aware of
their charm. Thats what Im looking for: true charm. Thats what the cinema
needs. And thats a clue to one of the things the cinema does so well: delve
deeply into human psychology, so deeply at times that the camera itself seems to
be a psychoanalyst.

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BC: I dont know if its true, but Ive heard that you dont give your performers
the entire script when you film. In other words, they dont know the story they
are about to be thrown into.
RB: Thats not quite correct. They have a script. What they dont know is how
theyre doing on screen. As Ive noted, unlike what is commonly done in the
movies, I dont show my performers the previous days rushes. I never show
them what theyve done, so that they wont watch themselves on screen as if in a
mirror and try to correct themselves, as all professionals do. These actors think,
My nose is too far to the right. Next time Ill face more to the left. Thatll be
better. You see what I mean.
BC: How do you ask your performers to learn their lines? Do they have any
input into the dialogue you write?
RB: I think Ive already answered this question: I ask them to learn their lines
while ignoring the meaning of those lines, as if they didnt have a meaning, as if
the words were just syllablesas if sentences were made not of words but only
of syllables. The meaning comes upon my performers unaware, at the moment I
described earlier, when I finally set them loose in the film.
BC: They learn their lines in a foreign language, as it were, only receiving the
translation at that moment when they are set free.
RB: Yes, if you like.
BC: Do you think long takes allow your performers to express themselves
better?

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RB: You are showing your theater-training once again. To me, the substance of
cinema isnt gestures and words; its the effect produced by those gestures and
words. So that effect is completely independent of me and even the performers.
It occurs completely without their knowledge. What counts is what these
gestures and words emit, what we read in the performers faces, utterances, and
above all their activities or actions. As Montaigne said, Were revealed in our
gestures.
BC: Your working methods are very secretive, Ive learned. You film in secret,
and you dont like publicity. I must say it was even difficult to arrange this
interview with you. This is part of your character, I sense. Is it absolutely
essential to your work, this secrecy?
RB: I believe that filmmaking takes a lot of concentration, and, what is more, I
dont think its good to talk about yourself or about what youre doing. It is
very difficult to explain to others something that you cant even explain to
yourself. I have tried to do so today, with your help, but I cannot know if Ive
been successful.
BC: Do you think you are in the vanguard of the film world?
RB: I dont know. But I do think that films in the future will be moving further
and further away from the theater, as I have tried to do in my work. The
techniques used in these films will be completely different from the theatrical
techniques used now.
BC: So you think that the cinema still has unfulfilled possibilities?

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RB: Oh, yes, of course. Not in technical terms but in terms of inner artistry, the
cinema is still lacking in genuine practitioners.
BC: Do you think, then, that todays acclaimed films will be forgotten in
twenty years?
RB: I really cant say. I dont like making such critical pronouncements.
BC: Do people understand you?
RB: I dont know if they understand me, but . . . is this about me or my films?
If its about the films, Id rather people felt a film of mine before understanding
it; I prefer that their feelings cut in before their intelligence.
BC: Do you yourself feel alone, or that you stand alone?
RB: Again, as a man or as an artist?
BC: Both.
RB: I feel very alone in each case, but I dont derive any pleasure from this
feeling, if thats what you mean.
BC: May I conclude by saying what I think of you and your work?
RB: Yes, if you want to.
BC: In my view, you are the greatest of filmmakers. When I see one of your
films, I feel such turmoil, such deracination, that its as if Im experiencing
cinema for the very first time in my life. With each Bresson film this happens.
Every one of your films has had a profound effect on me that has lasted for
years. I feel as though youre working in some secret medium to which you
alone have the key; the provenance of any film of yours thus seems to be

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different from that of other films. The film itself seems to be printed somewhere
else than the place where other films are printed. Your immensity, your
immensity in film art, is contained as much in a single one of your images as in
the entire body of your images, of your work. Its a new product, or, better, a
new phenomenonthats all I can say.
RB: You are too generous, M. Cardullo. But I would be dishonest if I didnt
say I hope youre right.

Dostoyevskyan Surge, Bressonian Spirit: LArgent, Une Femme douce, and

the Cinematic World of Robert Bresson, by Bert Cardullo.
When he completed LArgent (Money) in 1983, Robert Bresson (19011999) was probably the oldest active director in the world. But his evolution
had been in striking contrast to that of his contemporaries. Even if we do not
take into account those filmmakers whose declines had been conspicuous, most
of the senior statesmen of the cinema showed in their later phases a serenity of

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style, an autumnal detachment from reality, which compares with that of elder
artists in other genres such as the drama, the novel, and poetry. Not so with
Bresson. LArgent, his thirteenth and final film (freely adapted from the 1905
novella The Counterfeit Note, by Tolstoy), was made in essentially the same
strict, tense, controlled stylehere used in the depiction of extraordinary
violencethat he used in Les Anges du pch (Angels of the Streets) in 1943.
Hence Buffon was mistaken: style is not the man himself, its the universe
as seen by the man. (Many a disorderly person has been an artist with an
orderly style.) But neither is style a separable system into which an artist feeds
material. Van Gogh didnt look at the night sky and decide that it would be
pretty to paint the constellations as whirls. And Joyce didnt decide it would be
clever to describe that same sky as the heaventree of stars hung with humid
nightblue fruit. Neither artist had, in a sense, much choice. His style, of
course, was refined through a lifetime and first drafts were not often final drafts,
but the temper and vision of that style were given from the start.
Thus its impossible to imagine Bresson deciding to make LArgent as he
did. On the basis of his career, we can assume that, at some time after he had
read Tolstoys story, his mind and imagination shaped the structure and look of
his film in ways that his mind and imagination had long been doing. Its a kind
of fatalism, I believe. Not all fine artists work in the same way all their lives:
the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu is one who did not. But some, like Bresson,
do.

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Consequently you know, if youre familiar with Bressons oeuvre, that

LArgent was made with non-actors. He rarely used professionals, and he called
his untrained non-professionals models, whom he instructed to speak their
lines and move their bodies without conscious interpretation or motivation, in a
determined attempt on this directors part to keep them from psychologizing
their characters. Bresson hated acting and often said so. He chose people
instead who had what he considered the right personal qualities for their roles,
and he said that he never used people twice because the second time they would
try to give him what he wanted in place of what they were. Its as if he were
guided by Kleists line that Grace appears most purely in that human form
which either has no consciousness or has an infinite consciousness: that is, in the
puppet or in the god. Since Bresson couldnt employ gods, he got as close as
possible to puppetswith non-actors. They enact the story of LArgent, as of
Bressons other films, much as medieval townsfolk might have enacted a
mystery or morality play, with little skill and much conviction.
Apart from the actingor non-actingyou also know, if youve seen
Bressons films, that if the subject was contemporary (as it is in LArgent), the
sounds of metropolitan life were probably heard under the credits, as if to
adumbrate the role that such sound, any sound, would play in the film to follow.
You recall that the story was told with almost Trappist austerity and emotional
economy, in such an elliptical, fragmentary, even lacunary way that only in its
interstices can be found its poetryindeed, much of its meaning. You recall as

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well that Bressons camera fixed on places a moment before characters entered
and remained a moment after they left, not only to include environment as a
character but also to signify that humans are transient in the world; and you are
aware that, in any one of his films, probably a chain of consequences would
begin with an event seemingly unrelated to the conclusion.
In our time, when we are saturated more than ever with images of the
most superficially realistic kind, particularly on television, Bresson thus tried to
wash our eyes and lead us to see differentlyto bathe our vision, as it were, in
an alternative reality. Moreover, his distrust of wordsBressons laconic
dialogue is almost as characteristic of his work as the neutral tone of its
deliveryoften made him choose characters (like Mouchette in the 1967 film of
the same name, or like the truck driver of LArgent) who have little or no ability
to speak, and who therefore suffer their oppression in silence. And often we see
as little of them as we hear of their dialogue, for Bresson liked to focus his
camera on a door through which a person passed or on a headless body
approaching a door, turning the knob, and passing through. (His rare moving
shots were usually reserved for that kind of traversal.)
When it isnt doorknobs in LArgent, its cell doorsin prisons that are so
clean and well-run, so intensely physical as well as aural, so much a part of
societys organization, that they freeze the marrow. (The suggestion, of course,
is that humanity itself, inside or outside prison, is trapped behind four walls.
Possibly prisons figure so often in Bressons filmsin addition to LArgent,

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they can be found in A Man Escaped [1956], Pickpocket [1959], The Trial of
Joan of Arc [1962], and as early as Les Anges du pchand are the most
emblematic of his dcors, because he himself spent eighteen months in a
German P.O.W. camp during World War II.) Bresson thus put places, things,
and people on virtually the same plane of importance. Other directors do this,
tooAntonioni, for instance. But with Antonioni, its to show that the physical
world is inescapable, almost a person itself; Bresson, by contrast, wanted to
show that the world and the things in it are as much a part of Gods mind as the
people in the world.
Let me address the world of LArgent in a bit more detail, because its
pattern is simple yet common in the work of Bresson: a pebble is moved, and the
eventual result is an avalanche. A teenaged Parisian from a wealthy home asks
his father for extra money, besides his weekly allowance, to repay a debt. The
money is refused. The teenager then consults a friend of his age and station,
who has counterfeit banknotes (no explanation of the source) and knows where
to pass them (no explanation of the knowledge). The youths pass off a false
note to a woman in a camera shop. When her husband discovers the fraud, he
passes off the note to the driver of an oil-delivery truck. The truck driver is
subsequently framed as a passer of counterfeit money and the ensuing scandal
causes him to lose his job. In order to continue supporting his family, he tries
driving a getaway car for some criminals, but their heist doesnt go so well and
he is sent to prison for three years. While incarcerated, his child dies of

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diphtheria and his wife leaves him. Crazed upon release from jail, the former
husband and father turns to theft, violent crime, and eventually cold-blooded
murder before turning himself in to the policefor good, as it were.
This seemingly random and ultimately sensationalistic story holds
because, as in all of Bresson, the focus is not on the story, its on matters of
which we get only some visible-audible evidence. That is to say, to the devoutly
Catholic Bresson, evil is as much a part of life as good, and what happens here
en route to Gods judgment is not to be taken as proof or disproof of Gods
being. Though the sentimentalist in Tolstoy (on display in The Counterfeit
Note) would disagree, God does not prove, does not want to prove, his existence
by making the good prosper and the wicked suffer, by aiding the morally weak
or rescuing the ethically misled. (The most religious person in the film becomes
a murder victim.) This world is, after all, only this world, says LArgent; God
alone knows everything, the suffering of the faithful and also the suffering of the
sinner.
Bressons world-view is well conveyed here by his two cinematographers,
Emmanuel Machuel and Pasqualino de Santis (who has worked for Bresson
before). All the colors look pre-Raphaelite, conveying the innocent idea of blue
or red or any other color. And this fits Bressons innocent method: violence
runs through LArgent but is never seen. When the truckdriver commits a
double murder, for instance, all we see of it is the tap water that runs red in basin
for a few moments as he washes his hands. When he commits ax killings, the

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only stroke we see occurs when he hits a lamp. This innocence extends to the
last sequence of the film. The driver, who has killed off a family in an isolated
country house, goes to an inn, where he sits and has a cognac. It is then that he
turns himself in: by calmly walking over to some policemen standing at the bar
and confessing his crimes. In the next shot we are with the crowd outside the
inn door. As they watch, the police come out, taking the driver away. We never
see him again; instead, the camera places us with the innocent bystanders, who
continue to watch the door, watching for more police, more prisoners. But there
will be no more, and the film ends on the image of the crowd, waiting and
watchingthe constant disposition of every moviegoer as well, to be sure, but,
even more so, the habitual stance of the audience of any Bresson film, where the
emphasis falls on the watching (and the hearing) while youre waiting.
The other remarkable aspect of Bressons oeuvre, aside from the
consistency of his style, can be deduced from the content of LArgent as
summarized above: to wit, forty years after his real beginning in 1943 with Les
Anges du pch, his films still had the power to create scandal. (The director
disowned his first feature, a surrealist comedy called Les Affaires publiques
[1934], which was once thought to be lost but was found again in 1988 at the
Cinmathque franaise in Paris and publicly re-screened there for the first
time.) Even as Pickpocket was rejected by many at the time of its release (but
hailed by New Wave filmmakers like Franois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and
Louis Malle, then making their first films, as a landmark in modern cinema),

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LArgent was booed by the audience at Cannes in 1983 despite the fact that it
won the Grand Prize for creative cinema (together with Andrei Tarkovskys
Nostalgia). The director himself faced a violent reaction when he received the
award from Orson Welleshimself no stranger to rejection and scandal. The
irony in this instance was that Bresson, the avowed Catholic and a political
conservative, was attacked by all the right-wing newspapers in France that in the
past had defended his films. At the core of this attack, one can detect an
exasperation with, even a hostility toward, an artist whose lack of commercial
success had nonetheless never made him sacrifice one iota of his integrity, and
who always maintained his rigorous artistic standards.
It is sometimes forgotten that part of Bressons integrityhis moral or
ethical rigor, if you willwas his insistence on treating his share of socially as
well as linguistically marginalized characters, in such films as Pickpocket, Au
hasard, Balthazar (1966), and Mouchette. Yet no one would ever have called
him a working-class naturalist like Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, whose
pictures, even though they sometimes have an implicit Christian component
(especially Rosetta [1999] and The Son [2002]), are closer in subject to the
social-problem play tradition of the European naturalistic theater. Bresson, by
contrast, was a transcendental stylist (to use Paul Schraders term) concerned to
unite the spiritualism of religious cinema with realisms redemption of the
physical world in its organic wholeness if not otherness, its inviolable mystery,
and its eternal primacy or self-evidence.

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Id now like to reconsider here, in detail, what I believe to be Bressons

most underrated film: Une Femme douce (1969), or A Gentle Creature, his first
work in color, his ninth film, after the 1876 novella by Dostoyevsky (sometimes
called A Gentle Spirit), and his fourth picture derived from or suggested by a
Dostoyevskyan source. (Pickpocket was based on Crime and Punishment, Au
hasard, Balthazar was inspired by The Idiot, and Four Nights of a Dreamer
[1971] was adapted from the story White Nights.)

Bresson regarded

Dostoyevsky as the worlds greatest novelist, doubtless for his spiritual strain
an almost existential one, in contrast with the sentimental religiosity of
Tolstoybecause Bresson avoids the Russians preoccupation with truth and his
probing of human psychology.

Put another way, this most Catholic of

filmmakers (French or otherwise) always forbids the surface as well as the

depths of naturalism from distracting us from the mystical moments in his films,
which cannot be explicated or revealed in any positivistic manner.
Those moments, to be sure, involve cinematic characters, but Bresson
makes us focus, not on the story in the human beings on screen, but on the
human beings in the story and their sometimes complete lack of connection to or
understanding of what happens to them. Bresson almost disconnects character
from story in this way.

His is an extreme reaction to decades of dramatic

pictures, where character is action and action character; action movies, in

which the characters are designed to fit the exciting plot; and films of
character, where the plot is designed to present interesting charactersthose

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with a story, that is. To the oversimplifications of character of the cinema

before him, Bresson responds by not simplifying anything, by explaining almost
nothing.

To the self-obsession of the Hollywood star system, the dream

factory, Bresson responds in the extreme by calling for complete self-denial on

the part of his actors. (Hence his designation of them as models.)
Lets begin simply with the plot of Une Femme douce, so that we can
instructively compare what Bresson and Dostoyevsky do with more or less the
same series of events. A contemporary young woman, unnamed, of uncertain
background and insufficient means, for no apparent reason marries a
pawnbroker, also unnamed, whom she meets in his shop. She tells this man that
she does not love him, and she makes it very clear that she disdains his, and all,
money; if she is marrying to escape her origins, it remains unclear exactly what
those origins were and why she is choosing to escape them in this particular
way. The woman (as she is called in the credits, like the man) and her
husband go through periods of much unhappinesswe even see her with
another man at one point, but we cannot be sure that she has been unfaithful
and some calm. Then she nearly shoots her spouse to death in his sleep. Later
she becomes quite ill, and, once she recovers, matters appear to be righting
themselves between her and her husband. Nonetheless, she proceeds to jump to
her death from the balcony of their Paris apartment.
The plot of Dostoyevskys novella, A Gentle Spirit, is substantially similar
to this one, allowing for differences in time (mid-to-late nineteenth century) and

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place (the harsh Russian countryside), with one major exception: the young wife
in Dostoyevskys narrative is initially very loving toward her husband, with the
result that the main turns of the above plot are easily explained. The husband in
the novellahe is the narrator both of the novella and of Bressons film
distrusts, out of his own perverse obsession with verifiable as opposed to
intuited truth (his Dostoyevskyan surge, if you will), his wifes love for him, so
he decides to test it. He is cold toward her and holds over her head the fact that
he has rescued her from her poor beginnings. For these reasons, she eventually
comes to hate her husband and almost to commit adultery. Finally, she is even
ready to shoot him. With his wifes gun at his temple, the man awakens but
does not move. Yet she cannot fire. A religious woman, she feels great remorse
and atones for her sin by leaping to her death while clutching a Christian icon.
The wife in fact is lying on her bier at the beginning of the novella with her
husband at her side, reviewing his marriage in an attempt to understand why she
committed suicide.

What he winds up understanding is that his own

contrariness is the cause of all his unhappiness, and that all men live in, in his
words, in unbreachable solitudewords that Charles Thomas Samuels quotes
in his review/essay Bressons Gentleness (from his book Mastering the Film
[1977]), but who in the process makes the mistake of allowing Dostoyevskys
novella to color his perception of the action in Une Femme douce.
Samuels and many others (among them Eric Rhode, Jonas Mekas,
Michel Estve, Jean-Pierre Oudart, and Jean Smolu) explanations of what

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happens in Une Femme douce, however, pale beside the facts. And the facts are
almost all Bresson gives us (here as elsewhere in his oeuvre) and all that we
should consider if we are to be able to interpret his film justly. To recast a
statement once made by Bert States about Harold Pinters play The
Homecoming (1965), it is more a case of the films not contradicting critics
ideas than of its actually containing them. One fact that Une Femme douce
contains, that critics have inexplicably ignored, and that I take to be the
foundation of any sound interpretation of this film, is the young womans
declaration in the beginning that she does not love the man she intends to marry.
Put another way, it is not at all clear why she marries him (her Dostoyevskyan
surge, in opposition to the husbands in Dostoyevskys novella), and certainly
the sum of the evidence points to the conclusion that they are so different from
each other as to be nearly exact opposites. (No, the opposites attract theory
of romance doesnt work here, for nothing the young woman does indicates that
she is even attracted to the pawnbroker, let alone in love with him.) The
pawnbroker, for his part, although he may wish to marry this woman, does not
make known why, after so many years of bachelorhood, he suddenly wants to
wed someone about whom he knows so little. (Bresson makes him forty or so
and gives him a live-in maid-cum-assistant whom, significantly, he does not
dismiss after his marriage.) Certainly he gets little or no response from his
fiance, however much he may think he loves her, and they could hardly be said
to carry on anything resembling a courtship.

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In a word, these two are simply not meant for each other, and I am
maintaining that Bresson makes sure we know this right from the start.
Bressons subject is thus not the rise and fall of a modern marriage, say, on
account of financial problems or sexual infidelity (as it is Germaine Dulacs
subject in La souriante Madame Beudet [1922], a kind of early feminist film that
deals with the problem of a husbands economic domination of his wife, and to
which, in letter but not in spirit, Une Femme douce bears some resemblance).
The couple in Une Femme douce dont even fall out in direct conflict with each
other over a genuine issue that is raised in the film: the spiritually transcendent
way of life over the material driven one. These two are fallen out, as it were,
when they first meet.
What Bresson does in Une Femme douce, then, is the reverse of what
Dostoyevsky does in A Gentle Spirit. The latter has the husband test the love of
his wife and conclude that all human beings live in unbreachable solitude.
Bresson has the husband and wife living in unbreachable solitude from the start
and tests the duty, if not the love, toward them of the maid Anna, the character
whom Bresson adds and purposefully names so that she will stand in for us, the
audience. (Although Bresson could just as easily have had the husband narrate
the story of his marriage alone and unseen, in intermittent voiceover, he has us
watch the husband tell it to Anna in the same room where his wifes corpse lies
on their marital bed; like the wifes body lying in the street after she jumps to
her death, which we see at the start of the film, this is another telling image

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the dead woman juxtaposed against the [re]union of man and maidof the endof-the marriage-in-its-beginning.) Whereas Dostoyevsky had used the spiritual
to express the nihilistic, Bresson thus uses the nihilistic to express the spiritual.
Let me go into some detail as to how he does this, chiefly by
concentrating on the contrast between the figures of the man and the woman.
Since most of what we learn about her is designed solely to establish how
different from the pawnbroker she is, she does not add up to a unified character
of depth and originality, or color, with whom we can readily identify. She
walks into the pawnbrokers shop, and immediately the otherwise beautiful
Dominique Sanda, in her first screen role (and giving more of a performance
here than Bresson usually allowed his models), is unsympathetic: her clothing
is drab, her hair is disheveled, she makes very little eye-contact with anyone,
and her walk has about it at the same time a timidity and an urgency that make it
unnerving.
The pawnbroker, by contrast, is meticulous in appearance, sparing in
gesture, and steady in his walk; he looks directly at all whom he encounters
(whereas his customers avert his gaze), but with eyes that one cannot look into
and a face that, eerily, is neither handsome nor plain. This is clearly a man (as
modeled by Guy Frangin) who understands the world and how to get along
in it, as opposed to being had by it: money is everything to him, and what
cant be seen, touched, and stored is not worth talking about (which is one of the
reasons, as he himself says, that he is unable to pray). He accumulates item after

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item in his pawnshop, yet we never see him sell anything: he likes his money,
but apparently he likes his things, too.
His wife, on the other hand, gives away his money for worthless objects
when she is working in the pawnshop; before she was married, she pawned her
own last possessions in order to get a few more books to read. Her husband, for
his part, has shelves of books, not one of which we ever see him take down to
read; he likes them only for their thingness. Charles Thomas Samuels writes
that neither husband nor wife can rise above the world of things, and that this
in fact is why they fall out. The point, however, is that the husband does not
wish to rise above the world of things, while the wife longs to do so but realizes
that, as a human being, she can only achieve her goal to a limited extent. And
this chasm between them is clearly established from the start by their own
behavior as well as by Bressons camera.
The young woman indirectly reveals her knowledge when, early in Une
Femme douce, she declares, Were allmen and animalscomposed of the
same matter, the same raw materials.

Later we have this truism visually

confirmed when the young woman and her husband visit a museum of natural
history, where she goes on to ask, Do birds learn to sing from their parents, or
is the ability to sing present in them at birth? The wife yearns beyond a
universe in which all is such nature, nurture, matter, and where human being
themselves frequently seem to behave in a preconditioned manner:

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preconditioned to beautify the self, to marry, to reproduce, to gather wealth and

possessions, to enter society, et cetera.
Throughout the film the suggestion is that, himself obsessed with
possessing matter (including his wife, or her body), the husband responds to
situations in a preconditioned or correct manner, whereas his wife responds in
the most unforeseen, and sometimes bizarre, of ways. Indeed, almost all her
behavior in Une Femme douce is choreographed according to this ideal of the
unexpected or the gratuitous. When she and her husband enter their bedroom on
their wedding night, for example, the young woman quickly turns on the
television set but does not watch it. The man does, but what he sees could be
called the image of his own dead-end behavior pattern: cars racing in a circle.
(He drives an automobile, she doesnt.) Later the husband will watch horses
racing around a track on the same television, then World War II fighter planes
themselves flying round in endless circles as they try to out-maneuver one
another in dogfights.
Meanwhile, incongruously, the wife nearly runs about the room in
preparation for bed, wrapped in a towel that dislodges itself by accident as
opposed to being dislodged in an act of sexual enticement. At one point she
carelessly tosses her nightgown onto the bed, in much the same way she will
leave underclothes strewn about it during the day and scatters her books
everywhere, showing no respect for the material, for objects or possessions. At
another point, this young woman takes a bath but doesnt drain the dirty water

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and even leaves the faucet running, which her husband then turns off.
Moreover, she spurns money yet likes to eat fancy pastries; she enjoys jazz but
plays Bach and Purcell, too. The wife wants a bouquet so much she goes as far
as to pick sunflowers alongside a road, then quickly tosses them away when she
sees that, nearby, some couples are gathering their own bouquets of sunflowers.
She goes to a museum with her husband and contemplates an odd-looking piece
of sculpture, which he rejects as too distant from classic art, from the
symmetrical painting in the frame (earlier he has quoted Goethe proudly), but
which she embraces precisely because of its oddness or difference.
This woman is different even in dying. (Her suicide ends as well as begins
the film.) We do not get her point of view of the street before she leaps from the
balcony, nor do we await her fall from below, from the position where she will
soon find herself. After placing a white shawl around her shoulders before and
fingering the Christ figure retained from the gold crucifix she had pawned at her
future husbands shop, the wife jumps in total daylight. We then innocently
see a potted plant fall off the small table from which she leaped, we watch the
table topple over, and we are given a slow-motion shot of her shawl floating
discursively to the ground after heras if it were both her surviving soul or
spirit and a final reminder of the unpredictability of her human natureto be
followed by a series of shadows and feet that flutter toward her dead body.
Off-camera during her fall, the young woman lands in the street, cars
screech to a halt, and we await her husbands discovery of her death. She has

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fallen vertically into the street, and she is off-camera during her fall. The plant,
the table, and the shawl imitate her descent; and finally she is apart, she is
different, she is dead. (Her husband drives horizontally over the streetswe
may assume that he was the one navigating his car through the Paris night at the
beginning of the film, since his wife does not driveand, because of the
position of the camera during this shot, we seem to be in the drivers seat with
him.)
If, even in suicide, the wifes behavior has not been categorizable, has
once again been somewhere in betweenwe can never predict quite where,
we do not know quite whythen Bressons camera itself is always literally
somewhere in between, except when it is teasing us with a subjective cameraplacement or point-of-view shot. It so teases us at the beginning, during the
night drive through the city, and the camera does this again when the man and
woman, together with us, attend a French movie called Benjamin (1968)a
costume drama trading on the wiles of loveand a production of Hamlet, i.e.,
the kinds of narratives or dramas, unlike Une Femme douce, we are accustomed
to seeing and hearing, in which we are more or less easily able to identify with
the characters, their worlds, their experiences.
By contrast, during much of Une Femme douce we get one shot after
another of doors, of empty stairways, of the objects filling the pawnbrokers
shop and his apartment.

The camera is similarly in between in its

representation of people: we get hands and arms cut off bodies, bodies cut off

455

from heads, just torsos, just feet. As usual in his work, Bresson thus makes
matter of the human body, even as he films the material world, the literal
distance between the husband and the wife, as much to bring this matter to
(spiritual) life as to emphasize the fact that these two people live in
unbreachable solitude, on either side of a great chasm. The last shot of Une
Femme douce is of the lid to the womans coffin being screwed tight, as the
material worldthe actual coffin lid, the world of things which she has at last
transcendedcontinues to separate her, in death, from her husband, just as it did
in life.
If these two characters are so permanently separated or irreconcilably
different, one might ask, why did they choose to get married? I dont know; I
dont think that they know (if they do, they dont tell us); and Bresson doesnt
care because, as I have more than suggested, this couples psychology is not
the focus of Une Femme douce. Perhaps the man and the woman get together
out of their own perversity, but the film doesnt contain this idea: it just doesnt
contradict it. Just as it doesnt contradict the possibility that the young woman
marries the pawnbroker only because it is the unexpected thing to do. For
Bresson, then, their marriage is not a relationship to be explored, but instead a
device to be used.
To wit: marriage is universally perceived to be the most intimate state in
which two people can live, and Bresson counterpoints this perception of ours
with the almost total lack of intimacy that exists between the husband and the

456

wife in his film. In other words, the director does not allow us to identify with
the marriage of the pawnbroker and the young woman, to see ourselves in them,
because he doesnt indicate that they marry for the reasons we usually associate
with marrying: love, money, convenience, convention, children. They wed, they
are unhappy, they reach a fragile understanding, then she kills herself. The
husband, in his narrationit is not narration in the proper sense, but more on
this laterattempts to discover why his wife committed suicide, but he cannot
find an answer. He doesnt know why she killed herself, nor do we, and neither
does Bresson.
My point is not that every human action in Une Femme douce is without
explanation, without cause or motivefor instance, the wifes near murder of
her husband after he discovers her with another man can be accounted forbut
that these individual explanations become beside the point when one considers
that there is no explanation in the film as to why the pawnbroker and the young
woman got married in the first place. What becomes important, therefore, is not
so much their relationship with each other as our relationship with each of them,
and Annas with the pawnbroker. This is why the camera shifts periodically
from its illustration of past events to the husband pacing back and forth in the
bedroom in the present, telling his story of the marriage: not only to point up
that neither narrative account provides the answers, but also to emphasize that
this man, as character or person apart from his story, is the proper focus of our

457

concerns. As is his wife, literally apart from her story in death, lying in the road
at the beginning of the film even as she lies there at its conclusion.
Clearly, then, Bresson wants more from us than our understanding of
the husband and wifes relationship, our feeling sorry for them for their frailties
and obsessions, because ultimately this is only feeling sorry for ourselves; or it
is making these characters do the work of our living, which is too easy. The
remarkable aspect of this film is that we do much of the feeling and querying for
the actors, not in identification with them as they do it, but in their place: we
feel and query for them as we imagine they would. And this has the effect of
making us think absolutely about their situation, instead of about theirs plus our
own. Bresson, in this way, wants us to feel for and care about characters whom
we do not recognize, who reveal as little that is like us as possible, namely,
the heights and depths of strong emotion: love, hate, anger, regret, happiness,
sadness.
To this end, Bresson forces his actors to deny themselves in their portrayal
of their characters (even as the actors in the Paris production of Hamlet did not
deny themselves, going so far as to delete from the text Hamlets famous advice
to the Players to acquire and beget a temperance). He denies himself in his
shooting of these characters: for the most part, the camera is held steady in the
middle distance, there is no panning or tracking, and there are no high- and lowangle shotsobjectivity or distance that Bresson can afford because of the very
lack of appeal of his main characters. The director asks us in turn to deny

458

ourselves in our perception of these characters and their actions. He demands

that we pay attention to the husband and wife for themselves, no matter how
uninviting or inexpressive they may appear, no matter how their story resembles
little more than a skimpy newspaper report.
The fact that, as in the case of Une Femme douce, Bresson almost always
made his films from preexisting texts should be a signal that he was not
interested in the creation of original character for its own sake, or even in the recreation of traditionally arresting and appealing character (which is one reason
we never learn the name of the husband or wife). The fact that he frequently
began his films by telling us what would happen at the end should be a signal, as
well: that he was not primarily concerned to tell stories for the suspense they
could create. Related to this, the effect of having the husband narrate parts of
the story to Anna, the enactment of which parts we then see in flashback, is less
to show us discrepancies in the husbands version as compared with what really
happened (as Charles Thomas Samuels believes) than to obliterate the newness
or freshness of story, the interest in it per seprecisely through the filming of
both the husbands narration and its subsequent repetition in action instead of
words.
Bresson asks us, not to fully fathom this double-narrative, to decipher
the how and why of the whole story, but simply to believe that it occurred and to
take witness if not pity. His is a nearly perverse demand, which is to say a kind
of religious one. If we can comply and perform the requisite act of faith, of utter

459

selflessness, together with a leap of the imagination, Une Femme douce

becomes for us something resembling a religious or spiritual experience. It
becomes an experience, moreover, that teaches an important aesthetic lesson:
that we must acknowledge the existence of the inexplicable in, as well as
beyond, art.

For it is arts job not to make people and the world more

intelligible than they are, but instead to re-present their mystery or ineffableness,
their integrity or irreducibility, if you will, their connection to something
irretrievably their own or some otherslike God himself.
I am of course not the first to assert that Bresson invokes mystery or
otherness, what is beyond our ken as human beings, in Une Femme douce
indeed, in most of his films. But I differ with critics like Amde Ayfre and
Paul Schrader in my suggestion that Bresson is not invoking mystery or
otherness for its sake alone, but instead for the sake of exalting the human, of
calling his audiences attention to the divinity in humanity itself. Unlike a
Harold Pinter, who rises above his characters in similar outrageous or
exaggerated situations, who triumphs over the conventions of dramatic form
through his characters, and who thereby self-absorbedly points the finger at
himself, Bresson thus kneels before the mystery of his and all human behavior,
selflessly extending his hand toward someone or something else. Its true that
all may not be grace for the young woman at the end of Une Femme douce, as it
was for the cur of Ambricourt at the conclusion of Bressons Diary of a
Country Priest (1951, from the 1936 novel by Georges Bernanos), who utters

460

these words of spiritual certitude (All is grace) as he is dying. But then all is
not nothingness, either.
Anna the maid seems to have learned the lesson of inexplicability or
irreducibility from life rather than art, for she knows as little as we do about the
motives for, and causes of, the husbands and the wifes behavior, yet she utters
not one querying or querulous word to either of them in the course of the
picture. Indeed, Anna utters only a few lines through all of Une Femme douce.
Yes, she is the couples maid, but her silence and impassivity (especially as she
is played by Jane Lobr) here appear to go beyond the call of a servants duty.
Before the end of the film, Anna leaves the room in which she has quietly
listened to the husbands narrative of his and his wifes relationship, but she will
not leave him. She will remain with him during and after the funeral of the
young woman because, as the husband himself admits, he will need her.
Bresson, by implication, asks the same of us: that, figuratively speaking,
we do not desert this man in his time of need, that we recognize his humanity
despite the fact we cannot comprehend his, or his marriages deepest secrets. If
there is anyone in Une Femme douce with whom we should identify, then, it is
Anna. And if can be said we identify with the husband and wife at all, it is in
the sense, as I have implied, that they seem as puzzled by what is happening to
them as we are. This is not only character almost disconnected from story, it is
character nearly disconnected from self.

Thus are we disconnected from our

selves, our certain egos, and made to look, not for the moral or balance in the

461

story, the symmetry of feeling and form, of ideas and execution, but simply and
inescapably for the only remaining tie that binds us to the characters depicted on
screen: the human one, or the only one that cannot be explained away.
As one can doubtless deduce from my concentration above on Une
Femme douces method, as well as on LArgents after it, Bressons films are
even more distinguished for their method or their style than for their individual
subject matter. (On this point Charles Thomas Samuels and I can agree.) That
is because Bressons subjects pale beside his treatment of them, so much so that
it is almost as if the director were making the same movie time after time. How
ironic, or perhaps appropriate, that he filmed number nine in color (though
elegantly understated or innocent color it is, as photographed by Ghislain
Cloquet) because, as he later wrote in Notes on Cinematography (1975), he felt
color was more true to life. Like Andr Bazins true filmmaker, Bresson thus
attained his power through his method, which is less a thing literally to be
described or expressed (as in such terms as color, deep focus, handheld
camerawork, and long takes) than an inner orientation enabling an outward
quest. That quest, in Bressons case, is (this is not too strong) to honor Gods
universe by using film to render the reality of that universe, and, through its
reality, both the miracle of its creation and the mystery of its being.

Robert Bresson: A Chronology.

462

1907

Born to Lon and Marie Elizabeth (Clausels) on 25

September at Bromont-Lamothe (Puy-de-Dme) in the
mountainous Auvergne region of France. (Some sources
list 1901 as the year of Bressons birth, a discrepancy
never fully resolved.)

1915

Moves to Paris with his family.

1920-25

Studies classics and philosophy at the Lyce Lakanal in

Sceaux (Paris), then pursues a life as a painter.

1926

Marries Leidia Van der Zee on 21 December. After her

later death, Bresson marries Mylne van der Mersch, with
whom he remains for the rest of his life.

1930

Abandons painting but occasionally takes photographs and

plays piano, listens to records, and attends concerts.
Becomes interested in filmmaking.

1933

Works as a script consultant on Ctait un musicien,

directed by Frdric Zelnick and Maurice Gleize.

1934

Makes his first film, Les Affaires publiques, a surrealistic

comedy that was lost during World War II but
rediscovered in 1988 at the Cinmathque
franaise in Paris. It was financed by the art historian
Roland Penrose.

1936-37

Works as a script consultant on a comedy, Jumeaux de

Brighton (directed by Claude Heyman), and on an airplane
story by Antoine de Saint-Exupry, Courrier sud (directed
by Pierre Billon).

1939

Works briefly with Ren Clair on the script of Air pur.

Joins the French army.

1940

Prisoner of war from June 1940 to April 1941. Feigns

illness and is allowed by the Nazis to return to Paris.

463

1943

Directs Les Anges du pch (adapted from the book Les

Dominicains des prisons), his first major film and the film
Bresson regards as the real start of his career. It wins the
Grand Prix du Cinma Franais.

1945

The release of Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, which

Bresson adapts from Diderot, proves a critical and
commercial failure.

1947

Goes to Rome to work for an Italian producer named

DAngelo and writes a script on the life of Ignatius Loyola,
which was never filmed.

1949

With Jean Cocteau and Roger Leenhardt, founds a film

journal called Objectif 49, from which the staff of Cahiers
du cinma was recruited two years later.

1950

Completes Diary of a Country Priest (from the novel by

Georges Bernanos), which brings Bresson international
fame. It wins the following prizes: Grand Prix du Cinma
Franais; Prix de lOffice Catholique Internationale du
Cinma; Prix Louis Delluc; Grand Prize of the Venice
Film Festival; Prix du Referendum de la F. C. C.; Grand
Prix Internationale; Prix de la Critique Italienne; Prix du
Meilleur Film Franais des Critiques du Cinma.

1951-52

Writes Le Graal and begins casting, the first of several

false starts that would result, twenty-two years later, in the
filming of Lancelot du Lac.

1952

Writes a script based on La princesse de Clves, the

seventeenth-century novel by Madame de la Fayette, but
does not make the film on account of a dispute over the
rights to the project. (Jean Delannoy eventually makes the
film in 1960.)

464

1956

A Man Escaped (adapted from Andr Devignys account of

his escape from a German prison) is a considerable
success, winning the following prizes:
Best Director Award, Cannes; French Film Academy Best
Picture; Prix de lOffice Catholique Internationale du
Cinma; Prix Victoire du Cinma Franais; Prix de la
Critique Italienne.

1959

Makes Pickpocket, which is scripted from Bressons idea

but has a structure loosely based on Dostoyevskys Crime
and Punishment. It wins the French Film Academy award
for Best Picture.

1962

Makes The Trial of Joan of Arc, which is based on the

original trial records. It receives a Special Jury Award at
Cannes, as well as the Prix de lOffice Catholique
Internationale du Cinma and the Prix du Film pour la
Jeunesse.

1963

Goes to Rome once again and begins work for Dino de

Laurentiis on a script based on the Book of Genesis, but
the project is abortedapparently because of clashing
artistic sensibilities.

1965

Robert Bresson: Without a Trace, a documentary film by

Franois Weyergans, is released.

1966

Au hasard, Balthazar is Bressons first film to be based

entirely on his own idea, and its success marks the zenith
of critical attention to his work. It wins the following
prizes: International Catholic Award; Capital Jupiter Prize,
Rome; Prix San Giorgio; Prix Francesco Pasinetti; Prix
Cin-Forum; Prix Nouveau Cinma; Prix Special du Jury
du Festival International de Panama; Prix Georges Mlis.

465

1967

Mouchette is Bressons second film based on a work

by Bernanos. It wins the following prizes:
Grand Prize of the Festival of Panama; Homage
Unanime du Jury, Cannes; Prix de lOffice
Catholique Internationale du Cinma; Prix Georges Mlis;
Prix Inter-Club du Cinma. Zum Beispiel Bresson, a
documentary film by Theodor Kotulla, is released.

1968

Bresson is elected Prsident dhonneur de la Socit des

ralisateurs de films.

1969

Based on a story by Dostoyevsky, Une Femme douce is

Bressons first film in color. It wins the Coquille dArgent
award at the Festival de Saint-Sebastian.

1971

Four Nights of a Dreamer is also based on a

Dostoyevsky story, and it wins the British Film
Institute Award, also known as the Sutherland Trophy.

1974

Lancelot du Lac is Bressons first big-budget film, by his

standards, and it achieves a measure of international
success. It also wins the International Critics Prize,
though in this case Bresson refused the award.

1975

Bresson publishes Notes on Cinematography.

1977

The Devil, Probably is banned to teenagers in Paris

because it is seen as an incitement to suicide. This film by
Bresson nonetheless wins the Grand Prix des Arts et des
Lettres, as well as the Ours dArgent at the Berlin Festival.

1982

Rewrites the script of Genesis, incorporating the first

eleven chapters of the Bible, but Bresson never makes the
film.

1983

LArgent, Bressons final film, shares the Grand Prix du

Cinma de Cration at Cannes.

466

1984

The Road to Bresson, a documentary film by Leo De Boer

and Jurrin Rood, is released.

1987

Bresson is honored with the National Order of Merit and is

named Commander of Arts and Letters of the Legion of
Honor.

1989

Wins the Lion dOr at the Venice Film Festival.

1993

Wins the Felix Europen at the Berlin Film Festival.

1999

Dies on 18 December in Paris, in the seventeenth-century

house on the Isle St. Louis near Ntre Dame where he had
lived for over forty years.

ROBERT BRESSON: A FILMOGRAPHY.

Public Affairs (Les Affaires publiques), 1934

Production Company: Arc-Film
Screenplay: Robert Bresson (the playwright Andr Josset helped
with the dialogue)
Cinematography: Nicolas Toporkoff
Sound: Robert Petiot
Music: Jean Wiener

467

Sets: Pierre Charbonnier

Running time: 25 minutes
Cast: Beby (the chancellor of Crocandie); Andre Servilanges (the
princess of Mirandie); Marcel Dalio (announcer/sculptor/head of the
fire brigade/admiral); Gilles Margaritis

Angels of the Streets (Les Anges du pch), 1943

Production Company: Synops-Roland Tual
Screenplay: Robert Bresson (based on an idea by R. P.
Brckberger)
Dialogue: Jean Giraudoux
Cinematography: (black-and-white) Philippe Agostini
Editor: Yvonne Martin
Sound: Ren Louge
Music: Jean-Jacques Grnewald
Art Director: Ren Renoux
Running time: 97 minutes
Cast: Rene Faure (Anne-Marie); Jany Holt (Thrse); Sylvie (the
prioress); Mila Parly (Madeleine); Marie-Hlne Dast (Mother

468

Saint-Jean); Yolande Laffon (Anne-Maries mother); Paula Dehelly

(Mother Dominique); Sylvia Montfort (Agns); Gilberte Terbois
(Sister Marie-Joseph); Louis Rgnier (Prison director)

Ladies of the Park (Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne), 1945

Production Company: Les Films Raoul Ploquin
Screenplay: Robert Bresson (based on Jacques le fataliste et son
matre, by Denis Diderot)
Dialogue: Jean Cocteau
Cinematography: (black-and-white) Philippe Agostini
Editor: Jean Feyte
Sound: Ren Louge
Music: Jean-Jacques Grnewald
Art Director: Max Douy
Assistant director: Roger Spiri-Mercanton
Running time: 84 minutes
Cast: Maria Casars (Hlne); lina Labourdette (Agns); Paul
Bernard (Jean); Lucienne Bogaert (Agnss mother); Jean Marchat
(Jacques)

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Diary of a Country Priest (Journal dun cur de campagne), 1951

Production company: Union Gnrale Cinmatographique Screenplay:
Robert Bresson (based on the novel by Georges
Bernanos)
Cinematography: (black-and-white) Lonce-Henri Burel
Sound: Jean Rieul
Music: Jean-Jacques Grnewald
Art director: Pierre Charbonnier
Editor: Paulette Robert
Running time: 110 minutes
Cast: Claude Laydu (the cur dAmbricourt); Jean Riveyre (the
count); Armand Guibert (the cur of Torcy); Nicole Ladmiral
(Chantal); Martine Lemaire (Seraphita); Nicole Maurrey (Mlle.
Louise); Marie-Minique Arkell (the countess); Antoine Balptr (Dr.
Delbende); Lon Arvel (Fabregard); Jean Danet (Olivier)

A Man Escaped (Un Condamn mort sest chapp, ou Le vent

souffle o il veut), 1956

470

Co-producers: Gaumont; Nouvelles ditions de Films

Screenplay: Robert Bresson (based on the account by Andr
Devigny)
Cinematography: (black-and-white) Lonce-Henri Burel
Sound: Pierre-Andr Bertrand
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Kyrie of Mass in C Minor
Art director: Pierre Charbonnier
Editor: Raymond Lamy
Running time: 100 minutes
Cast: Franois Leterrier (Fontaine); Charles Le Clainche (Jost);
Maurice Beerblock (Blanchet); Roland Monod (the pastor); Jacques
Ertaud (Orsini); Roger Trherne (Terry)

Pickpocket, 1959
Producer: Agns Delahae
Screenplay: Robert Bresson
Cinematography: (black-and-white) Lonce-Henri Burel
Art director: Pierre Charbonnier
Sound: Antoine Archimbaut

471

Music: Jean-Baptiste Lully

Editor: Raymond Lamy
Running time: 75 minutes
Cast: Martin Lasalle (Michel); Marika Green (Jeanne); Jean Pligri
(the inspector); Dolly Scal (Michels mother); Pierre Leymarie
(Jacques); Kassagi (the first accomplice); Pierre taix (the second
accomplice)

The Trial of Joan of Arc (Procs de Jeanne dArc), 1962

Producer: Agns Delahaye
Screenplay: Robert Bresson (based on transcripts of the trial)
Cinematography: (black-and-white) Lonce-Henri Burel
Art director: Pierre Charbonnier
Sound: Antoine Archimbaut
Music: Francis Seyrig
Editor: Germaine Artus
Running time: 65 minutes
Cast: Florence Delay (Joan of Arc); Jean-Claude Fourneau (Bishop
Cauchon); Roger Honorat (Jean Beaupre); Marc Jacquier (Jean

472

Lematre); Jean Gillibert (Jean de Chatillon); Michel Heubel

(Isambert); Andr Regnier (dEstivet); Andr Brunet (Massieu);
Marcel Darbaud (Nicolas de Houppeville); Philippe Dreux (Martin
Ladvenu); Paul-Robert Nimet (Guillaume Erard); Richard Pratt
(Warwick); Grard Zingg (Jean Lohier); Andr Maurice (Tiphaine)

Au hasard, Balthazar (By Chance, Balthazar), 1966

Co-producers: Argos Films; Pare Film; Athos Films (France);
Institut sudois du film; Svensk Filmindustri (Sweden)
Screenplay: Robert Bresson
Cinematography: (black-and-white) Ghislain Cloquet
Art director: Pierre Charbonnier
Sound: Antoine Archimbaut
Music: Franz Schubert, Sonata no. 20; Jean Wiener
Editor: Raymond Lamy
Running time: 95 minutes
Cast: Anne Wiazemsky (Marie); Walter Green (Jacques); Franois
Lafarge (Grard); Jean-Claude Guilbert (Arnold); Philippe Asselin
(Maries father); Pierre Klossowski (the grain merchant); Nathalie

473

Joyaut (Maries mother); Marie-Claire Frmont (the bakers wife);

Jean-Jol Barbier (the cur); Jean Remignard (the lawyer); Guy
Brejnac (the veterinarian); Jacques Sorbets (the police captain);
Franois Sullerot (the baker); Tord Paag (Louis), Sven Frostenson and
Roger Fjellstrom (members of Grards gang); Rmy Brozeck
(Marcel); Mylne Weyergens (nurse)

Mouchette, 1967
Co-producers: Argos Films and Pare Film
Screenplay: Robert Bresson (adapted from Nouvelle histoire de
Mouchette, by Georges Bernanos)
Cinematography: (black-and-white) Ghislain Croquet
Art director: Pierre Guffroy
Sound: Sverin Frankiel and Jacques Carrre
Music: Claudio Monteverdi, Jean Wiener
Editor: Raymond Lamy
Running time: 82 minutes
Cast: Nadine Nortier (Mouchette); Jean-Claude Guilbert (Arsne);
Paul Hbert (the father); Marie Cardinal (the mother); Jean Vimenet

474

(Mathieu); Marie Susini (Mathieus wife); Marie Trichet (Louisa);

Liliane Princet (the teacher); Raymonde Chabrun (the grocer);
Suzanne Huguenin (the old lady who watches over the dead)

A Gentle Creature (Une Femme douce), 1969

Co-producers: Pare Film and Marianne Production
Screenplay: Robert Bresson (based on A Gentle Spirit, a novella
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
Cinematography: (color) Ghislain Cloquet
Sound: Jacques Maumont, Jacques Lebreton, Urbain Loiseau Music:
Henry Purcell, Jean Wiener
Art director: Pierre Charbonnier
Editor: Raymond Lamy
Running rime: 88 minutes
Cast: Dominique Sanda (She); Guy Frangin (He); Jane Lobr (the
maid); Claude Ollier (the doctor)

Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre Nuits dun rveur), 1971

475

Co-producers: Albina Productions; i Film dellOrso; Victoria Film;

Gian Vittorio Baldi (Italy); and ORTF (France)
Screenplay: Robert Bresson (based on White Nights, a story
Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
Cinematography: (color) Pierre Lhomme (Ghislain Cloquet for the
police-film scene)
Sound: Roger Letellier
Art director: Pierre Charbonnier
Editor: Raymond Lamy
Running time: 83 minutes
Cast: Isabelle Weingarten (Marthe); Guillaume des Forts (Jacques);
Jean-Maurice Monnoyer (the lodger); Jrme Massart (the visitor);
Patrick Jouann (the gangster); Lidia Biondi (Marthes mother);
Groupe Batuki (musicians on the bateau mouche)

Lancelot of the Lake (Lancelot du Lac), 1974

Co-producers: Mara-Films; Laser-Production ORTF (France); and

476

Gerico Sound (Italy)

Screenplay: Robert Bresson (adapted from Le chevalier la
charrette, by Chretien de Troyes)
Cinematography: (color) Pasqualino De Santis
Sound: Bernard Bats
Music: Philip Sarde
Scene design: Philippe Charbonnier
Editor: Germaine Lamy
Running time: 93 minutes
Cast: Luc Simon (Lancelot); Laura Duke Condominas (Queen
Guinevere); Humbert Balsan (Gawain); Vladimir Antolek (King
Arthur); Patrick Bernard (Mordred); Arthur de Montalembert
(Lionel); Marie-Louise Buffet (old peasant woman); Marie-Gabrielle
Carton (young girl)

The Devil, Probably (Le Diable probablement), 1977

Co-producers: Sunchild G.M.F./M. Chanderli
Screenplay: Robert Bresson

477

Cinematography: (color) Pasqualino de Santis

Sound: Georges Prat
Music: Claudio Monteverdi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Scene design: Eric Simon
Editor: Germaine Lamy
Running time: 97 minutes
Cast: Antoine Monnier (Charles); Tina Irissari (Alberte); Henri de
Maublanc (Michel); Laetitia Carcano (Edwige); Nicolas Deguy
(Valentin); Rgis Hanrion (the psychoanalyst); Geoffroy Gaussen (the
bookseller); Roger Honorat (the police officer)

Money (LArgent), 1983

Co-producers: Marions Films; FR3 (France); and Eos Films
(Switzerland)
Screenplay: Robert Bresson (adapted from the novella of Leo
Tolstoy, The Counterfeit Note)
Cinematography: (color) Pasqualino de Santis; Emmanuel
Machuel
Sound: Jean-Louis Ughetto and Jacques Maumont

478

Music: Johann Sebastian Bach

Scene design: Pierre Guffroy
Editor: Jean-Franois Naudon
Running time: 85 minutes
Cast: Christian Patey (Yvon); Vincent Risteruci (Lucien); Caroline
Lang (Elise); Sylvie Van den Elsen (the woman with gray hair);
Michel Briguet (her father); Batrice Tabourin (woman in the
photography shop); Didier Baussy (man in the photography shop);
Marc-Ernest Fourneau (Norbert); Bruno Lapeyre (Martial); Jeanne
Aptekman (Yvette); Andr Cler (Norberts father); Claude Cler
(Norberts mother); Franois-Marie Banier (Yvons cellmate)

Bibliography of French and English-Language Sources: Robert

Bresson.

Adams Sitney, P. The Rhetoric of Robert Bresson. In The

Essential Cinema, Vol. 1. Ed. P. Adams Sitney. New York:
Anthology Film Archives and New York University Press,
1975.

479

Adams Sitney, P. Cinematography vs. Cinema: Bressons

Figures. In Adamss Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of
Vision in Cinema and Literature. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1990.
Affron, Mirella Jona. Bresson and Pascal: Rhetorical Affinities.
Quarterly Review of Film Studies, 10, #2 (Spring 1985), pp.
118-134.
Agel, Henri. Robert Bresson. Bruxelles: Club du Livre du
Cinma, 1957.
Andrew, Dudley. Desperation and Meditation: Bressons Diary
of a Country Priest. In Modern European Filmmakers and
the Art of Adaptation. Ed. Andrew Horton and Joan
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