Notes on the Cinematograph
Person: Bresson, Robert; Le Clézio, J. M. G.
Year: 2016
Language: English
Scope: 128 p.
Available
- Contents:
- "A key influence on the French New Wave and the director of such iconic works as Pickpocket and A Man Escaped, Robert Bresson is one of the central figures of French cinema. Notes on the Cinematograph is not only his definitive treatise on film--its inherent peculiarity and potential--but an ascetic meditation on how art transcends, and is transformed by, the senses. Bresson upends inherited truths with empirical ones, calling for film to divest itself of the trappings of theater in order to come into its own as an art form. While theater is capable of simulation, film can capture immanent being. Therefore, he argues, the two forms are innately at odds: "No marriage of theater and cinematography without both being exterminated." To this end, Bressonrechristens his actors "models" and conducts them through grueling shoots where they repeat their lines and movements until he deems them vacant of actorly intention and charged, instead, with inscrutability: "A model. Enclosed in his mysterious appearance. He has brought home to him all of him that was outside. He is there, behind that forehead, those cheeks.""--
- Robert Bresson (1901-1999) was born in Bromont-Lamothe, France. He attended the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, and moved to Paris after graduation, hoping to become a painter. He directed a short comedy, Affaires publiques, in 1934, but his work was curtailed by the outbreak of World War II. He enlisted in the French army in 1939 and was captured in 1940, spending a year in a labor camp as a prisoner of war. After his release he returned to Paris and directed Angels of Sin (1943), his first full-length film, under the German occupation. Les dames du Bois de Boulogne followed in 1945, and in 1951 Diary of a Country Priest was met with widespread acclaim. His next film, A Man Escaped (1956), which follows the memoirs of André Devigny, a French Resistance leader incarcerated during World War II, became a hit. He made eleven more films over the next three decades, including Mouchette (adapted from the Georges Bernanos novel of the same name, published as an NYRB Classic); Au Hasard Balthazar; Pickpocket; Lancelot of the Lake; and L'Argent. Throughout his career Bresson eschewed the use of theatrical techniques and employed nonprofessional actors whom he referred to as models. Raised in the Catholic faith, he worked on and off throughout his career on an adaptation of the book of Genesis, which never saw fruition. He died in Droue-sur-Drouette at the age of ninety-eight. Robert Bresson's interviews, edited by Mylène Bresson, are collected in Bresson on Bresson, published by New York Review Books. Jonathan Griffin (1906-1990) served as the director of BBC European Intelligence during World War II. Among the authors he has translated are Jean Giono, Fernando Pessoa, and Nikos Kazantzakis. A collection of Griffin's poetry, In Earthlight, was published in 1995. J.M.G. Le Clézio was born in Nice in 1940. He has written more than forty books, including works of fiction and memoir as well as collections of essays and books for children. In 2008 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Title Information
Title: Notes on the Cinematograph
Person: Bresson, Robert; Le Clézio, J. M. G.
Translator: Griffin, Jonathan
Publisher : Random House Digital Dist
ISBN: 9781681370255
Category: Non-Fiction & Guidebooks, Art, Culture & Media, Film
Format: ePub
Loan period: 21 days