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Robert Bresson
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Robert Bresson's masterpiece is set in the last days of the age of chivalry. As the Knights return to King Arthur's Court after a doomed quest for the Holy Grail, they are torn apart by jealousies and rivalries, at the center of which is Lancelot and his relationship with Guinevere. Told in Bresson's austere style, with rich colors and stark images, the film becomes a hypnotic study in the loss of faith, in which reality stands in sharp relief to the spiritual. With Luc Simon, Laura Duc Condominas and Humbert Balsan. French with English subtitles. France/Italy, 1975, 80 mins.
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One of the greatest Robert Bresson films, Mouchette, is on a new $40 disc from Criterion, which has done well by this most austere and minimalist of all filmmakers. The French writer/director, who died at 98 in 1999... had been a painter and German POW. Here are three other favorite Bressons:
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Tuesday December 21 3:31 PM ET French filmmaker Robert Bresson dies at 98 PARIS (Reuters) - Eclectic, secretive French filmmaker Robert Bresson has died at age 98, France's Cultural Affairs Ministry said Tuesday. The quintessential intellectual, Bresson nonetheless managed to attract a large audience for his his best-known films, ''Ladies of the Park'' (1945), ``Diary of a Country Priest'' (1951), ``A Man Escaped'' (1956), ``Pickpocket'' (1959) and ''The Trial of Joan of Arc'' (1962). Bresson was attracted to religious themes, and his films often dealt with spiritual grace and redemption. His initial training as an artist was clear in the importance he gave to light and contrasts with film historian-turned-director Francois Truffaut once saying Bresson's cinema ``was closer to painting than photography.'' His last film, ``L'Argent'' (Money), was made in 1983 and was less successful. On learning of his death, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin paid tribute to Bresson, whom he described as a ``master of the art of cinema of the 20th century.'' Reuters/Variety * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * This mailing list is brought to you by Slick.ORG at http://www.slick.org to remove yourself from the list, send e-mail to majordomo@slick.org and include the words "unsubscribe deathwatch" in the message (not in the subject). For web-based help, go to: http://www.slick.org/cgi-bin/majordomo * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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Robert Bresson drew inspiration from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment for this examination of an arrogant young pickpocket who deems himself above the laws and conditions of ordinary men. Michel (Martin LaSalle), a rather bland-looking young man with a perpetually blank face, haunts the subways, city streets, and racetracks to ply his trade. He plays a game of wits with a fatherly police inspector and walls his heart off from the affections of a quiet young woman, Jeanne (Marika Green), who looks after his dying mother. Bresson's direction of his "models" (as he calls his nonprofessional performers) strips them of affectation and motivation, making them blank slates defined by the accumulation of precisely drilled actions and words. Pickpocket is no thriller, though Bresson offers impressive, meticulously detailed scenes of daring and intimate robberies (one sequence on a subway feels like an homage to Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street). Rather, it is a powerful, profound search for meaning and spiritual enlightenment by a man who believes in nothing but himself, and many critics consider it Bresson's masterpiece.
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Robert Bresson's film can be interpreted in several ways. For one thing, one can give it a religious interpretation. The prison can represent sin, and it is divine grace that allows the hero to escape sin, and experience salvation. Secondly, it can be seen as an allegory of gay life. The prison represents the modern world, and its persecution of homosexuals. First he finds love as part of a partnership, and then the two of them escape the prison, representing society's oppression, entirely.
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Robert Bresson was born in Bromont-Lamothe, a small town in central France, on Sept. 25, 1901 (although some records show he was born on the same day in 1907). His father was an army officer, and the family moved frequently while he was young. Drawn to the arts at an early age, he worked first as a painter and then as a photographer before testing his hand as a screenwriter.
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Robert Bresson