Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson (September 25, 1901December 18, 1999) was a French film director well known for his mastery of minimalist film-making. He has influenced a number of other film-makers, including Jim Jarmusch and Paul Schrader, whose book Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (ISBN 0306803356) includes a detailed critical analysis.

10 Quotes

One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.

— Robert Bresson

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

— Robert Bresson

Films can only be made by by-passing the will of those who appear in them, using not what they do, but what they are.

— Robert Bresson

Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.

— Robert Bresson

When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best -- that is inspiration.

— Robert Bresson

Cinema, radio, television, magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen in without hearing.

— Robert Bresson

Model. Two mobile eyes in a mobile head, itself on a mobile body.

— Robert Bresson

An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.

— Robert Bresson

In the NUDE, all that is not beautiful is obscene.

— Robert Bresson

The true is inimitable, the false untransformable.

— Robert Bresson