notes on the cinematographer by robert bresson

There must be nothing extraneous or redundant: everything in the frame has to be there for a reason, and he knows this. It gives way to the only visible part of the being, the merging part.” The what?īresson does not express himself like that because film-making isn’t just an art, it’s a science and involves a number of practical skills. “To Bresson, art is the only possible escape from the bitterness of impotence. I can admire Le Clézio’s fiction, but his introduction really is all fancy Gallicism. It features an introduction by JMG Le Clézio, who went on to win the Nobel prize for literature in 2008. This translation, by Jonathan Griffin, first appeared in 1977, two years after the book’s French publication, and 22 years before Bresson’s death, aged 98. As Bresson puts it: “ Draw the attention of the audience (as we say that a chimney draws).” (French: tirer.) There is a lot of silence in his films, and yet this very stillness draws in the viewer. Not a fancy Gallicism: more a reminder to us that cinema is a kind of writing – cf “photograph”, writing with light. Notice the way he insists on calling it “cinematograph” rather than cinema. He started off as a scriptwriter, so he knows the value of words. He studied philosophy as a young man, as well as painting, an ideal pairing for the contemplative, ascetic cinema of Diary of a Country Priest, Pickpocket and A Man Escaped – all from the 1950s, when the bulk of these notes were written.

If there were any director you might expect to write what is, in effect, a philosophical notebook on the art and science of film-making, it would be Bresson. It is also correct, you realise: after all, before soundtracks you had either a continuous musical accompaniment, or the clattering of the projector itself. A bout a third of the way through this collection of brief, lapidary propositions and thoughts on the making of films, we see, in shouty capitals: “THE SOUNDTRACK INVENTED SILENCE.” There are a couple more occasions when Bresson resorts to such typography, but this is the most striking in that it uses a loud voice, so to speak, to evoke silence.

Notes on the cinematographer by robert bresson