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Robert Bresson ( French: [ʁɔbɛʁ bʁɛsɔ̃]; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) [1] was a French film director. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson made a notable contribution to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have led his works to be regarded as preeminent examples of minimalist film.
Robert Bresson. Robert Bresson trained as a painter before moving into films as a screenwriter, making a short film (atypically a comedy), Public Affairs (1934) in 1934. After spending more than a year as a German POW during World War II, he made his debut with Angels of Sin (1943) in 1943.
- January 1, 1
- Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, France
- January 1, 1
- Paris, France
- A Man Escaped (1956) In an unlikely alignment of Bresson’s style with the genre sensibilities of the “prison break” film, A Man Escaped may be Bresson’s only truly mainstream work while also arguably his first and fullest expression of the asceticism his whole career worked toward, both feeding and feeding on the genre mandated tension and stoicism, and finding in the prison setting a readymade stage for dramatic allegories of the spiritual.
- Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) Au Hasard Balthazar chronicles a slice of provincial life through the impassive eyes of a donkey, the titular Balthazar, as he changes hands from master to master, used and abused and silently bearing his burden.
- Diary of a Country Priest (1951) The culmination of Bresson’s work in melodrama – following the mostly conventional Angels of Sin and Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne – and his final use of professional actors, Diary of a Country Priest, from George Bernanos’ novel of the same name, also establishes his mode of existential character study, its motifs and conventions of the strictly single perspective of the priest (Claude Laydu), the exploration of psyche through diary and voiceover narration, and the film’s dramatic grounding in the internal movements of the priest’s spiritual condition, and the way these influence his relation to those around him.
- Mouchette (1967) From a novel by the same Bernanos as Diary of a Country Priest, Mouchette almost looks to be Bresson’s 400 Blows in its story of a poor and ostracized country girl that quickly takes a turn for the miserable.
Robert Bresson (born September 25, 1901, Bromont-Lamonthe, Puy-de Dôme, France—died December 18, 1999, Droué-sur-Drouette) was a French writer-director who, despite his limited output, has been rightly celebrated as one of the cinema’s few authentic geniuses.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Features Writer / List Editor
- Pickpocket (1959) Bresson explores the ambiguity of morality in his excellent 1959 film Pickpocket. Martin LaSalle stars as Michel, an impoverished petty criminal who becomes swept up in the underground world of pickpocketing in order to raise enough money to pursue his dreams.
- Mouchette (1967) In Mouchette, Bresson's final film in black-and-white, the director paints a portrait of a young woman (Nadine Nortier) who suffers at the hands of the cruel society around her.
- Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) There are few if any of Bresson’s films that aren’t wholly tragic, but Au Hasard Balthazar is one of the most unflinchingly heartbreaking.
- A Man Escaped (1956) It’s bold for a narrative to state explicitly in its title what’s going to happen, but A Man Escaped does just that. Clearly, it isn’t about what happens but how it happens and what everything in between means.
Robert Bresson est un cinéaste français, né le 25 septembre 1901 1, 2 à Bromont-Lamothe ( Puy-de-Dôme) et mort le 18 décembre 1999 à Droue-sur-Drouette 3, 4 ( Eure-et-Loir ), il est inhumé dans le cimetière de ce village 5 . Il a réalisé treize longs métrages et a rédigé un essai important sur le cinéma intitulé Notes sur le cinématographe.
Dec 23, 1999 · The director, whose austere masterpieces evoked praise but little imitation, died Saturday in Paris at 98, after a long illness that inspired retrospectives and tributes at the Film Center of the Art Institute of Chicago and in Toronto, London, Edinburgh and Tokyo.
