Often described as a “painter” of films, French director Robert Bresson was one of cinema’s greatest anomalies. He directed only 13 films over the course of 40 years, but these films were in a category all their own, minimalist works that tended towards radical (and sometimes controversial) reinterpretations of such classical sources as Diderot, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy. An expert manipulator of narrative incident, Bresson focused on seemingly incidental details of the stories he told and used amateur actors (whom he called ‘models’) lacking any trace of theatricality, creating searching meditations on the quality of transcendence, spirituality, and alienation. Of the artistic influences inherent in his work – perhaps most apparent in his belief that the cinema is a fusion of music and painting, not the theatre and photography – Bresson once said “Art is not a luxury, but a vital necessity.”
The year of Bresson’s birth has often been subject to debate; his biographer, Philippe Arnaud, has declared it to be 1901, while others claim that he was born in 1907. Whatever the case may be, Bresson was born on September 25, in the town of Bromont-Lamothe, located in France’s mountainous Auvergne region. Originally trained as a painter, he abandoned painting in favor of the cinema in 1934. His first film, a short comedy called Les Affaires Publiques, went largely unseen. In 1939, Bresson joined the French army and spent a year as a POW in a German war camp. The experience had a profound effect on him and would later prove to be a particular influence in his making of Un condamné à mort s’est échappé (A Man Escaped).
After his release, Bresson returned to Paris, and during the height of the war he began preparing his first feature-length film, Les Anges du Péché (Angels of Sin). Released in 1943, it was one of his only films to use trained actors, stylized dialogue, and a specially composed soundtrack, features that Bresson would reject in his later work. The film, which revolved around a nun’s love and self-sacrifice in the service of the rehabilitation of a fallen woman, showed early indication of the director’s preference for a narrative composed of a series of short scenes, as well as a fascination with the details found in human skill and ritual.
Bresson sought literary inspiration for his second film, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne. Made two years after Les Anges, the film’s plot was taken from a novel by Diderot, Jacques le fataliste, and featured dialogue written by Bresson and Jean Cocteau. A tale revolving around a woman’s revenge on her seemingly uncaring lover, it was made with professional actors and the same composer and cameraman that Bresson used for his first film. Although it proved to be critically and financially unpopular (owing in part to its use of highly stylized costumes and formal dialogue), it contained the seeds of what would later become hallmarks of Bresson’s work, namely the kind of spare, icy calm that pointed to an interior world of quiet alienation.
Bresson’s international reputation was established with his third film, Le Journal d’un Curé de Campagne (Diary of a Country Priest) (1950). Based on the novel by Catholic writer Georges Bernanos, it was a first-person account of the efforts of a young priest to bring salvation to an insular, loathsome French village. Bresson used a blend of voice-over and dialogue to describe the sort of alienated interior world he had alluded to in Les Dames. The film made evident his preoccupation with transcendence and spirituality (next to art, perhaps the greatest influence on Bresson’s work was Catholicism) and was centered around the doomed priest’s attainment of a state of grace. Praised by international critics and a considerable box office success, Le Journal won a number of prizes, including a Prix Louis Delluc and the 1951 Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival.
The film that many consider to be Bresson’s masterpiece came six years later. Un condamné à mort s’est échappé (A Man Escaped) was inspired by the experiences of a former prisoner of war, Commandant André Devigny, and was both an excruciatingly tense study of the details of confinement and a profound interior examination of a human being. Bresson used non-professional actors for the film and only the most minimal of dialogue to create a sort of anxious dream state; even though the title would indicate otherwise, it was never entirely clear whether or not the prisoner would actually escape. Bresson not only succeeded in manipulating his audience in this way, he also achieved complete control through the use of his actors, or “models.” Manipulating their every move and word, the director, as one critic observed, effectively played all of the film’s roles. His incredible handle on all aspects of his film did not go unrewarded: Un Condamné won a number of international honors, including the Cannes Festival’s Best Direction prize.
Pickpocket, which followed in 1959, was one of Bresson’s films that was indebted to Dostoyevsky. Loosely inspired by Crime and Punishment, it told the story of a lonely, arrogant, expert pickpocket who feels that he is above the law and normal human emotions. The film employed the same documentary-like approach as Un Condamné, as well as an obvious delight in human skills. Like his previous work, Pickpocket provided another striking example of Bresson’s preoccupation with isolation and transcendence and the ultimate attainment of a state of grace.
Following Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (The Trial of Joan of Arc) (1962), a study of Joan’s inner struggle that blended historical accuracy and an extreme compression of narrative, Bresson made what many consider his most complex film Au Hasard, Balthazar (By Chance Balthazar) (1966). Deriving inspiration from Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, the film was an episodic study of the experiences of a donkey and his victimization during a series of human encounters, each representing one of the deadly sins of humanity. The poor donkey, who eventually is killed during one of these encounters, is used by Bresson to achieve his most complex and saintly portrait within a film, one that is wholly free of sentiment or false emotion. When it was released, Balthazar was hailed as a film of deep resonance and immediacy, and Bresson’s next film, Mouchette, followed just a year later with unprecedented rapidity.
One of Bresson’s most controversial films, Mouchette was banned in some areas as an indictment against teenage suicide. Certainly, the plight of the title character – a socially isolated 14-year-old girl who is brutally raped and subsequently commits suicide – is bleak, but as is typical in Bresson’s films, Mouchette is more about tragic alienation and the ultimate attainment of inner peace. A particularly troubling film for Catholics, it seemed to affirm Bresson’s growing pessimism – something he denied – although many critics thought that the film was more the director’s affirmation of both the human spirit and the bleakness of the human condition.
Bresson’s next film, Une Femme Douce (A Gentle Woman) (1969), was the first that he made in color. It was also one of his few to use a “model” who would later become an actor. The “model” was Dominique Sanda, a popular ‘60s fashion model, and it was upon her inner world that Bresson focused his story. The plot, which began with the suicide of its title character, revolved around the increasingly problematic relationship between a pawnbroker and his wife (Sanda). Both a study in the contrasts between its two protagonists and a spiritual examination of its central character, Une Femme Douce met with a fairly cool reception; some reviewers felt that Bresson’s use of color softened the film’s potential impact.
The director went back to Dostoyevsky for his next film, Quatre Nuits d’un Rêveur (Four Nights of a Dreamer) (1971). Inspired by the author’s White Nights, the film could be deemed a fairly accessible love story, but it was informed by Bresson’s attraction to what has been described as “the idea of love being stronger than the love story itself.” Although some of the director’s admirers expressed concern about his preoccupation with young love and the use of popular music in the film, it still earned a number of honors, including the British Film Institute’s award for the “most original film” of the year.
Bresson’s subsequent Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake) (1974), was a pet project for the director, who had spent 20 years planning how he would film the search for the Holy Grail. His most elaborate and expensive work, it combined fights and swordplay with long sequences of philosophical dialogue. Deeply pessimistic, it had none of the certainty of grace featured throughout Bresson’s earlier works, and it was viewed as his darkest film – literally and morally – to date.
Bresson returned from the medieval forest to modern Paris for his next film, Le Diable, Probablement (The Devil, Probably) (1977). Centered on four disillusioned intellectuals who bear witness to a society that is materialistic, inhuman, and exploitative, it was Bresson’s most overtly political work to date. He called it “a film about money, a source of great evil in the world.” The movie is dominated by a protagonist who hates both life and death and declares that “My sickness is that I see things clearly.” As Bresson’s most unsympathetic protagonist, he was, in part, why the film was labeled as the director’s most uncompromising and daring film to date. In rejecting modern society, the character rejects the audience, who are complicit in the evils of society. His eventual death at the hands of a drug addict whom he has bribed to kill him brings with it a nihilistic state of grace, free of the kind of redemption that had dominated much of Bresson’s previous work.
Based on a story by Tolstoy, L’Argent (1983) was another examination of a world riddled by corruption. Like Le Diable before it, the film centered around the evils of money and its disastrous effects on an essentially innocent young man. Inarguably one of Bresson’s bleakest works, it nevertheless came to the conclusion – through brutal societal retribution and deliverance from membership in society – that “All is Grace.” It was Bresson’s last film, and he described it as the one with which he was most satisfied. It was the final installment in the career of a man who can be truthfully described as one of cinema’s genuine auteurs. On December 18, 1999, Robert Bresson died, leaving behind over a half-century’s worth of contributions to both his country’s culture and that of the world. —AllMovie guide
