April 11 - 25
ALL IS GRACE: THE UNCOMPROMISING SPIRITUALITY OF ROBERT BRESSON
“My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons & real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order & projected onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.”
- Robert Bresson
Though Robert Bresson (1901-99) made only 13 features over 40 years, there is perhaps no other body of work more unified or marked by a director’s personality in the history of cinema. He started as a painter & photographer & began making feature films in the early 1940s, rising to prominence with the Cocteau collaboration, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne. Sometimes drawing on his own tastes & experiences, his time as a prisoner-of-war informed his majestic A Man Escaped. His work has also been informed by art, religious belief & literature: he has adapted such monumental figures as Bernanos, Diderot, Tolstoy & Dostoevsky. But what is most notable about Bresson is his cinematic style. His unadorned & always beautiful images interplay with a singular working method: he would ask his actors (he preferred the term “models”) to repeat a scene again & again until all semblance of a performance was stripped away. Bresson was resolute in his cinematic aesthetic, refusing sentimentality, & employing precise editing & rigorous framing. This yields a powerfully pure cinematic experience & has often (most famously by Paul Schrader) been labelled a “transcendental style”. Indeed, his films, no matter the plotline, are concerned with the redemption of the individual in a cruel world, & often speak of loneliness and immanence. One of the most significant filmmakers of the 20th century, his influence can still be felt today in the work of Michael Haneke, Bruno Dumont and the Dardenne brothers. This season of specially imported 35mm prints features many of Bresson’s greatest films.
Presented in conjunction with:
Institut français is the agency for the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs with responsibility for cultural activity outside France. It works to promote artistic exchange and dissemination of the French language, books and knowledge. Institut Français also complements the role of UniFrance Films in promoting French patrimonial cinema, the non-commercial screening of recent films, and showcasing its professionals. Institut français supports world cinema through the “Cinémas du Monde” pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival, the Cinémathèque Afrique, and Fonds Sud Cinéma for the funding of films, which Institut français manages alongside the National Centre for Cinematography and the Moving Image.
April 11
7:00 - A MAN ESCAPED
Robert Bresson (1956) 99 mins PG
A young member of the French Resistance is imprisoned & sentenced to death but through his own intensely focused will manages to escape prison, merely hours before his execution. Based on a true story, Bresson’s most critically & commercially successful film recounts an exceptional story with acute attention to detail & fidelity to facts, & was shot in the prison where the actual events took place. The first script by Bresson (who himself had been imprisoned by the Germans) transcends all viewer expectations of a suspense thriller or prison escape film. Winner of Best Director at Cannes in 1957.
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
CTEQ Annotation:
‘A Man Escaped‘ by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
8:50 – AU HASARD BALTHAZAR
Robert Bresson (1966) 95 mins PG
Bresson’s blunt & compassionate chronicle of the birth, life & death of a donkey is a Christian parable that never eschews its gaze on an apparently godless world that is hard on little things. In the final, beautiful but deathly moments this beast of burden finally achieves transcendence. One of the director’s greatest & most austerely moving works, with Anne Wiazemsky & wonderfully precise & haunting cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet. Special Jury Prize at the 1966 Venice Film Festival.
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
Cteq Annotations:
‘Au Hasard, Balthazar‘ by Dana Polan
April 18
7:00 – PICKPOCKET
Robert Bresson (1959) 75 mins M
Bresson’s massively influential tale (inspired by Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment) of a pickpocket (the intense Martin La Salle) who finds hard-won redemption through love is a startlingly pure & austere religious allegory. Léonce-Henry Burel’s cinematography focuses with mesmeric intensity on the ballet-like play of nimble hands & stoic faces, creating a work of great emotional & cinematic impact: “with theft I entered by the back door into the kingdom of morality” (Bresson). With Pierre Etaix.
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
Cteq Annotation:
‘Pickpocket‘ by Rick Thomson
8:25 – MOUCHETTE
Robert Bresson (1967) 82 mins M
Bresson’s achingly moving & extensively detailed account of the last day in the life of a loveless, abused & humiliated 14-year-old peasant girl. A malaise of distilled passion & wasted youth, this rigorous & often ruthless dissection of social mores was a massive influence on the work of the Dardenne brothers. Adapted from the novel by Georges Bernanos (Diary of a Country Priest). Shot by the great Ghislain Cloquet.
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
Cteq Annotation:
‘Au Hasard, Balthasar & Mouchette‘ by Bill Mousoulis
10:00 – PROCÈS DE JEANNE D’ARC
Robert Bresson (1962) 65 mins G
Like Dreyer’s more famous work, Bresson’s pared-back film relies upon the original court manuscripts & draws its force from the merciless & penetrating close-ups of cinematographer Léonce-Henri Burel & the fugitive facial expressions of Jeanne & her judges. One of the director’s least seen films, it combines precise editing & composition with an exquisitely modulated soundtrack. Special Jury Prize at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
Cteq Annotation:
‘Voices With(out) a Face: On Robert Bresson’s Procès de Jeanne d’Arc‘ by José Sarmiento
April 25
7:00 – L’ARGENT
Robert Bresson (1983) 85 mins M
Mysterious, brutal, beautiful & despairing, Bresson’s devastatingly precise final film is an intense but mute dissection of the journey of a young man from innocence to a life of crime & eventually murder. As in many of the director’s key works, the motivations & emotions of the central character are never revealed, the action described rather than explained. Bresson’s adaptation of a short story by Tolstoy is an unflinching presentation of the material nature of existence, the casual & impersonal exchange of money & its devastating effects.
Starkly shot by Pasqualino De Santis & Emmanuel Machuel.
Cteq Annotation:
‘L’Argent‘ by Adrian Miles
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
8:35 – LES DAMES DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE
Robert Bresson (1945) 90 mins
A woman (María Casares) revenges herself on her bored lover by arranging for him to marry a prostitute. This transposition of Denis Diderot’s story to contemporary Paris creates a provocative & dynamic tension between the often poetic, epigrammatic & melodramatic dialogue by Jean Cocteau & director Bresson’s stark, natural & burgeoning austerity. A “fascinating turning point” (David Thomson) in Bresson’s career, it is luminously shot by Philippe Agostini.
CTEQ Annotation:
‘Les dames du Bois de Boulogne‘ by Manjari Kaul
35mm print courtesy of L’Institut Français.
10:10 – JEAN COCTEAU: AUTOPORTRAIT D’UN INCONNU
Edgardo Cozarinsky (1983) 66 mins
Cozarinsky’s 1st-person documentary shows Cocteau recounting his artistic life in post-World War I Paris & highlights his encounters with such figures as Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Picasso, Jean Renoir & Stravinsky.
A compilation of material shot over many years, & featuring moments from various Cocteau films & collaborations such as Melville’s Les Enfants terribles, writer-filmmaker Cozarinsky’s evocative “autoportrait” is one of a series of seminal works on the cinema made by the director.
Backdrops:
Robert Bresson on set of A MAN ESCAPED
A MAN ESCAPED
AU HASARD BALTHAZAR
PICKPOCKET
MOUCHETTE
PROCES DE JEANNE D'ARC
LES DAMES DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE
L’ARGENT