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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Theological vision can be incorporated in a film's style. This is true, clearly, in the films of Robert Bresson. Understanding the Bresson style from within its tradition of cinematic conventions can illuminate its theological vision: his Realistic film style creates a representational form which renders tangible the human caught intrinsically in the embrace of the Divine.
1 Schrader, Paul, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1972), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar
2 Sitney, P. Adams, “The Rhetoric of Robert Bresson,” in The Essential Cinema (New York: Anthology Film Archives and New York University Press, 1975), p. 191.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., p. 182.
4 Sontag, Susan, “Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson,” in Against Interpretation (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1966)Google Scholar,
5 Consult Holland, Norman N., The Dynamics of Literary Response (New York: Norton, 1975).Google Scholar
6 Sitney, p. 183.
7 Ibid., p. 184.
8 Bazin, André, “La Strada,” Cross Currents, 6/3 (1956), 20.Google Scholar
9 Bazin, André, What is Cinema?, trans. Gray, Hugh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), I, 14.Google Scholar
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 15.
12 Ibid., p. 96.
13 Bresson, Robert, interview in Cahiers du Cinema 178 (Cahiers du Cinema in English 8); quoted in Sitney, , p. 193.Google Scholar
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19 Samuels, p. 61.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., p. 58.
25 Ibid., p. 61.
26 Ibid., p. 60.
27 Durgnat, Raymond, “Le Journal d'un Curé de Campagne,” in The Films of Robert Bresson, ed. Cameron, Ian (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 46.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., p. 47.
29 Interview with Jean Queval.
30 Samuels, p. 58.
31 Ibid., p. 60.
32 This is probably one of the reasons why his early films are not the successes that he might have liked—in his own estimation anyway. In Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne he was forced to direct actors. There was always a conflict between what they wanted to express and the “reality” he wanted to give some form to.
33 Sitney, pp. 184-85.
34 Interview with Jean Queval.
35 Bazin, , What is Cinema?, p. 133.Google Scholar
36 Ibid.
37 This should not be construed to mean that Bresson is opposed to psychology in itself. It merely means that Bresson's films are not examples of “psychological realism.” Their “realism” is of a different stamp. “The psychologist discovers only what he can explain. I explain nothing” (quoted in Samuels, p. 61).
38 Weil, Simone, Gravity and Grace (New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1952), p. 62.Google Scholar
39 Ibid., p. 45.
40 Ibid., p. 55.
41 Blue, James, Excerpts From an Interview with Robert Bresson, June 1965 (Los Angeles: by the author, 1969), p. 2Google Scholar, quoted in Schrader, p. 62.
42 Sontag, p. 189.
43 Ibid., p. 190.
44 Ayfre, Amedée, “The University of Robert Bresson,” in The Films of Robert Bresson, ed. Cameron, Ian (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 16.Google Scholar