Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer

A few excerpts:

• One does not create by adding, but by taking away. To develop is another matter.
• Let the cause follow the effect, not accompany it or precede it. *
• No absolute value to an image. Sound and image owe their value and their power only to the use you put them to.
• In the mixture of true and false, the true makes the false stand out, the false prevents belief in the true.
• An appeal to the eye only makes the ear impatient; the ear appealed to alone makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences.
• Forms that resemble ideas. Treat them as actual ideas.

*The other day I was walking through the gardens by Notre-Dame and saw approaching a man whose eyes caught something behind me, which I could not see: at once they lit up. If, at the same time as I saw the man, I had perceived the young woman and the child towards whom he now began running, that happy face of his would not have struck me so; indeed I might not have noticed it.

“In the world of today, whatever the domain, France can now shine only through exceptional works. Robert Bresson illustrates this rule in the cinema. He is the French cinema, as Dostoyevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music. Listen to him.”
Jean-Luc Godard

My short review:
THE FINEST WINE, THE HOLY OF HOLIES? SOME MAY NOT APPRECIATE THE PRIVILEGE
Robert Bresson (not the great photographer Cartier-Bresson) is like one of the best wines, wasted on non-connoisseurs. If you have already appreciated his films (start with “Pickpocket” and “A Man Escaped”), these aphorisms – the notes he took around his work – will resonate deeply. Any creative person having to figure out how images and sounds function will benefit greatly. This is not the realm of answers but of questions, and for some, this will feel like the purest oxygen to fill our lungs. I have taught filmmaking for the past 30 years, and this tiny book still shines with my students.