Robert Bresson

Los intérpretes, las tomas, el montaje, la música de las películas, son sujetos de la filosofía del cinematógrafo formulada magistralmente en estas NOTAS por el realizador Robert Bresson entre los años 1950 y 1974. Realizador o director. No se trata de dirigir a alguien, sino de dirigirse a uno mismo, dice uno de sus primeros aforismos. Las NOTAS compendian principios cuyas consecuencias son, como en los tratados de etica, el trabajo efectivo del autor. Este amante riguroso de la verdad ha dado lecciones de doma del lenguaje cinematografico en su libro, compañero de viaje de catorce peliculas extraordinarias.

Susan Sontag escribió que, para Bresson, «el arte consiste en descubrir lo necesario, en eso y nada más». Por ello este libro no debe considerarse tanto un documento como un objeto trabajado, pensado

La política de los autores, expresión abundantemente utilizada incluso en nuestros días en el campo del cine, se ha convertido en un concepto trillado por culpa de un uso cada vez más restrictivo: la reivindicacion de un supuesto estatuto de artista que se debe otorgar al cineasta en el mismo grado que a un pintor o a un escritor.

NOTAS SOBRE O CINEMATÓGRAFO é un clásico da literatura cinematográfica, son textos cheos de sobriedade e rigor, unha excelente poesía.Esta colección de aforismos, de reflexións tomadas polo aire mentres R. Bresson construia os seus filmes, e tan apaixonante para o profesional da setima arte como para quen queira afondar no pensamento e na razon.A sabedoria deste"texto no reino dos voluntariamente cegos"e o que se expon nas presentes `Notas sobre o cinematografo.

Robert Bresson, the director of such cinematic master-pieces as Pickpocket, A Man Escaped Mouchette, and LArgent, was one of the most influential directors in the history of French film, as well as one of the most stubbornly individual: He insisted on the use of nonprofessional actors; he shunned the advances of Cinerama and Cinema-Scope (and the work of most of his predecessors and peers); and he minced no words about the damaging influence of capitalism and the studio system on the still-developingin his viewart of film. Bresson on Bresson collects the most significant interviews that Bresson gave (carefully editing them before they were released) over the course of his forty-year career to reveal both the internal consistency and the consistently exploratory character of his body of work. Successive chapters are dedicated to each of his fourteen films, as well as to the question of literary adaptation, the nature of the sound track, and to Bressons one book, the great aphoristic treatise Notes on the Cinematograph. Throughout, his close and careful consideration of his own films and of the art of film is punctuated by such telling mantras as Sound...invented silence in cinema, Its the film that...gives life to the charactersnot the characters that give life to the film, and (echoing the Bible) Every idle word shall be counted. Bressons integrity and originality earned him the admiration of younger directors from Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette to Olivier Assayas. And though Bressons movies are marked everywhere by an air of intense deliberation, these interviews show that they were no less inspired by a near-religious belief in the value of intuition, not only that of the creator but that of the audience, which he claims to deeply respect: Its always ready to feel before it understands. And thats how it should be.

The French film director Robert Bresson was one of the great artists of the twentieth century and among the most radical, original, and radiant stylists of any time. He worked with nonprofessional actorsmodels, as he called themand deployed a starkly limited but hypnotic array of sounds and images to produce such classic works as A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, Diary of a Country Priest, and Lancelot of the Lake. From the beginning to the end of his career, Bresson dedicated himself to making movies in which nothing is superfluous and everything is always at stake.Notes on the Cinematograph distills the essence of Bressons theory and practice as a filmmaker and artist. He discusses the fundamental differences between theater and film; parses the deep grammar of silence, music, and noise; and affirms the mysterious power of the image to unlock the human soul. This book, indispensable for admirers of this great director and for students of the cinema, will also prove an inspiration, much like Rilkes Letters to a Young Poet, for anyone who responds to the claims of the imagination at its most searching and rigorous.