Line #36 Creator/RobertBresson


1	[[quoteright:340:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/robert_bresson.jpg]]
2
3	->''"Bresson is to French cinema what [[Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart Mozart]] is to German music and [[Creator/FyodorDostoevsky Dostoevsky]] is to Russian literature."''
4	-->-- '''Creator/JeanLucGodard'''
5
6	Robert Bresson (25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director known for working chiefly with non-professional actors and for his unique, inimitable, and — if you’re in the mood — ultra-low-key but hauntingly powerful style of filmmaking.
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8	Bresson is sometimes associated with the UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave movement, but he was actually considerably older than the likes of Creator/FrancoisTruffaut, Creator/JeanLucGodard, Creator/EricRohmer, and Creator/JacquesRivette. However, they all tended to revere him, especially Godard, and he was if anything even more of an influence on other filmmakers such as Creator/AndreiTarkovsky, Creator/RainerWernerFassbinder, Creator/TheDardennes, Creator/AkiKaurismaki, Creator/MartinScorsese (''Film/TaxiDriver'' is very Bressonian) and, in particular, ''Taxi Driver''’s screenwriter Creator/PaulSchrader, whose book ''Ozu / Bresson / Dreyer: Transcendental Style in Film'' contains some of the acutest writing about Bresson.[[note]]Three of Schrader’s films, ''Film/AmericanGigolo'', ''The Card Counter'' and ''Light Sleeper'', contain endings which are, as he freely acknowledges, a direct homage to the end of Bresson’s ''Pickpocket''.[[/note]]
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10	Bresson is an unusual director from TV Tropes' point of view because he was notably ''trope-averse''. After his first couple of movies he started using non-professional actors, not because he was too cheap or was trying to make some point about actors as such but because he didn't like what professional actors bring to films, namely performances, and all the tropes that go with them, from MethodActing to ChewingTheScenery and all stops in between. His whole method of storytelling means that you just don't get those beats where the audience wants to punch its collective fist in the air, or burst out laughing, or go "Awwwww". This often has the effect of annoying non-admirers, and Bresson didn't make things better with some of his more pompous and oracular remarks on the subject, in which he sometimes came across as believing that only he made real cinema, and all other filmmakers were basically making filmed theater.
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12	As a result, it's probably easier to characterise his films in terms what tropes they avert. Nevertheless, tropes are present in his films as they are in everyone else's, and sometimes to great effect.
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14	----
15	!! Films:
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17	[[index]]
18	* ''Les Anges du péché'' (''The angels of sin'') (1943)
19	* ''Les dames du Bois de Boulogne'' (''The Women of Bois du Boulogne'') (1945)
20	* ''Journal d'un curé de campagne'' (''Film/DiaryOfACountryPriest'') (1951)
21	* ''Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut'' (''Film/AManEscaped'') (1956)
22	* ''{{Film/Pickpocket}}'' (1959)
23	* ''Procès de Jeanne d'Arc'' (''The Trial of Joan of Arc'') (1962)
24	* ''Film/AuHasardBalthazar'' (''Balthazar'') (1966)
25	* ''Film/{{Mouchette}}'' (1967)
26	* ''Film/UneFemmeDouce'' (''A Gentle Woman'') (1969)
27	* ''Quatre nuits d'un rêveur'' (''Four Nights of a Dreamer'') (1971)
28	* ''Film/LancelotDuLac'' (''Lancelot of the Lake'') (1974)
29	* ''Film/LeDiableProbablement'' (''The Devil Probably'') (1977)
30	* ''Film/LArgent'' (''Money'') (1983)
31	[[/index]]
32
33	----
34	!!Tropes common to Bresson and his works include:
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36	* AuteurLicense: Bresson was given this early on and he clung to it fiercely. He kept it because although his films never made much money, he shot them very economically on very low budgets and they almost invariably got very good reviews.
37	* BatmanInMyBasement: The family in ''L'argent'' hides the protagonist in their shed.
38	* BittersweetEnding: ''Pickpocket''. [[spoiler: Michel is in jail for pickpocketing and his friend Jeanne visits him regularly; at the end of the film, he suddenly realises that it's because she loves him and he loves her.]]
39	* ChekhovsGunman: Jost in ''A Man Escaped'' is this to Fontaine, the main character. Initially, Fontaine regards Jost as at best TheLoad and at worst a fatal liability. [[spoiler: In the end, Fontaine decides to take Jost along with him, and at one point during the escape they reach an unexpected obstacle which Fontaine couldn't have overcome by himself. He does so with Jost's help, making Jost this trope.]]
40	* ChristianityIsCatholic: Bresson's films tend to be very Catholic in terms of subject matter and themes. Some theorists have stated he was inspired by Jansenism, a rigorist sect in Catholicism that, effectively, combines some aspects of Calvinism. Bresson was also said to have described himself as a "Christian atheist", but there is no source that confirms this assertion, nor are the circumstances clear under which he would say it (if he did say it at all). If anything, he actually had this to say in an interview in 1973:
41	-->"There is the feeling that God is everywhere, and the more I live, the more I see that in nature, in the country. When I see a tree, I see that God exists. I try to catch and to convey the idea that we have a soul and that the soul is in contact with God. That's the first thing I want to get in my films."
42	** In another interview, he expressed an interest in making a film based on the Book of Genesis, but thought that such a production would be too expensive and costly.
43	* CrapsackWorld: Very much the world in ''Le diable probablement'', and a major cause of the main character's depression.
44	* DeathByNewberyMedal: Subverted in ''Au hasard Balthazar''. [[spoiler: Balthazar does indeed die at the end, but Marie doesn't get to see it or even hear about it; in fact, we don't know what happened to her.]]
45	* {{Determinator}}: The hero of ''A Man Escaped'', who painstakingly busts his way out of a German prison fortress. In a meta-example, Bresson himself, who was absolutely determined to make his films the way he wanted to and if he couldn't do that, the film didn't get made.
46	* DownerEnding: Oh so many. ''Mouchette'', ''Une femme douce'', ''Lancelot du Lac'', ''Le diable probablement'', ''L'argent''. Strangely averted in ''Diary of a Country Priest'' and ''Balthazar''. [[spoiler: Even though the titular characters in those two films die in the end, it's not quite a downer in the way the deaths in the ends of the other films are. Bresson became grimmer as he got older.]]
47	* DullSurprise: A characteristic response of actors in Bresson's films, largely on account of his preference for non-professional actors. He managed to make it work for him by means of extraordinarily acute editing; Bresson never dwells on a character's reaction, but always moves on fairly quickly to the next beat in the story.
48	* TheDungAges: ''Lancelot du Lac'' may be the TropeMaker in film.
49	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''Les Anges du péché'', Bresson's first film and his only comedy.
50	* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: ''A Man Escaped''. Well, duh.
51	* FaceDeathWithDignity: Bresson's characters tend to do this, although it's cruelly averted with [[spoiler: Charles in ''Le diable probablement'']], who was ''planning'' to do it but who gets KilledMidSentence by his best friend, who's too baked to do it properly.
52	* GoryDiscretionShot: The ax attack on the old woman in ''L'argent''. We only get to see blood splattered on the wall.
53	* KickTheDog: ''Au hasard Balthazar'' is basically ''Kick The Donkey: The Movie''.
54	* KilledMidSentence: [[spoiler: Happens to Charles in ''Le diable probablement'', because he's arranged for a friend to kill him but the friend is stoned, and too impatient to wait for Charles to finish talking.]]
55	* PleaseKillMeIfItSatisfiesYou: [[spoiler: The nameless woman in the last act of ''L'argent'' gives this to Yvon, when she finds him standing in her bedroom in the middle of the night with an axe.]]
56	* RealityHasNoSoundtrack: ''L'argent'' lacks a soundtrack.
57	* ShamefulStrip: Marie in ''Au hasard Balthazar'' is given a brutal one of these offscreen, but we see the result.
58	* ShownTheirWork: Both in-universe and meta- in ''Pickpocket'': the hero learns how to pick pockets onscreen from a pickpocket played by a real pickpocket, Henri Kassagi, whom Bresson hired for the purpose. And it's awesome. Kassagi later went straight and became a well-known magician and performer.
59	* SilentCredits: The opening credits of ''L'argent'' run without soundtrack, we only hear street noise.
60	* SignatureStyle: Bresson's style is very particular.
61	** He uses almost exclusively non-actors, giving most of the performances in his films a DullSurprise quality.
62	** He is interested in mechanical motions, operations and movements, such as turning cranks or folding napkins. He drilled his actors on these motions repeatedly so that they would perform them like machines.
63	* SlidingScaleOfAnimalCast: ''Au hasard Balthazar'' is Type 3: the secondary main character is a girl, Marie, but the main character is Balthazar, a donkey she cares for (in fact she's the only person in the whole film who cares for him.)
64	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: His early films (Such as ''{{Film/Pickpocket}}'' and ''Film/DiaryOfACountryPriest'') had a couple of idealistic elements. However, the large majority of his filmography is notoriously bleak and misanthropic.
65	* SpoilerTitle: ''A Man Escaped''.
66	* StockSoundEffects: Conspicuously averted. One of the pleasures of Bresson's films, especially his later ones, is the way he painstakingly recorded specific sounds to go with the appearance of the exact action that went with them, not even using Foley artists to fake them: for example, in ''L'argent'', the sound of a broken wine glass being mopped up, or the sound of a price sticker being ripped off a camera box.
67	* ThenLetMeBeEvil: The events of ''L'argent'' make its central character Yvon resort to this.
68	* TraumaCongaLine: Bresson protagonists commonly go through these. Consider Yvon in ''L'argent'': early in the film he's passed a forged banknote. [[spoiler: He doesn't realise it's forged, and when he attempts to pay for a drink in a bar with it, he's arrested. He doesn't get sent to prison, but loses his job. Needing money, he tries to help a friend rob a bank, and is caught and re-arrested. While in prison, his small daughter dies and his wife leaves him. He attempts suicide and fails. On being released from prison, he immediately murders two hotel keepers and robs their money, then a kind woman shelters him in her house. He kills her and her family with an axe before finally offering himself up for arrest again, this time for multiple murder.]]
69	* VillainProtagonist: Yvon in ''L'argent'' starts out as an innocent heating oil engineer, and the film is about how he becomes one of these.

Context Creator / RobertBresson