Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer
An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.
Nothing is durable but what is caught up in rhythms.
The sight of movement gives happiness: horse, athlete, bird.
Ideas gathered from reading will always be bookish ideas. Go to the persons and objects directly.
Don't run after poetry. It penetrates unaided through the joins (ellipses).
It is in its pure form that an art hits hard.
Robert Bresson used the term "cinematographer" to refer to a filmmaker who does not use the medium for the rehashing of theatrical tricks. The working notes collected in this small volume show him confronting and articulating the same key ideas over and over again (the bulk of the remarks were written in 1950-58, with further notes from the years 1960-1974): the difference between "cinema" and "cinematography", "actor" and "model", the use of voice and gesture, the relationship between image and sound, etc.
Your film is not made for a stroll with the eyes, but for going right into, for being totally absorbed in.
Previous Bresson-related posts: Pickpocket; Mouchette & Au hasard, Balthazar
