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Robert Bresson

Robert Bresson

Directing

Biography

Robert Bresson (French: [ʁɔbɛʁ bʁɛsɔ̃]; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French filmmaker. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson made a notable contribution to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have led his works to be regarded as preeminent examples of minimalist film. Much of his work is known for being tragic in story and nature. Bresson is among the most highly regarded filmmakers of all time. He has the highest number of films (seven) that made the 2012 Sight and Sound critics' poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. His works A Man Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1959) and Au hasard Balthazar (1966) were ranked among the top 100, and other films like Mouchette (1967) and L'Argent (1983) also received many votes. Jean-Luc Godard once wrote, "He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music." Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Bresson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Known For

Cinépanorama
8.7

No description available.

Cinépanorama

1956
Mouchette
7.4

A young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.

Mouchette

1967
Au Hasard Balthazar
7.5

The story of a donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of burden, suffering the sins of humankind. But despite his powerlessness, he accepts his fate nobly.

Au Hasard Balthazar

1966
L'Argent
6.9

A forged 500-franc note is passed from person to person and shop to shop, until it falls into the hands of a genuine innocent who doesn't see it for what it is—which will have devastating consequences on his life.

L'Argent

1983
A Man Escaped
7.9

A captured French Resistance fighter during World War II engineers a daunting escape from prison.

A Man Escaped

1956
Pickpocket
7.3

Michel takes up pickpocketing on a lark and is arrested soon after. His mother dies shortly after his release, and despite the objections of his only friend, Jacques, and his mother's neighbor Jeanne, Michel teams up with a couple of petty thieves in order to improve his craft. With a police inspector keeping an eye on him, Michel also tries to get a straight job, but the temptation to steal is hard to resist.

Pickpocket

1959
The Devil, Probably
6.8

Charles drifts through politics, religion and psychoanalysis, rejecting them all. Once he realises the depth of his disgust with the moral and physical decline of the society he lives in, he decides that suicide is the only option...

The Devil, Probably

1977
Four Nights of a Dreamer
7.1

Jacques, a young man with artistic aspirations, spends four nights wandering Paris with a young woman, whom he rescued from suicide.

Four Nights of a Dreamer

1972
Lancelot of the Lake
6.2

Having failed in their quest for the Holy Grail, the knights of the Round Table return to Camelot, their number reduced to a mere handful. Seeing a rift developing between Lancelot and Mordred, Arthur urges his knights to bury their differences and become friends. However, the king is unaware that Lancelot is having an affair with his queen, Guinevere. Lancelot is torn between his duty to his king and his love for the queen, whilst Mordred is determined to use his infidelity to destroy him.

Lancelot of the Lake

1974
Diary of a Country Priest
7.5

An inexperienced, sickly priest shows up in the rural French community of Ambricourt, where he joins the community's clergy. But the locals don't take kindly to the priest, and his ascetic ways and unsociable demeanor make him an outcast. During Bible studies at the nearby girls school, he is continually mocked by his students. Then his attempt to intervene in a family feud backfires into a scandal. His failures, compounded with his declining health, begin to erode his faith.

Diary of a Country Priest

1951
Angels of Sin
6.9

A well-off young woman decides to become a nun, joining a convent that rehabilitates female prisoners. Through their program, she meets a woman named Thérèse who refuses any help because she says she was innocent of the crime she was convicted for. After being released from prison, Thérèse murders the actual perpetrator of the crime and comes to seek sanctuary in the convent.

Angels of Sin

1943
Morceaux de Cannes
2.0

We thought we'd seen, read, and heard everything there was to see about the Cannes Film Festival, from the glitz and gossip to the scandals and censorship. And yet, Emmanuel Barnault's "Morceaux de Cannes" (Pieces of Cannes), by this leading expert on Italian and French cinema, convinces us otherwise. The third largest event in the world (after the Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup) reveals its secrets only sparingly, as this film attests. The result of passionate research in the INA archives, these 52 minutes, without interviews or voice-over narration, string together rare and sometimes previously unseen footage. Taken together, they tell a surprising, original, and heartwarming story of the Festival. On the beach, on a street corner, in a restaurant, or in the privacy of a hotel room, these forgotten archives summon the greatest filmmakers, actors, and actresses of the last seventy years, from Jean Cocteau to David Lynch, for an anthology of the Festival's history.

Morceaux de Cannes

2021
A Gentle Woman
6.8

When his young wife commits suicide with no explanation, an introspective pawnbroker looks back on their life together.

A Gentle Woman

1969
What Is Cinema?
6.5

Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, David Lynch, and Jonas Mekas, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman shows what these filmmakers and others do that can't be expressed in words - but only in cinema.

What Is Cinema?

2013
The Trial of Joan of Arc
7.2

Rouen, Normandy, 1431, during the Hundred Years' War. After being captured by French soldiers from an opposing faction, Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans, is unjustly tried by an ecclesiastical court overseen by her English enemies.

The Trial of Joan of Arc

1963
Au Hasard Bresson
6.0

In 1966, German film critic Theodor Kotulla — who would go on to become one of the New German Cinema's most uncompromising filmmakers — visited the set of Robert Bresson's "Mouchette" (1967) and created this half-hour documentary about the director. It won the 1967 German Film Award for best short documentary.

Au Hasard Bresson

1967
Les Dames du bois de Boulogne
6.9

A love story that follows the maneuverings of a society lady as she connives to initiate a scandalous affair between her aristocratic ex-lover and a prostitute.

Les Dames du bois de Boulogne

1945
Un metteur en ordre: Robert Bresson
N/A

A documentary, originally produced in 1966 for the French TV series "Pour le plaisir," about Robert Bresson's film "Au Hasard Balthazar," featuring interviews and discussions with Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Marguerite Duras and others.

Un metteur en ordre: Robert Bresson

1966
The Road to Bresson
7.0

A Dutch documentary about legendary French filmmaker Robert Bresson.

The Road to Bresson

1984
Southern Carrier
6.6

A pilot on one of the air mail flights between France and its African colonies has a brief romance with his distressed cousin before he returns to the call of duty, and the rebels in the desert.

Southern Carrier

1937