Quotes from Robert Bresson

Le cinéma sonore a inventé le silence.

Traduire le vent invisible par l'eau qu'il sculpte en passant.

Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle.

People are charming because they aren't aware of their charm.

Moque-toi d'une mauvaise réputation. Crains une bonne que tu ne pourrais pas soutenir.

There must, at a certain point, be a transformation. If not, there is no art.

An image must be transformed by contact with other images as is a colour by contact with other colours. A blue is not the same blue beside a green, a yellow, a red. No art without transformation.

The truth of cinematography cannot be the truth of theatre, not the truth of the novel, nor the truth of painting. (What the cinematographer captures with his or her own resources cannot be what the theatre, the novel, painting capture with theirs).

Life drifting, in its continuous, unpredictable flow. Life inimitable. Japanese Buddhism teaches us that art (or bliss) is surprise, it cannot be calculated. It is a prey, a catch: "Be as ignorant of what you are going to catch as a fisherman of what is at the end of his fishing rod" (the fish that arises from nowhere).

To Bresson, art is the only possible escape from the bitterness of impotence.

Art is not in the mind. Art is in the eye, in the ear, in the memory of our senses. Images, dreams.

BEING (models) instead of SEEMING (actors).

The great talent and the greatest difficulty - isn't it what we commonly call "charm" in daily life? People are charming because they aren't aware of their charm. That's what I'm looking for: true charm. That's what cinema needs.

For myself, there is something which makes suicide possible - not even possible but absolutely necessary: it is the vision of the void, the feeling of void which is impossible to bear.

They are trying to explain what is not explainable. That is why many young people try to find something idealistic in dao – because they need something to live.

A quote by film director Robert Bresson (1901-1999), 'Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen' (as cited in The Independent I, 2019), encapsulates why, although there appears to be a gap between peers' early language skills, it is necessary to go beyond rhetoric and supposition.

Make visible what, without you, might have never been seen.

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.[3]

Shooting. Put oneself into a state of intense ignorance and curiosity, and yet see things in advance.

A whole made of good images can be detestable.

A l'assurance des acteurs oppose le charme des modèles qui ne savent pas ce qu'ils sont.

Un cri, un bruit. Leur résonance nous fait deviner une maison, une forêt, une plaine, une montagne. Leur rebond nous indique des distances.

In your passion for the true, people may see nothing but faddism.

Ton public n'est ni le public des livres, ni celui des spectacles, ni celui des expositions, ni celui des concerts. Tu n'as à satisfaire ni le goût littéraire, ni le théâtral, ni le pictural, ni le musical.