Channelling Bresson

Jamie McCallum, O&J exec, got me thinking about Robert Bresson. There’s a wonderful quote on the wikipedia page: “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 onto a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.” Currently in the process of killing an idea by writing it down, I know what he means. I got hold of Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer * (to B, ‘cinematography’ is the true art, ‘cinema’ a debased, debauched cousin). This tiny book is a treasure house and joins immediately that short shelf of holy books (including Mamet’s *Three Uses of the Knife and - the gift of O&J editor Simon Bryant - Walter Murch’s In the Blink of an Eye. Today I find I’m not alone in revering this book. Watched Bresson’s L’Argent: how many shots of doors are there in the film? And how many slightly-tight frames that seem to cramp the actors (sorry, ‘models’ in Bresson-speak) creating a constant unease. Brilliant theories put into practice.

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