Robert Bresson

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domino harvey
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Re: Robert Bresson

#76 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 07, 2016 8:07 pm

It was of directors across the Americas and Europe, not just France. I actually think this tidbit about the list is hilarious:
Cecil B. De Mille
1.....Cabiria (Giovanni Pastrone 1914)
2.....the Birth of a Nation (D W Griffith 1915)
3.....Ben Hur (Fred Niblo 1925)
4.....the 10 Commandments (Cecil B. De Mille 1923)
5.....the King of Kings (Cecil B. De Mille 1927)
6.....the Big Parade (King Vidor 1925)
7.....the Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. De Mille 1932)
8.....Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming 1939)
9.....Going My Way (Leo McCarey 1944)
10...Samson and Delilah (Cecil B. De Mille 1949)

Cahiers pointed out that De Mille had listed four of his own films -- the 10 Commnandments, King of Kings, the Sign of the Cross, and Samson and Delilah -- and identified six others who had cited films of their own:

Claude Autant-Lara -- Le Diable au corps
Luis Bunuel -- L'Age d'or
Edward Dmytryk -- Gives Us This Day (Christ in Concrete)
William Dieterle -- the Life of Emile Zola
Marcel L'Herbier -- El Dorado
King Vidor -- the Big Parade
Henry Hathaway -- the Lives of Bengal Lancers

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knives
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Re: Robert Bresson

#77 Post by knives » Mon Nov 07, 2016 8:14 pm

Of all the movies of his own Hathaway could have chosen why that I wonder?

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Re: Robert Bresson

#78 Post by MichaelB » Tue Nov 08, 2016 4:45 am

zedz wrote:
ando wrote:LOL That's great. Not even Kane, thank heavens.
I think that's less about Bresson bucking any trends and much more about 1952 being pre-Kane, as the film didn't really emerge as canonical until later in the decade. It didn't figure on Sight & Sound's inaugural best films poll in 1952, for instance
Not the top ten, but it did come in at number eleven.

Although it's certainly true that it took time to achieve its über-canonical status.

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Cremildo
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Re: Robert Bresson

#79 Post by Cremildo » Tue Nov 08, 2016 9:13 am

knives wrote:Of all the movies of his own Hathaway could have chosen why that I wonder?
Perhaps he felt grateful for it because he received his only Best Director Oscar nomination for it.

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TMDaines
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Re: Robert Bresson

#80 Post by TMDaines » Thu Nov 10, 2016 8:36 pm

domino harvey wrote:Here are the top results by number of ballots from that 1952 Cahiers issue (100 ballots sent out, of which 55 of the directors responded)
32 ---- Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein 1925)
25 ---- The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin 1925)
20 ---- Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica 1948)
15 ---- City Lights (Charles Chaplin 1931)
15 ---- The Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir 1937)
15 ---- Le Million (René Clair 1931)
11 ---- Greed (Eric von Stroheim 1924)
10 ---- Hallelujah (King Vidor 1929)
9 ---- Brief Encounter (David Lean 1945)
9 ---- The Threepenny Opera (G W Pabst 1931)
9 ---- Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty 1934)
8 ---- The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer 1928)
7 ---- Les Enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné 1945)
7 ---- Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim 1922)
6 ---- L'Age d'or (Luis Bunuel 1930)
6 ---- The Birth of a Nation (D W Griffith 1915)
6 ---- Broken Blossoms (D W Griffith 1919)
6 ---- Le Diable au corps (Claude Autant-Lara 1947)
5 ---- Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch 1939)
5 ---- Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty 1922)
5 ---- Carnival in Flanders (Jacques Feyder 1935)
5 ---- Citizen Kane (Orson Welles 1941)
5 ---- The Best Years of Our Lives (Willilam Wyler 1946)
Would votes for Greed here be based on the sub 3 hour cut?

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Roger Ryan
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Re: Robert Bresson

#81 Post by Roger Ryan » Fri Nov 11, 2016 10:42 am

TMDaines wrote:Would votes for Greed here be based on the sub 3 hour cut?
Well, that's the only cut that existed between 1924 and the attempted reconstruction of the long version in 1999, so I'd say "yes". According to Wikipedia, only twelve people saw the full-length version and that was prior to the film's initial release.

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Re: Robert Bresson

#82 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Nov 11, 2016 8:08 pm

Following on from this strong Erich von Stroheim polling I'm curious as to whether there was any particular reason that The Wedding March did not feature in any of these lists? Was it seen as not up to the standards of Foolish Wives or Greed, or were there distribution issues? Or wasit because the second half of that film was compromised? Or was it something as simple as it being a very early talkie, and von Stroheim's first sound film?

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domino harvey
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Re: Robert Bresson

#83 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 11, 2016 9:11 pm

It did make Cahiers' later 12 Best Films of All Time list in 1957:
Sunrise (F W Murnau)
the Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini)
Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein)
the Birth of a Nation (D W Griffith)
Mr Arkadin (Orson Welles)
Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
L’Atalante (Jean Vigo)
the Wedding March (Erich Von Stroheim)
Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock)
Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin)
The list was compiled rather strangely, though. They first polled seventeen Cahiers critics to create a list of greatest auteurs, then picked a film to represent each. The next twelve auteurs in order were Max Ophuls, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks / Buster Keaton (tie), Ingmar Bergman, Nicholas Ray, Norman McLaren (!) / Robert Flaherty (tie), Luis Bunuel / René Clair (tie), Luchino Visconti / Alexander Dovchenko (tie)

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ando
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Re: Robert Bresson

#84 Post by ando » Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:52 am

New editions/translations of Notes of a Cinematographer and Bresson on Bresson are out on Tuesday (Nov. 15). I remember enjoying the former far more so than the latter, which, though full of pithy insights (selected by Bresson's widow), seemed deliberately random. What's really got me exited are the release of e-reader versions.

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Big Ben
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Re: Robert Bresson

#85 Post by Big Ben » Sat Nov 12, 2016 1:55 pm

I actually ordered said new version of Notes of a Cinematographer months ago. I'll be a first time reader and I'm looking forward to it! Disappointed to hear that Bresson on Bresson isn't any good though.

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ando
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Re: Robert Bresson

#86 Post by ando » Sat Nov 12, 2016 7:11 pm

Forgive me, early morning grog had me a little loopy; Bresson on Bresson is the superb collection of interviews over the span of a decade or two and Notes is what I meant to dub a pithy but random collection. I forget which famous director said he is never without a copy of it on any set but I'd imagine that it would certainly appeal more to those in the business of making films than the casual cineaste. And, frankly, few directors approach their craft with the level of rigor as Bresson delineates therein.

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ando
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Re: Robert Bresson

#87 Post by ando » Fri Nov 18, 2016 12:01 am

The Road To Bresson (1984, Leo De Boer, Jurriën Rood) Streamer. New to me. But it's included with the supplements to the Criterion edition of A Man Escaped.

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whaleallright
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Re: Robert Bresson

#88 Post by whaleallright » Mon Feb 13, 2017 3:10 am

domino harvey wrote:Bresson's list comes from Cahiers' "Best Films of Our Lives" feature in 1952 where they polled directors for their Top 10s.
This may seem like nitpicking, but the article you're referencing—"The Best Films of Our Life" from issue 12 (May 1952; and yes, the original title is in the slightly mangled English)—is Cahiers' summary of the poll of filmmakers conducted by the Festival Mondial du film et des Beaux-Arts in Belgium. That's the one I mistakenly referred to above as having being conducted by the "Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique." As far as I can tell, Cahiers didn't independently conduct their own poll of filmmakers in that era.

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TMDaines
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Re: Robert Bresson

#89 Post by TMDaines » Thu Feb 16, 2017 9:22 pm

I swear I'm going crazy. I could have sworn someone posted here the other day requesting the individual ballots from the 1952 Belgian poll to see Kautner's ballot amongst others. Did someone delete a post?

After a fruitless search online, I managed to get them from Bill Georgaris at TSPDT. I'll post them tomorrow after neatening them up.
Last edited by TMDaines on Thu Feb 16, 2017 9:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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knives
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Re: Robert Bresson

#90 Post by knives » Thu Feb 16, 2017 9:24 pm

Yes, in the Godard thread if memory serves.

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TMDaines
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Re: Robert Bresson

#91 Post by TMDaines » Thu Feb 16, 2017 9:52 pm


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ando
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Re: Robert Bresson

#92 Post by ando » Fri Mar 03, 2017 7:27 pm

Image
The Invention of Robert Bresson: The Auteur and His Market, Colin Burnett (2017)

The cover is funny - Bresson a la Stanley Kowalski. It looks like a good one, at any rate, though I've only skimmed it. Anyone here read it yet?
Burnett wrote:It is often thought that [Bresson] forged his distinctive style in isolation - that it was somehow autopoietic or self-produced - Bresson's unique voice as an artist owes much to the direct ties he fostered early with several prominent artists in the interwar Parisian art world.
Of this I know little to nothing so it might be a worthwhile purchase for art history sake alone.

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bunuelian
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Re: Robert Bresson

#93 Post by bunuelian » Thu Sep 07, 2017 5:01 pm

Regarding the ending of Proces de Jeanne d'Arc, am I completely out of bounds
SpoilerShow
reading her disappearance not as a miracle but rather as an extension of the British officer's command that no trace of her be left? It seems to me that her body's disappearance, as the official record supposedly describes, was simply an official explanation of events to ensure that no one could create politically charged relics from Jeanne's ribs. We're shown several instances where the official record (that is, the source of the film) is subject to manipulation by the officials running the trial, which leaves the reliability of the later record very much in doubt as well. If this is indeed the correct reading, Bresson rejects the "miracle" as an official lie, but leaves the audience to figure that out (and meanwhile, curiously, he's letting those who want to see the miracle still see it).
I came to Jeanne after close, repeat viewings of Le diable probablement (such a marvelous, strange film) and L'argent so my take may be tainted by Bresson's late "pessimism," not to mention my own atheist perspective.

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knives
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Re: Robert Bresson

#94 Post by knives » Thu Sep 07, 2017 5:14 pm

I definitely take that as a good reading. My biases showing as well I never interrupted the ending as indicating anything miraculous. Bresson seems too grounded (wrong word right idea) in all of his pictures to do something as fantastical as Dreyer to go with the obvious example. There's no precedent in his work for something narratively unreal to occur (I'm making a differentiation with filmic miracles like the pickpocketing in that movie).

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bunuelian
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Re: Robert Bresson

#95 Post by bunuelian » Thu Sep 07, 2017 6:43 pm

"Grounded" is close. I think it's not entirely irresponsible to say that Bresson used the artifice of cinema to get as close to reality as possible. This certainly reached an extreme in the later films, with Diable being downright jarring in its unreality. But I think it's safe to find it in Jeanne as well.

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Nicola Matteo
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Re: Robert Bresson

#96 Post by Nicola Matteo » Mon Nov 20, 2017 8:09 am

Trees wrote:Is the Une femme douce restoration streaming anywhere? What is the best way to see it in HD right now?
There is an announcement for Bresson's Une femme douce Blu-ray France to be released Feb 01, 2018.

A bit confusing: There is also an announcement for Serguei Loznitsa's Une femme douce (AKA Кроткая) Blu-ray to be released Jan. 02, 2018, where they use the poster of Bresson's film.

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Re: Robert Bresson

#97 Post by criterionsnob » Sun Jun 10, 2018 4:24 pm

I had seen this mentioned in another thread here, that Four Nights of a Dreamer is up on Filmbox Live. I signed up for a free trial just to watch it. The master is very old, but it's watchable up until about 40 minutes in, when it goes completely bonkers. Lots of digital noise, freezing, and jumping back and forth between shots. I'm glad to have finally seen the film, but the master they have is pretty atrocious.

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ando
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Re: Robert Bresson

#98 Post by ando » Sun Jun 10, 2018 7:58 pm

There are a couple of decent versions up on YT. And Filmstruck used to have it - worth the 14 day free trial to see any Bresson, imo. May take my own advise on this one. Ha

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ellipsis7
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Re: Robert Bresson

#99 Post by ellipsis7 » Tue Jun 12, 2018 6:01 am

QUATRE NUITS DU UN REVEUR screens next month as part of a full Bresson retrospective @ Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, presumably in a decent print.... The previous screening @ CF was in October 2008, so ten years have elapsed in the meantime... Details here....

The complete retrospective unfolds like so...
Les films
Affaires publiques (Les) Robert Bresson / France / 1934 CM Di 8 juil 19h00 Di 15 juil 21h00 Me 25 juil 17h30
Anges du péché (Les) Robert Bresson / France / 1943 Di 8 juil 19h00 Di 15 juil 21h00 Me 25 juil 17h30
Argent (L') Robert Bresson / France-Suisse / 1982 Je 5 juil 21h45 Ve 13 juil 19h00 Di 29 juil 21h30
Au hasard, Balthazar Robert Bresson / France-Suède / 1965 Ve 6 juil 21h15 Ve 20 juil 21h00 Ve 27 juil 21h30
Dames du bois de Boulogne (Les) Robert Bresson / France / 1944 Me 4 juil 20h00 Me 18 juil 17h00 Me 25 juil 19h45
Diable probablement (Le) Robert Bresson / France / 1976 Sa 14 juil 19h30 Sa 21 juil 17h00 Di 29 juil 19h30
Journal d'un curé de campagne Robert Bresson / France / 1950 Di 8 juil 21h30 Me 18 juil 19h30 Me 25 juil 21h45
Lancelot du lac Robert Bresson / France, Italie / 1974 Sa 14 juil 21h30 Di 22 juil 21h00 Di 29 juil 17h00
Mouchette Robert Bresson / France / 1966 Ve 20 juil 19h00 Di 22 juil 17h00 Sa 28 juil 17h15
Pickpocket Robert Bresson / France / 1959 Sa 7 juil 19h00 Je 19 juil 21h00 Ve 27 juil 16h30
Procès de Jeanne d'Arc Robert Bresson / France / 1961 Ve 6 juil 19h15 Sa 21 juil 19h00 Ve 27 juil 19h30
Quatre nuits d'un rêveur Robert Bresson / France, Italie / 1970 Ve 13 juil 21h15 Di 22 juil 19h00 Sa 28 juil 21h45
Un condamné à mort s'est échappé Robert Bresson / France / 1956 Sa 7 juil 21h30 Je 19 juil 19h00 Je 26 juil 16h30
Une femme douce Robert Bresson / France / 1968 Di 15 juil 19h00 Sa 21 juil 21h00 Sa 28 juil 19h30
Autour de Robert Bresson
Chemin vers Bresson (Le) Leo De Boer, Jurriën Rood / Pays-Bas / 1984 Me 11 juil 21h30
Cinéastes de notre temps : Robert Bresson, ni vu ni connu François Weyergans / France / 1965 Me 11 juil 19h30
Rencontres et conférences
Robert Bresson et la chose venue de l'intérieur. Conférence d'Émilie Cauquy Je 5 juil 19h00

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Re: Robert Bresson

#100 Post by GoodOldNeon » Fri Aug 24, 2018 5:05 am

A Blu-ray of Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is coming out in France next month. It seems like the only subtitle option is French HOH. Hopefully this means a Criterion upgrade is coming.

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