Robert Bresson quotes
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“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.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.13, New York Review of Books
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“Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.38, New York Review of Books
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“When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best - that is inspiration.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“The future of cinematography belongs to a new race of young solitaries who will shoot films by putting their last penny into it and not let themselves be taken in by the material routines of the trade.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.56, New York Review of Books
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“The point is not to direct someone, but to direct oneself.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.9, New York Review of Books
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“The ear is profound, whereas the eye is frivolous, too easily satisfied. The ear is active, imaginative, whereas the eye is passive. When you hear a noise at night, instantly you imagine its cause. The sound of a train whistle conjures up the whole station. The eye can perceive only what is presented to it.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“Hide the ideas, but so that people find them. The most important will be the most hidden.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.21, New York Review of Books
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“Laugh at a bad reputation. Fear a good one that you could not sustain.”
-- Robert Bresson -
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“A film is born in my head and I kill it on paper. It is brought back to life by the actors and then killed in the camera. It is then resurrected into a third and final life in the editing room where the dismembered pieces are assembled into their finished form.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“Films can only be made by by-passing the will of those who appear in them, using not what they do, but what they are.”
-- Robert BressonSource : "The Films Of Robert Bresson: A Retrospective" by Rodrigo Perez, www.indiewire.com. April 18, 2012.
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“Two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc...) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create”
-- Robert Bresson -
“Prefer what intuition whispers in your ear to what you have done and redone ten times in your head.”
-- Robert Bresson -
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“Ten properties of an object, according to Leonardo: light and dark, color and substance, form and position, distance and nearness, movement and stillness.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“In the NUDE, all that is not beautiful is obscene.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.27, New York Review of Books
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“Hostility to art is also hostility to the new, to the unforeseen.”
-- Robert Bresson -
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“To create is not to deform or invent persons and things. It is to tie new relationships between persons and things which are, and as they are.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.14, New York Review of Books
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“The true is inimitable, the false untransformable.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“Cinema, radio, television, and magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen without hearing.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (1977). “Notes on cinematography”
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“For me, film-making is combining images and sounds of real things in an order that makes them effective. What I disapprove of is photographing things that are not real. Sets and actors are not real.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“Model. Two mobile eyes in a mobile head, itself on a mobile body.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“Bring together things that have not yet been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.”
-- Robert BressonSource : "Notes on the Cinematograph".
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“A too-expected image (cliché) will never seem right, even if it is.”
-- Robert Bresson -
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“The faculty of using my resources well diminishes when their number grows.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“Be the first to see what you see as you see it.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.27, New York Review of Books
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“The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences. Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way. Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.30, New York Review of Books
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“Practice the precept: find without seeking”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.31, New York Review of Books
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“Unbalance so as to re-balance.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.21, New York Review of Books
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“It is in its pure form that an art hits hard.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“The crude real will not by itself yield truth.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“Let nothing be changed and all be different.”
-- Robert Bresson -
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“Cinematography is a writing with images in mouvement and with sounds.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“Nothing more inelegant and ineffective than an art conceived in another art's form.”
-- Robert Bresson -
“Empty the pond to get the fish.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.44, New York Review of Books
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“When a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it. The ear goes more towards the within, the eye towards the outer.”
-- Robert BressonSource : Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.29, New York Review of Books
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“Ideally, nothing should be shown, but that’s impossible.”
-- Robert Bresson
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