Robert Bresson Quotes
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Empty the pond to get the fish.
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Laugh at a bad reputation. Fear a good one that you could not sustain.
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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.
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Hostility to art is also hostility to the new, to the unforeseen.
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Model. Two mobile eyes in a mobile head, itself on a mobile body.
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In the NUDE, all that is not beautiful is obscene.
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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.
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It is in its pure form that an art hits hard.
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Nothing more inelegant and ineffective than an art conceived in another art's form.
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Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle.
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Catch instants. Spontaneity, freshness.
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The crude real will not by itself yield truth.
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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.
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The things one can express with the hand, with the head, with the shoulders!... How many useless and encumbering words then disappear! What economy!
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The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine.
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The true is inimitable, the false untransformable.
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A too-expected image (cliché) will never seem right, even if it is.
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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
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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.
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Unbalance so as to re-balance.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best - that is inspiration.
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An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.
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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.
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Bring together things that have as yet never been brought together and did not seem predisposed to be so.
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Prefer what intuition whispers in your ear to what you have done and redone ten times in your head.
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Be the first to see what you see as you see it.
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Practice the precept: find without seeking
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