Bresson thought there were two schools of filmmaking: theater and cinema. "Theater" to him was simply filmed plays, with prominent acting performances. By contrast, Bresson thought of his own films as "cinema," almost like compositions in a way. He did not want the actors to introduce their own interpretations which could possibly change the meaning of the film. One quote has Bresson saying something, "To make a film, you must get past the will of the people appearing in the film." Bresson belonged to the school of thought that the only creative force behind a film is the director, and the actors in the film must be subordinate to the director's vision and ideas.
To this end, Bresson was noted for using people who were generally not professional actors and were often unknowns. Often he used them for only one film and then never hired them again. A rare exception is Jean-Claude Guilbert, who appears in both "Au Hasard Balthazar" and again in "Mouchette" (just a year later) but as a different character. Bresson often made chalk marks on the ground, which were not visible to the camera, and instructed the actors to keep their eyes on the chalk marks as much as they can. This is one reason why they keep looking down.
Bresson was also known for repeating many takes of one scene, as many as 50 takes of a single scene at a time, to drain the actors of any last vestige of "performance" so that they were no longer performing or acting, but in a way actually living the scene as if it was real life instead of acting in movie. Bresson felt that something magical happened when all artificial "performance acting" was stripped away. Bresson often referred to the people appearing in his films as "models" rather than actors. Bresson studied painting and still photography before becoming a filmmaker. And some scenes in his films do have a feeling of a still life, rather than a motion picture.
I personally believe that Bresson somewhat overdid this draining of performance, and the result is that some of the people in the films have a zombie-like quality rather than seeming like living people. But I guess he wanted to err on that side rather than erring on the side of "artifical" theatricality in the acting, which he did not want in his films. Another thing very important to Bresson was the juxtaposition of one scene with another - the contrast between the mood of one scene and a jarringly different mood of the next scene was important and interesting to Bresson.
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lukechong
16 years ago
The effect of Bresson's method is not to introduce something completely naturalistic to the "acting", but to draw attention to what the characters do (notice the close-ups on the hands/legs etc) rather than what they feel or think. Bresson believe humans do lots of things without thinking. While this bring about a kind of zombie-like quality to his characters (in the words of a poster), it does bring out something different to his films.
His films are as far from melodrama as could possibly be (death of Marie being a case in point), so you dwell on what happens, rather than the "acting". He isn't very interested in facial expression.
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Tchoutoye
12 years ago
Bresson thought there were two schools of filmmaking: theater and cinema. "Theater" to him was simply filmed plays, with prominent acting performances. By contrast, Bresson thought of his own films as "cinema,"
With the exception of
Un condamné à mort s'est échappé..., I would call his films "
anti-cinema": perhaps interesting in a conceptual way, but ultimately unlikeable.
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