This is a book I first read maybe 15 years ago, and in an indirect way, Notes on the Cinematograph (also known as Notes on the Cinematographer), was an inspiration for this site.
As much as editing is an emotive, instinctual process, it’s also an intentional one. Whether unconscious or fully conscious, we never entirely just FEEL our way through an edit, there is always a set of decisions that lead filmmakers to the final version of their work. Behind these decisions, there is usually a set of principles at work that we build in order to help guide ourselves.
Process
I think it’s probably clear from the rest of this site that I’m fascinated by process. Even the site as a whole is focused on the decisions that are made to shape a film, on why and how we make those decisions, and on how and when we listen to out instincts about what is right and wrong for our project.
I’m also a sports fan, and I’m fascinated by how sports teams and organisations are run too. There are clear goals for a sports team, but many factors have to be balanced, with concern given to use of budget and resources, and attracting and emboldening talented people. There are also often multiple approaches available in the pursuit of the relatively simple, easily definable goal of winning the Champions League, or the Super Bowl, or an F1 World Championship, or whatever.
I think a lot of the considerations of a sports organisation can speak to filmmakers too as we also often have easily definable goals (make an award-winning film, get the next job, get a bigger budget for the next project etc.), but just like a sports team, “being good/best” is only an outcome, and there are thousands of decisions that need to be made, and that need to be made well, in order to succeed.
All of which is to say that this book, like this site, is about process, and how to make good decisions.
The Author
Robert Bresson was an atypical filmmaker. He didn’t like to use music or professional actors, amongst many other elements he considered to be artifice. Jean-Luc Godard described him as “French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music.”, and he was highly influential not just for the French New Wave filmmakers who came after him (Godard included), but many European and American filmmakers too.
The beginnings of much of the realism of modern cinema can be traced back to filmmakers like Bresson, making the first of his great films (Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, Pickpocket) in the ’50s as the world at large, and cinema culture on a smaller scale, found its way into a new post-war era.
Befitting the filmmaker, Notes on the Cinematographer is an atypical book. Essentially a collection of notes made throughout his career, the book is less prose than it is notebook.
It’s rare to get such an insight into a filmmaker’s thoughts and process so much in the moment, usually it’s an after-the-fact recollection many years later, or a distillation with distance.
The Book
Bresson hated films which staged drama in front of the camera in the same way as was done on stage. He firmly believed that in the same way music and art are different, and should be attempting to do different things, so too should film and theatre.
Two types of film: those that employ the resources of the theatre (actors, direction, etc.) and use the camera in order to reproduce; those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create.
Bresson
He did not want to simply recreate another artform in front of the camera, he wanted to use the camera in ways that simply weren’t possible in the theatre, or indeed in any other medium. A large proportion of the book focuses on the things to avoid and the things to focus on in order to achieve this.
Nothing more inelegant and ineffective than an art conceived in another art’s form.
Bresson
Actors
Bresson is also famous for his dislike of acting and his preference for using “models” rather than actors. Not models in the modern, fashion sense, but untrained non-actors who would not attempt to mimic in the way he believed actors did.
To your models: “Don’t think about what you’re saying, don’t think what you’re doing.” And also: “Don’t think about what you say, don’t think about what you do.”
Bresson
Bresson believed that an actor’s expressiveness was magnified by the camera, and was liable to turn it into a theatrical “performance”. What he wanted to capture was something real, a real person reacting in a genuine way, not a studied, planned affectation. For Bresson, everything on stage was “false”, and so replicating any of that in front of the camera would destroy the “truth” he was trying to find.
Nine-tenths of our movements obey habit and automatism. It is anti-nature to subordinate them to will and to thought.
Bresson
Realism
I think it’s important to remember that when Bresson was writing about these things in the ’50s, “realism” had not yet taken hold in cinema. Looking back from the early 21st century, performances in films from this period and earlier do often feel very different to those of modern films. Naturalism and realism had been present in the theatre since the late 19th Century in the works of Zola, Chekhov, Ibsen and others, and had begun to infiltrate Hollywood in the early ’50s through the star-making performances of Marlon Brando and James Dean, but the spectacle of Hollywood and its mainstream national counterparts were still the dominant form.
Catch instants. Spontaneity, freshness.
Bresson
Meanwhile, in Europe, filmmakers were beginning to take advantage of technological developments which allowed cameras to be far more mobile, able to leave the studio behind and get out into the world. The silent cinema era had been a period of experimentation with a new artform, but the coming of sound, and the restrictions of the technology, had led to a reliance on the theatre as a basis for studio-based, dialogue heavy films. There was also a generation looking to break with the old ways that many believed had led to the death and destruction of the war, and the French New Wave in particular looked to Bresson for inspiration in how to transform cinema.
Artifice
No music as accompaniment, support, or reinforcement.
Bresson
Unsurprisingly, as a man on a crusade to remove artifice from his work, Bresson did not like to score his films. He wanted as much as possible to create a filmic world that felt like it had come from the real world. But he was not tied to realism for the sake of realism. What Bresson wanted to do was to show the audience something new, done in a new way, a way that felt alive. He was a minimalist, but minimalism was a way for him to find the powerful truth of a moment.
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.
Bresson
Bresson’s Legacy
The internet is full of articles on how to make your film “cinematic”. Very few of these articles spend time exploring what that actually means. Bresson was a filmmaker whose career was in many ways shaped by his drive to define the term “cinema” as separate and distinct from other art forms. Part of his legacy is his exploration of the processes and decisions behind his work, and of his efforts to self-analyse how he arrived at endeavours that he felt were worthy of the description.
Buy the book on Amazon. Or check out some of Bresson’s films. And yes, these are affiliate links. For links to more external resources, check out the Resources category.