Robert Bresson (1901–1999) is one of the monumental figures of French cinema. Over an iconoclastic career spanning six decades, he embraced poetic asceticism in his pursuit of a new kind of truth in filmmaking.
This program presents a rare comprehensive retrospective of Bresson’s films, from his early comedy short Public Affairs 1934 to his haunting final treatise L’Argent 1983. It features the first Australian screening of the new digital restoration of the long-unavailable Four Nights of a Dreamer 1971, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Bresson eschewed many of the medium’s traditional emotional signifiers. Early in his career, he began working exclusively with non-professional actors – whom he described as ‘models’, as if for a painting or a sculpture – and stripped them of familiar dramatic externalisations. He crafted a stark, minimalistic aesthetic and gradually abandoned the use of music in his films. As his singular cinematographic style became more refined, he generated meaning and beauty through the rhythm and interplay of his precisely composed images.
Informed by Bresson’s devout Catholicism, much of his oeuvre explores the possibility of achieving grace in an unjust world. He was also influenced by his time as a prisoner of war in Germany, with both figurative and literal imprisonment being a key leitmotif throughout his career. His films deal with both the historical and the modern, often transmuting stories from figures such as Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to contemporary France, and he sought to render the real in mythologised figures.
Renowned for his austere masterpieces such as the methodical prison drama A Man Escaped 1956, the existentialist portrait Pickpocket 1959 and the profound parable Au hasard Balthazar 1956, Bresson remains among cinema’s most revered and deeply influential filmmakers.
Image: Production still from Au Hasard Balthazar 1966 / Director: Robert Bresson / Image courtesy: Janus Films
QAGOMA acknowledges the generous assistance of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, Canberra; La Cinémathèque française, Paris; and L’Institut français, Paris in providing materials for this program.
Program curated by Robert Hughes, Australian Cinémathèque
