SCREEN-L Archives

December 1999, Week 4

SCREEN-L@LISTSERV.UA.EDU

Options: Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
gloria monti <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 21 Dec 1999 18:10:20 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (80 lines)
        December 21, 1999
        Robert Bresson, Film Director, Is Dead at 98
        By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

                  ARIS -- Robert Bresson, the film director whose
austere approach helped redefine French cinema and paved the way for
France's New Wave movement, has died, French television reported
today.  He was 98.  The LCI channel quoted members of Bresson's
family as saying the director died Saturday.  No cause of death was
given.
        Often using untrained actors coached to speak in flat
monotones, Bresson believed the most
poignant stories defied words and were best told with images.
Critics said Bresson played a unique role in the development of
French cinema. A man who defied categorization, he was the ultimate
loner,
belonging to no particular school of cinematography.
        In "Pickpocket," (1959) widely regarded as his most brilliant
film, Bresson pared down the
               compulsive art of lifting wallets to its barest
psychological elements. Coinciding with the
               budding New Wave cinema, the film became a reference
for the generation of young
               filmmakers spearheaded by Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.
        In "La Femme Douce" (1969), starring the 19-year-old
Dominique Sanda in her first screen
role, Bresson painted an ironic tale of obsessive love.  Using
flashbacks, he allowed the viewer
to unravel the mystery of the opening scene: a young woman who throws
herself off a building.
        Bresson also was interested in extreme, real-life situations.
"A Man Escaped," which won
Bresson the best director award at the 1957 Cannes Film Festival, was
based on the true story
of a French Resistance fighter who escaped from the Gestapo's Fort
Montluc prison in Lyon.
        Born on Sept. 25, 1901, in Bromont-Lamothe, the son of a
military officer, Bresson first
studied to become a painter. He made his first film in 1934,
"Affaires Publiques" (Public
Affairs), based on three days in the life of an imaginary dictator.
        During World War II, Bresson spent a year in a German
prisoner of war camp. He returned
home in 1943 to make "Les Anges du Peche" (The Angels of Sin) and
"Les Dames du Bois
de Boulogne" (Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne) in 1945.
        Bresson was known as a quiet, solitary, even secretive man.
Critics said the turning point of his career came in 1951 with the
film adaptation of the Georges Bernanos classic "Journal d'un Cure de
Campagne" (Diary of a Country Priest), the story of an ailing priest
who tries, unsuccessfully, to
connect spiritually with his parishioners.
        Bresson's final work, "L'Argent" (Money) was based on a short
story by Leo Tolstoy. It won the Grand Prix du Cinema de Creation in
Cannes in 1983.  Comparing it to a Greek tragedy,
critics said it expressed Bresson's dismal vision of a society in
which appearances count more
than values. The film also won a major New York film critics' award in 1984.
        Bresson was married twice. Details on funeral arrangements
and survivors were not immediately clear.
______________________________

gloria monti
special assistant professor
department of audio/video/film
318 dempster hall
111 hofstra university
hempstead, NY
voice mail: 516-463-6463
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://pantheon.cis.yale.edu/~godard/index.html

12/21/1988: a bomb exploded, killing 270 people aboard a Pam Am
Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland.  I lost one Yale College
classmate and 36 Syracuse students in the crash.

----
Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu

ATOM RSS1 RSS2