Bresson, Robert (rôbĕr` brĕsôN`), 1901–99, French film director and scriptwriter, b. Bromont-Lamottie, France. Bresson's films tend to be austere, unadorned, and concerned more with intellectual and spriritual values than plot or character. He evinced a unique aesthetic and spiritual approach to cinema in the 13 films he made during the course of 40 years. Bresson attempted to avoid the theatrical, preferring to use nonprofessional actors in scripts with a minimum of dialogue and creating images of nearly abstract simplicity. His films include Les Dames du Bois de Bologne (1944), The Diary of a Country Priest (1950), A Man Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1959), The Trial of Joan of Arc (1965), Au Hasard, Balthazar (1966), Mouchette (1966), Lancelot of the Lake (1974), and Money (1983).

Bibliography

See The Films of Robert Bresson (ed. by I. Cameron, 1970).

Bresson, Robert

(born Sept. 25, 1901, Bromont-Lamonthe, Puy-de Dôme, France—died Dec. 18, 1999) French film director. He worked as a painter and photographer before making his first film in 1934. His feature-length Les Anges du péché (1943) established his austere, intellectual style. Noted for intense psychological probing and the subordination of plot to visual imagery, he also directed The Diary of a Country Priest (1950), A Man Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1959), Balthazar (1966), Lancelot of the Lake (1974), and L'Argent (1983).