more bresson

[Paul Murphy]

A propos de Bresson:

There was a brief vogue of dropping Bresson's name around the time of
Sontag, but more pointedly, Paul Schrader's book "Transcendental Style in
Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer", when critics used to talk about "Bressonian
restraint" a lot. (Bresson exclusively employed non-professional actors,
whose facial and gestural movements were severely curtailed, to the point
of statuesque posing. He also was the great mediator of the Bazin-inspired
debate between Renoir's long-take mise-en-scene technique and Eisensteinian
montage; RB deployed montage consistently, in a jigsaw-like isolation of
feet, hands, and faces, best experienced in his brilliant _Pickpocket_,
which is a cinematic ballet of petty theft).

Schrader reportedly mimicked the voice-over narration from _Diary of a
Country Priest_ for his script to _Taxi Driver_.

Bresson seems to have fallen out of favour of late (Godard gets namechecked
more often, courtesy of Tarantino and Araki) ... watch out for the Dreyer
renaissance, though, in the wake of Lars von Trier's _Breaking the Waves_.

Cheers,
Paul