Feb. 9–March 30 at TIFF Bell Lightbox.
Robert Bresson set some awfully lofty goals for himself, as he did for anyone else committed to his vision of what cinema should be—a church whose adherents include Martin Scorsese and Lars von Trier. A slim book published by the French director in 1975, Notes on the Cinematographer is a trove of advice that’s often been mined by budding talent and seasoned auteurs alike. He offers things like, “Hide the ideas, but so that people will find them. The most important will be the most hidden.” And then there’s this maxim: “Nothing too much, nothing deficient.”
Like most advice, this is easier said than done. As you might expect, Bresson was the only one to have ever lived up to his own standards. Screening in a new retrospective at TIFF Bell Lightbox, the 13 features he made between 1943 and 1983 comprise one of cinema’s most revered oeuvres. Here are films in which no sound or image goes wasted—or at least that’s the case according to his admirers and acolytes.
Indeed, the veneration for Bresson can seem so religious in nature that it may be intimidating to moviegoers new to his work. Some may worry that seeing one of his films is akin to sitting through an especially heavy Sunday-morning sermon. It doesn’t help that Bresson’s sensibility was catholic enough to make Scorsese look like a lightweight.
Thankfully, the movies featured in the series’ first weekend dispel any notion that Bresson’s brand of austerity lacks any urgency or richness. A Man Escaped (presented Feb. 9 at 6:30 p.m.
with an introduction by Bart Testa) is a riveting account of a French Resistance fighter’s escape from a Nazi prison. Given that its hero spends a good portion of his screen time patiently chipping his way through the wooden door of his cell, this was one of several Bresson masterpieces to benefit from having protagonists who were as meticulous as he was.
The taciturn kleptomaniac in Pickpocket (Feb. 10, 6:30 p.m.) is another figure who regards his earthly trials as a quasi-spiritual pursuit. And while the movie’s religious overtones are impossible to miss, the contents are as gripping and as seedy as those of any great crime story.
The characters’ sufferings are even greater in Mouchette (Feb. 11, 7 p.m.) and Diary of a Country Priest (Feb. 12, 4 p.m.), two indelible portraits of heavy-hearted loners who find precious little comfort among their fellow dwellers in France’s not-so-bucolic countryside.
Viewings of any of these provide a solid introduction to Bresson. Having mastered them, newbies may feel readier for later works like The Devil, Probably (March 4, 5 p.m.), a thoroughly dyspeptic story about a Parisian malcontent who believes that suicide is the only way out of the malaise of post-’60s youth culture. Like the director, this young man is not one for compromise.
