Editing Robert Bresson (section)

=== Artistic minimalism ===
Bresson published ''Notes on the Cinematographer'' in 1975, in which he argues for a unique sense of the term "[[cinematography]]". For him, cinematography is the higher function of cinema. While a movie is in essence "only" filmed theatre, Bresson defines cinematography as an attempt to create a new language of moving images and sounds.<ref name="notes">{{cite book |author=Bresson, Robert |title=Notes on the Cinematographer |publisher=Green Integer |year=1997 |isbn=978-1-55713-365-6}}</ref> His early artistic focus was to separate the language of cinema from that of the theater, which often relies heavily upon the actor's performance to drive the work. Film scholar Tony Pipolo writes that "Bresson opposed not just professional actors, but acting itself,"<ref>{{cite book |author=Pipolo, Tony |title=Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-19-531979-8}}</ref> preferring to think of his actors as 'models'. In ''[[Notes on the Cinematographer]]'' ({{Langx|fr|Notes sur le cinématographe}}; also published in English as ''Notes on the Cinematograph''), a collection of aphorisms written by Bresson, the director succinctly defines the difference between the two:

<blockquote>HUMAN MODELS: movement from the exterior to the interior. [...]<br />
ACTORS: movement from the interior to the exterior.<ref name="notes" /></blockquote>

Bresson further elaborates on his disdain for acting by appropriating a remark [[Chateaubriand]] had made about 19th century poets and applying it to actors: "what they lack is not naturalness, but Nature." For Bresson, "to think it's more natural for a movement to be made or a phrase to be said like ''this'' than like ''that''" is "absurd", and "nothing rings more false in film [...] than the overstudied sentiments" of theater.<ref name="notes" />

With his 'model' technique, Bresson's actors were required to repeat multiple takes of each scene until all semblances of 'performance' were stripped away, leaving a stark effect that registers as both subtle and raw. This, as well as Bresson's restraint in musical scoring, would have a significant influence on minimalist cinema. In the academic journal ''[[CrossCurrents]]'', Shmuel Ben-gad wrote:

<blockquote>There is a credibility in Bresson's models: They are like people we meet in life, more or less opaque creatures who speak, move, and gesture [...] Acting, on the other hand, no matter how naturalistic, actively deforms or invents by putting an overlay or filter over the person, presenting a simplification of a human being and not allowing the camera to capture the actor's human depths. Thus what Bresson sees as the essence of filmic art, the achievement of the creative transformation involved in all art through the interplay of images of real things, is destroyed by the artifice of acting. For Bresson, then, acting is, like mood music and expressive camera work, just one more way of deforming reality or inventing that has to be avoided.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ben-gad |first=Shmuel |date=1997 |title=To See the World Profoundly: The Films of Robert Bresson |url=http://www.crosscurrents.org/bresson.htm |journal=CrossCurrents |access-date=25 September 2015}}</ref>
</blockquote>

Film critic [[Roger Ebert]] wrote that Bresson's directorial style resulted in films "of great passion: Because the actors didn't act out the emotions, the audience could internalize them."<ref>{{cite web |last=Ebert |first=Roger |date=23 December 1999 |title=Robert Bresson was master of understatement |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/robert-bresson-was-master-of-understatement |access-date=25 September 2015}}</ref> In ''[[Against Interpretation]]'', [[Susan Sontag]] wrote that "Some art aims directly at arousing the feelings; some art appeals to the feelings through the route of the intelligence ... art that detaches, that provokes reflection. In the film, the master of the reflective mode is Robert Bresson." Sontag said that "the form of Bresson’s films is designed (like Ozu's) to discipline the emotions at the same time that it arouses them: to induce a certain tranquility in the spectator, a state of spiritual balance that is itself the subject of the film."<ref name=":1" />