Editing Robert Bresson (section)

===French cinema===
Opposing the established pre-war French cinema (known as ''Tradition de la Qualité'' ["tradition of quality"]) by offering his own personal responses to the question "what is cinema?",<ref name="horschamp.qc.ca">{{Cite web|url=https://offscreen.com/view/bresson|title=Robert Bresson as a Precursor to the Nouvelle Vague: A Brief Historical Sketch|website=offscreen.com}}</ref> and by formulating his ascetic style, Bresson gained a high reputation with the founders of the [[French New Wave]]. He is often listed (along with [[Alexandre Astruc]] and [[André Bazin]]) as one of the main figures who influenced them. New Wave pioneers praised Bresson and posited him as a prototype for or precursor to the movement. However, Bresson was neither as overtly experimental nor as outwardly political as the New Wave filmmakers, and his religious views ([[Catholicism]] and [[Jansenism]]) were not attractive to most of the filmmakers associated with the movement.<ref name="horschamp.qc.ca"/>

In his development of [[auteur theory]], [[François Truffaut]] lists Bresson among the few directors to whom the term "auteur" can genuinely be applied, and later names him as one of the only examples of directors who could approach even the so-called "unfilmable" scenes, using the film narrative at its disposal.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Truffaut |first1=François |title=''Une certaine tendance du cinéma français'' ("A certain tendency in French cinema") |journal=Cahiers du Cinéma |date=1954 |url=https://www.newwavefilm.com/about/a-certain-tendency-of-french-cinema-truffaut.shtml |access-date=22 March 2023}}</ref> [[Jean-Luc Godard]] also looked upon Bresson with high admiration ("Robert Bresson is French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is the German music."<ref name="theyshootpictures.com">{{cite web |title=TSPDT – Robert Bresson |url=http://www.theyshootpictures.com/bressonrobert.htm |access-date=9 August 2018 |website=theyshootpictures.com}}</ref>) Screenwriter and director [[Alain Cavalier]] describes Bresson's role as pivotal not only in the New Wave movement, but for French cinema in general, writing, "In French cinema you have a father and a mother: the father is Bresson and the mother is [[Jean Renoir|Renoir]], with Bresson representing the strictness of the law and Renoir warmth and generosity. All the better French cinema has and will have to connect to Bresson in some way."<ref name="bfi.org.uk"/>