1 - Bresson’s Debt to Painting: Iconography, Lighting, Color, and Framing Practices
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2021
Summary
Abstract
Chapter one examines the way Bresson borrows from styles, techniques, and conventions in the history of painting, with a focus on his diverse collection of framing practices. Subsections focus on the way framing is used in UNE FEMME DOUCE (1969), especially the relationship between shots of the wife and a Cupid and Psyche painting; the way Cézanne’s incommensurate perspectives and flattening of space are mined by Bresson; the use of Christian themes and canvases in UNE FEMME DOUCE to arrive at an invisible spiritual sublime, especially through paintings by Alfred Manessier; and parallels between Georges de la Tour's baroque nocturnal paintings and Bresson's lighting practices in LANCELOT DU LAC (1974).
Keywords: Alfred Manessier, baroque lighting, framing, Georges de la Tour, Paul Cézanne, the sublime
Robert Bresson develops a filmmaking style that is noticeably different from other directors of his time. I argue in this chapter that such a singular approach is possible because Bresson draws, in a number of highly original ways, on the conventions, style, and iconography of painting. Such tendencies are hardly surprising, since Bresson trained as a painter in his youth, and claims in numerous interviews throughout his career that he never actually left painting, but rather transported a distinctive set of painterly concerns to the cinema, evident from the wide range of painters discussed in Notes surle cinématographe (1975). It is relatively common to encounter comparisons between Bresson and painting, and a handful of articles even tease out parallels between a particular Bresson film and an individual painter's style, including work by Giotto, Uccello, Vermeer, Courbet, and Cézanne. In her foundational study on the relationship between painting and cinema, Angela Dalle Vacche acknowledges Bresson's unique contributions to the interchange between painting and cinema, but observes that almost no analysis has been done on the topic. Dalle Vacche is quite right: beyond a few preliminary nods, little has been done to explore such connections in a rigorous or detailed way. Studies on the relationship between painting and cinema tend to focus on a small group of filmmakers, led by such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, or Peter Greenaway.
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- Late Bresson and the Visual ArtsCinema, Painting and Avant-Garde Experiment, pp. 35 - 80Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018