"We are all still coming to terms with Robert Bresson, and the peculiar power and beauty of his films. This thoughtfully argued, wonderfully lucid book goes a long way toward giving us a clearer understanding of one of the cinema's greatest artists."--Martin Scorsese

"Bresson is among the most meticulous, moral, and profound of filmmakers. Tony Pipolo evokes and celebrates his genius with this readable, engrossing study."--Roger Ebert

"It becomes clearer all the time: Robert Bresson's films demand and deserve a lifetime of intense scrutiny. Tony Pipolo has given them just that, a lifetime of viewing, analysis, and exploration. Following the pathways of the films, following the footsteps of their inscrutable creator, he brings us a Bresson at once more ascetic and more majestic than we had imagined possible."--Dudley Andrew, Yale University

"Pipolo explores Bresson's sources and methods across his career, tracing the course of spiritual grace in a fallen world. Trained both as a film historian and a psychoanalyst, Pipolo sees Bresson's odysseys as not unlike those of the psychoanalytic journey, highlighting their common goals of liberation and transformation-and provides profound new insight into one of cinema's most elusive auteurs."--Tom Gunning, University of Chicago

"[T]his book is, as Pipolo writes, a 'highly personal response' to Bresson's body of work and a chronological, in-depth dissection of the films with particular attention paid to Bresson's style. ... This is a scholarly yet accessible study."--Library Journal

"As the book methodically progresses from film to film, Pipolo's unique dissection of Bresson's characters prompts readers to search beneath the visual chiaroscuro of Bresson's scene 'painting' and explore the core emotions, the underlying moral fiber, of the on-screen players. On every page of his masterful work, Pipolo's observations serve as a potent reminder to the serious spectator: it's often what's left unspoken--the slightest trembling of a lip or a downcast gaze--that can prove most vital to a film."--Film Comment

"Pipolo's volume is a thorough chronicle, imbued with warmth and personality."--Bookforum

Product Description

Perhaps the most highly regarded French filmmaker after Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson created a new kind of cinema through meticulous refinement of the form's grammatical and expressive possibilities. In thirteen features over a forty-year career, he held to an uncompromising moral vision and aesthetic rigor that remain unmatched. Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film is the first comprehensive study to give equal attention to the films, their literary sources, and psycho-biographical aspects of the work. Concentrating on the films' cinematographic, imagistic, narrative, and thematic structures, Pipolo provides a nuanced analysis of each film-including nearly 100 illustrations-elucidating Bresson's unique style as it evolved from the impassioned Les Anges du péche to such disconsolate meditations on the world as The Devil Probably and L'Argent. Special attention is also given to psychosexual aspects of the films that are usually neglected. Bresson has long needed a thoroughgoing treatment by a critic worthy to the task: he gets it here. From it emerges a provocative portrait of an extraordinary artist whose moral engagement and devotion to the craft of filmmaking are without equal.