21 inspirational quotes for filmmakers.

Last week I randomly found a recent edition of “Notes on the Cinematograph” by Robert Bresson at a flea market in Lisbon.

Bresson, a French film director who produced classics like “Au Hasard Balthazar” and “The Trial of Joan of Arc” is considered by many among the greatest artists of the twentieth century. The book had been out of print for at least 30 years so I immediately picked it up.

“The power of Bresson’s films lies in the fact that his purity and fastidiousness are at the same time an idea about life, about what Cocteau called ‘inner style,’ about the most serious way of being human.” Susan Sontag

Honestly, I was expecting to get some hardcore film theory or techniques no longer applicable to today’s digital world. What I found instead was a long list of inspiring quotes which I organized in three categories: Cinematography, Shooting, and Editing & Sound.

If you are interested in buying the book please consider using this Amazon link. It costs you nothing and it helps us a bit. 

On Cinematography

• Cinematography is writing with moving images and sounds.
• Images, like words in a dictionary, have no power or value except through their position and relation.
• A single word or a single movement that is not right, or is in the wrong place, gets in the way of everything else.
• Debussy used to play with the piano’s lid down. Your film must resemble what you see on shutting your eyes. You must be capable, at any instant, of seeing and hearing the entire story.
• An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it.
• Be the first to see what you see as you see it.
• Cinematography is a new way of writing, therefore of feeling.

On Shooting

• Someone who can work with the minimum can work with the most. One who can only work with the most cannot, inevitably, with the minimum.
• The faculty of using well my resources diminishes when their number grows.
• You must put yourself into a state of intense ignorance and curiosity, and yet see things in advance.
• Cinematography is a military art. Prepare for a film like for a battle.
• To be constantly changing lenses in photographing is like constantly changing one’s glasses.
• Things are made more visible not by adding more light, but by the fresh angle at which I regard them.

On Editing and Sound

• If the eye is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear. One cannot be at the same time all eyes and all ears.
• When a sound can replace an image, cut the image or neutralize it. The ear goes more towards the within, the eye towards the outer.
• A sound must never come to the rescue of an image, nor an image to the rescue of a sound.
• If a sound is the obligatory complement of an image, give preponderance either to the sound, or to the image. If equal, they damage or kill each other.
• Image and sound must not support each other, but must work each in turn through a sort of relay.
• Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.
• Let images and sounds present themselves spontaneously to your eyes and ears as words do to the spirit of a creative writer.
• What is for the eye must not duplicate what is for the ear. Don’t use two violins when one is enough.

How’s that for an oldie? I find Bresson’s advice very inspiring, and hope you do too. As I mentioned above, please consider using this Amazon link to purchase the book. Thanks!