Collections/November 2023

Directed by Robert Bresson

A singular, iconoclastic artist, Robert Bresson left behind an astonishing body of work, defined by the search for what he called “not beautiful images, but necessary images.” In a long, visionary career that began in the 1940s and ended in the 1980s, he continually refined the strict precision of his famously ascetic style—abolishing psychology, professional actors, and ornate camera work, and instead concentrating on the exactingly choreographed movements of his “models” (as he called his performers) and the anguished solitude of his martyred characters. In indelible visions of suffering and salvation like Pickpocket , Au hasard Balthazar , and Mouchette , he stripped cinema to its essence to reveal nothing less than the very soul of his subjects.

9 films — 8 on the Channel, 1 unavailable