Robert Bresson
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Calvary (2014)
Directed by John Michael McDonagh
influenced by Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
Themes Visuals
McDonagh, inspired by Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest , blends the bitter melancholy of that film with themes that will resonate with especial force in McDonagh’s native Ireland.
In Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1951), an obvious inspiration here, a rural community treats a young priest with disdain because he is young, effete and has a high-minded view of religion entirely out of keeping with the grind of their daily lives.
McDonagh himself has described his film as Robert Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest” “with a few gags thrown in.”
The picture is mostly structured as a series of snappy conversations Father James has with the members of his parish, who abide him with a bit more humor (but still much of the disdain) expressed by the parishioners in Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest .
Taking a conscious step away from the ironic frivolity of The Guard, McDonagh has mentioned Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest as an influence on Calvary .
In fact, McDonagh maintains a tone much more in keeping with Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest” or Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Léon Morin, Priest” than the churlish score-settling of “Philomena.”
During his contrived climax, Bertolucci�s use of the sublime ending of Mouchette only makes apparent the hopelessness of his attempt to give The Dreamers a dignity it doesn�t deserve.
Even when Isabelle's attempt at suicide is intercut with the suicide from Bresson's Mouchette (1967) it seems more like a spontaneous expression of her sense of tragedy than an intellectual comment on her action.
I love how they are able to find in the cinema a set of moral standards � a clip from Freaks demonstrates their sense of camaraderie as much as one from Mouchette demonstrates a sense of moral consequence or Marlene Dietrich�s Blonde Venus song and dance routine keys them into the exoticism of sex.
Given the plot, it's odd that Truffaut's Jules and Jim is never alluded to in any way, and the references to other movies that are included usually work better for the Cincinnati crowd (with its narrower choices) than for Parisians or Chicagoans (except for the one most American viewers are likely to find inexplicable -- clips from the end of Robert Bresson's Mouchette to contextualize a suicide attempt, which I found offensive).
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Directed by Charlie Kaufman
influenced by Les Dames du bois de Boulogne (1945)
During the return trip (with the chains on the tires), the couple’s discussions take on a tenser tone—and Kaufman makes notable, noticeable use of the sound of the car’s windshield wipers, a sidelong reference to a famous line of film criticism, from a 1951 essay by André Bazin and referring to Robert Bresson’s 1945 film “Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne”: “The sound of a windshield-wiper against a page of Diderot is all it took to turn it into Racinian dialogue.”
Like Robert Bresson’s similarly themed L’Argent, the endless cycle of greed can be traced back to a single piece of currency.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced by A Man Escaped (1956), Pickpocket (1959)
Themes
There are other films where the intensity of being inside someone is delivered: in so many Robert Bresson films—like Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, and Pickpocket—we inhabit the spiritual suspense of the central characters.
There are other films where the intensity of being inside someone is delivered: in so many Robert Bresson films—like Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, and Pickpocket—we inhabit the spiritual suspense of the central characters.
It even — or so some critics more imaginative than I have suggested — channels bits of minimalist French director Robert Bresson’s “A Man Escaped.”
Agony by agony, Silence imitates the classic films about religious intolerance and spiritual doubt: Father Rodrigues and Father Garupe hide in tall ferns from avenging warlords, evoking Sternberg’s Anatahan (1953); their witnessing of enslavement recollects Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff (1954); their surprise at the Japanese converts’ devotion recalls Borzage’s The Big Fisherman (1959); Rodrigues’s questioning by a devious old samurai (Issey Ogata) is a twist on Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (1951); a recurring Judas figure representing abject mankind brings to mind Buñuel’s Simon of the Desert (1965); an icon of enduring faith references Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987); even Neeson’s appearance unfortunately brings to mind Batman Begins (2005).
And yet the assumption that a film of deep religious feeling has to resemble a long slog is contradicted by the movies, some of which Scorsese references (such as Robert Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest”), that came fully alive onscreen at their moments of greatest spiritual intensity .
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Directed by Mel Gibson
influenced by Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
Visuals Themes
What you wonâ??t find in The Passion of the Christ is the formal purity of a film like Bressonâ??s Diary of a Country Priest or the documentary-style lyricism of Pasoliniâ??s The Gospel According to St. Matthew (or, for that matter, last fallâ??s superb The Gospel of John), but rather the color-saturated wide-screen cinematography, â??impactâ?? editing and amped-up digital soundtrack that are the calling cards of the high-end Hollywood studio picture.
Expressions of personal faith account for some of the cinema's very greatest works of art, from Carl Dreyer's Ordet and The Passion of Joan of Arc, to Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest.
Secret Things (2002)
Directed by Jean-Claude Brisseau
influenced by Les Dames du bois de Boulogne (1945)
Visuals
Like Bresson�s Les dames du Bois de Boulogne or Une femme douce or Au hasard, Balthasar, Brisseau�s film stays close (for much of its length) to the surfaces of contemporary reality while manifesting a total contempt for the level of naturalism where ordinary films live and die.
Ida (2013)
Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski
influenced by Diary of a Country Priest (1951), Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Themes Visuals
The relationship between the two is worthy of the Bresson of Diary of a Country Priest, and far more intense than the simple plot outline of what is only an eighty-minute film.
I almost expected to see the donkey from Au Hasard Balthazar wandering about in the background.
On this evidence the French writer-director Eugène Green (small previous oeuvre unknown to me) may be the reincarnation of Robert Bresson, master of the gnomically poetic (Pickpocket, Mouchette).
The ultimate cinematic expression of the last example would be Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar, in which, accidentally given a soul, a donkey dies for our sins.
The Driver (1978)
Directed by Walter Hill
influenced by Les Dames du bois de Boulogne (1945)
Visuals
O'Neal's softness provides an analysis of Steve McQueen, his "cowboy desperado" pitted against Dern's haunted sheriff -- macho hostility is ritualized, aestheticized, etherealized, the dialogue pitched at another Bresson, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne.
For a much more penetrating, artful look at Arthur and his knights, seek out Robert Bresson's Lancelot of the Lake (1974), recently released on DVD by New Yorker Video.
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Directed by Frank Darabont
influenced by A Man Escaped (1956)
Themes
Unlike the best prison dramas (like, say, Bresson’s A Man Escaped , Jean Genet’s Un chant d’amour, or any episode of Oz), sentimental twaddle like Shawshank Redemption (admittedly a few steps above a stinking pile of shit like The Last Castle ) says zilch about life behind bars and human interaction.
Seven Pounds (2008)
Directed by Gabriele Muccino
influenced by Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
Characters
You might have to go back to Claude Laydu in Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest to see an actor undergoing such exquisite anguish as Will Smith does in Gabriele Muccino’s Seven Pounds.
One does not expect to see some of Robert Bresson’s masterfully crafted A Man Escaped -type constructions to Finney’s escape.
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Directed by Matt Reeves
influenced by A Man Escaped (1956)
Plot
As a war movie, it’s like smaller, more character-driven films, such as the 1956 Robert Bresson film “A Man Escaped,” or the 1938 Jean Renoir film “La Grande Illusion.”
Robert Bresson made a similar existential film, “A Man Escaped,” about a prisoner in a Nazi camp who spent every waking moment in his daily routine plotting his escape and therefore his survival.
There is the safecracking in Michael Mann's Thief (1981) and other heist movies, and the painstaking efforts of prison escapees, like those of Fontaine in A Man Escaped (1956).