Film Series
Bresson on Cinema
Cinema’s great ascetic, Robert Bresson, searched for the soul in the modern world. To mark the NYRB’s publication of Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983 (newly translated from the acclaimed French edition) and Bresson’s beloved aphoristic treatise on the art of film, Notes on the Cinematograph, this series will present a selection of Bresson’s films alongside favorite films that embody his radical sensibility.
Though his films are often discussed in terms of their sui generis style—an aesthetic that favored non-professional actors, intricate sound design, and tableaux-like compositions—this series reveals an artist in dialogue with cinema history, illuminating our understanding of this most elusive and divinely inspired of filmmakers.
Go to the movies just once a month and a BAM membership pays for itself.
Bresson’s study of crime and spiritual crisis is forever modern.
Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece transforms “real life” into heartrending cinema.
Charlie Chaplin delights in this hilarious and heartfelt silent comedy classic.
Chaplin’s masterpiece balances balletic physical comedy and heart-tugging pathos.
Pioneering quasi-documentarian Robert Flaherty captures a child’s-eye view of nature.
The hardscrabble life of an Irish fishing family is depicted in this docufiction landmark.
This program brings together three of the best of Bresson favorite Buster Keaton.
Eisenstein’s electrifying agitprop masterwork remains a technical tour-de-force.
A housewife and married doctor carry out a secret affair in this classic romance.
Bresson’s prison break classic wrings suspense from an accumulation of minute details.
Bresson’s breakthrough film is one of the great spiritual works of cinema.
Jean Cocteau is a poet traveling through time in his fantastical final film.
Bresson’s study of earthly suffering is his most emotionally devastating work.