Between genres and styles in the films of Robert Bresson

Authors

  • Luíza Beatriz Alvim Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2015.127

Keywords:

Robert Bresson, French cinema, genres, classical music, Rococo painting

Abstract

The films of French director Robert Bresson are considered sober and transcendental. However, in A gentle woman (1969) and in Four nights of a dreamer (1972), he included extracts of quite different genres, like a libertine comedy (the extract of film Benjamim by Michel Deville, 1968), a Shakespearean tragedy (a performance of Shakespeare´s Hamlet) and a gangster film (When love possesses us, produced by Bresson himself). In a way, those excerpts represent exactly the opposite of Bresson´s cinema. On the other hand, they still have some familiarity with it. We analyze the approach of those genres in the sequences in Bresson´s films, as well of the styles present in them by the use of music and images of paintings.

Author Biography

Luíza Beatriz Alvim, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil

Temporary lecturer at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. PhD in Communication with the thesis "Robert Bresson and music".

References

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Published

2016-02-17

How to Cite

Alvim, L. B. (2016). Between genres and styles in the films of Robert Bresson. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 5(1), 113–136. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2015.127

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