The Impact of Non-Actors in Cinematic Storytelling, Pt. 1

The Filmmaking of Robert Bresson, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel

Hi, welcome back to sancho*. This week we continue with my thesis, The Impact of Non-Actors in Cinematic Storytelling: The Filmmaking of Robert Bresson, Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel. This series will culminate with the online premiere of my film, Dawn.

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Roche: One essential characteristic of your films is your rejection of the theatrical.

Bresson: The theatricality that I reject, or, rather, that I try to reject, because it’s not that easy, is expression by means of facial cues, gestures and vocal effects.

Roche: But you seem to be looking for some kind of anti-expression…

Chalais: You push it to extremes.

Roche: Not only do you not want acting, but you don’t even allow realism. It’s as if you make the actors blank, less expressive than in real life.

Bresson: I don’t think so. I try to draw them towards the automatism that occupies such a large part of our lives.

Chalais: But can you see how people might think you’re turning your back on what audiences want to see?

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I. Bresson’s Legacy

Conducted shortly after the December 1959 premiere of Pickpocket, this interview sees film actress France Roche and film journalist François Chalais challenge Bresson about his filmmaking. It is a fitting introduction to this chapter for two reasons. Firstly, it provides insight into Bresson’s philosophy on directing, a fundamental rejection of “the terrible habit of theatre”. Bresson was of the idea that the theatre and cinema were separate mediums, each with their own unique language. He expands further in his seminal book, Notes on the Cinematograph.

‘The truth of cinematography cannot be the truth of theatre, not the truth of the novel, nor the truth of painting.’

But the interview is of interest to me particularly because of the confrontational manner and tone in which Roche and Chalais conducts it, which illustrates how Bresson’s approach to acting and performance provoked even the film literate then, despite—or perhaps precisely because of—his minimal and unimposing style.