Robert Bresson: Cinematic Style as Philosophy

A philosophical engagement with Bresson’s many films, attentive to more than their religiosity.

Over a forty-year career, Robert Bresson developed one of the most distinctive cinematic styles in the history of filmmaking. Criticizing conventional movies as “filmed theater,” Bresson proposed instead a way of writing with images, which he called “cinematographs.” Robert B. Pippin argues here for a way of understanding how these stylistic innovations express a range of philosophical commitments, explorations of the possible sources of meaning in late modern life, and the implications of the absence of such sources.