Description
The color films of French film director Robert Bresson (1901-99) have largely been neglected, despite the fact that Bresson himself considered them to be more fully realized reflections of his aspirations for the cinema. This study presents a revised and revitalized Bresson, comparing his late style to painterly innovations in color, light, and iconography from the Middle Ages to the present, to abstract painting in France after World War II, and to affinities with the avant-garde movements of Surrealism, Constructivism, and Minimalism. Drawing on media archeology, this study views Bresson's work through such allied visual arts practices as painting, photography, sculpture, theater, and dance.
About the Author
Raymond Watkins currently teaches at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his Ph.D. in comparative literature and cinema from The University of Iowa, and has published in Cinema Journal, Studies in French Cinema, and The Quarterly Review of Film and Video.
Reviews
"Watkins's approach refreshingly expands the scope of Bressonian scholarship ... Late Bresson and the Visual Arts sheds light on a part of the filmmaker's career that has often been unjustly neglected, by way of commendable, high-level visual and intertextual analysis." - Marco Grosoli, H-France Review, Volume 20 (2020) "In his excellent book on Late Bresson and the Visual Arts (Amsterdam University Press 2018), Raymond Watkins argues that a blue-painted door evokes the work of Yves Klein. ... Watkins discusses the centrality of Schoeffer's Lux 1 piece in the art museum sequence of Une femme douce = I fully concur with Watkins's reading." - Roland-Francois Lack, University College London, The Cine-Tourist
Book Information
ISBN 9789462983649
Author Raymond Watkins
Format Hardback
Page Count 270
Imprint Amsterdam University Press
Publisher Amsterdam University Press
Series Film Culture in Transition
About the Author
Raymond Watkins currently teaches at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his Ph.D. in comparative literature and cinema from The University of Iowa, and has published in Cinema Journal, Studies in French Cinema, and The Quarterly Review of Film and Video.
Reviews
"Watkins's approach refreshingly expands the scope of Bressonian scholarship ... Late Bresson and the Visual Arts sheds light on a part of the filmmaker's career that has often been unjustly neglected, by way of commendable, high-level visual and intertextual analysis." - Marco Grosoli, H-France Review, Volume 20 (2020) "In his excellent book on Late Bresson and the Visual Arts (Amsterdam University Press 2018), Raymond Watkins argues that a blue-painted door evokes the work of Yves Klein. ... Watkins discusses the centrality of Schoeffer's Lux 1 piece in the art museum sequence of Une femme douce = I fully concur with Watkins's reading." - Roland-Francois Lack, University College London, The Cine-Tourist
Book Information
ISBN 9789462983649
Author Raymond Watkins
Format Hardback
Page Count 270
Imprint Amsterdam University Press
Publisher Amsterdam University Press
Series Film Culture in Transition
