Notes on the Cinematographer (Green Integer) (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From 1950 to 1974, French film director Bresson ( Pickpocket, Mouchette wrote notes for his own use, and over 450 of those brief reflections were collected for this slim volume. The casual but succinct observations, presented here three or four to a page, consist of short paragraphs or single sentences. Some are fragmentary phrases: "Passionate for the appropriate." Some are self-directed: "Apply myself to insignificant (non-significant) image." Some are maxims: "Empty the pond to get the fish." Some are quotations: "Cezanne: 'At each touch I risk my life.' " Some are questions: "Is it for singing always the same song that the nightingale is so admired?" All demonstrate a scintillating curiosity and quest for perfection.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

French film classic, tr J Griffin, intro Le Clezio

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Product Details

• Paperback: 136 pages
• Publisher: Green Integer (May 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557133654
• ISBN-13: 978-1557133656
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 4.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #135,125 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must have for any non-Hollywood Style Filmmakers, May 13, 2003

By A Customer

If you want a step by step, how to make film book, you're better off browsing the bookstore at your local film school.

If you are a novice filmmaker, and you want to make art with film or video, and you want a guidebook on how to THINK and FEEL about your chosen art form, this is a must.

Bresson inspired the French New Wave filmmakers, and in my opinion was one of the few directors this world has seen who actually considered the particular reality of the moving image and created a set of principles to guide his choices as a director based on the medium itself, and not on any inherited traditional technique. One of the primary divisions in film theory is whether you believe film to be an extension of theatre or something entirely different.

For Bresson theatre is a more intellectual, mind based experience, whereas film is an EXPERIENTIAL art form. Bresson was highly interest in TRUTH over the APPEARANCE of truth. For Bresson the camera and audio recorder capture the essence of a thing, and therefore he cautions against using actors, and sets, and instead suggests people being themselves and shooting on actual locations.

This book is actually a collection of notes that Bresson wrote to himself over the course of his career. It is a wonderful look into the mind of an artist. In this book I have found a kindred spirit, whose insights into the nature of film and film production are distilled down to their essential forms. What kind of Truth does the camera capture, what elements go in the mise-en-scene which add or distort that truth, how do you illicit the inner truth of the actor (model) while still maintaining the requirements of the plot and script?

There are two books which have, for me, opened up the truest possibilities of film as an artform. These books are: "Notes on the Cinematographer" by Bresson, and "Sculpting in Time" by Tarkovsky. These books are a must read for anyone interested in exploring the true potential of film as an art form.

Also, this book goes in and out of print fairly regularly, so you should buy it whenever you see it being sold. Its relatively inexpensive, but contains a wealth of knowledge. It makes a great gift for someone interested in film or video as an art form.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Towards a Poetics of Film, August 9, 2000

By	Joe Beirne "Joe B." (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There is no better guide to the process and experience of making a film. Though its epigrammatic style makes it at first seem abstract, Notes on the Cinematographer is essentially a step-by-step handbook on what to do (and more so, what not to do) with actors and a movie camera. The title is so unintentionally misleading as to the subject of the work, which contains not a single line on lighting or photography ('cinematographer' is Bresson's rhetorical name for 'film-maker') that I believe it has obscured what would otherwise be a justly renown (and more readily-available) classic text on filmmaking.

This book stands also as an intriguing commentary on Bresson's films, on which is it is difficult to say anything adequate.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Writing With Images, March 7, 2003

By	Arch Llewellyn "arch-l" - See all my reviews

"Notes on the Cinematographer" is a tidy, Zen-like summation of the special aesthetic Bresson brought to film. 'Cinema' to him was simply filmed theater. He wanted movies to do something more, to create a new language of images that could express a character's inner states and moods (I think this goal, more than anything, explains why he's so often labeled a 'spiritual' director). Bresson wanted faces, not actors; events, not scenes; "BEING instead of SEEMING." To this end he insisted on amateurs over trained actors, noises over music, slowness and close-ups over speed and pans. Cinematography as Bresson explains it here is a unique form of writing. His efforts to make an essentially mechanical & visual medium parallel the inwardness of the written word has to be one of the strangest and most fascinating projects in the history of film. Not surprisingly, he writes beautifully, and these aphoristic koans, surrounded by all that empty white space, are as haunting as anything he captured on film. A tiny masterpiece.