'No actors. (No directing of actors.) No parts. (No learning of parts.) No staging. But the use of working models, taken from life. BEING (models) instead of SEEMING (actors).' (Bresson, 1997: 14)

'Nature: what the dramatic art suppresses in favor of a naturalness that is learned and maintained by exercises.' (ibid., 18)

'The false when it is homogeous can yield truth (theatre)' (ibid., 9)

'Unbalance so as to re-balance' (ibid. 44)

'Hide the ideas, but so that people find them. The most important will be the most hidden.' (ibid. 44)

'Actors. The nearer they appear (on the screen) with their expressiveness, the further away they get. Houses, trees come nearer; the actors go away.' (ibid.: 65)

FRAGMENTATION 'This is indispensible if one does not want to fall into REPRESENTATION. See beings and things in their separate parts. Render them independent in order to give them a new dependence.' (ibid.: 93)

'Things too much in disorder, or too much in order, become equal, one no longer distinguishes them. They produce indifference and boredom.' (ibid.: 98)

'Don't show all sides of things. A margin of indefiniteness. ' (ibid.: 104)

'The actor is double. The alternate presence of him and of the other is what the public has been schooled to cherish.' (ibid.: 106)

'What our eyes and ears require is not the realistic persona but the real person.' (ibid.: 108)

all abstracts from Bresson, R. (1997) Notes on the Cinematographer, tr. by J. Griffin, Copenhagen: Green Integer.


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