Directors Whose Interviews You Like More Than Their Movies?

[MortSahlFan]

a bit off topic
I love some of Bresson's films but his theories might be his most important work. shame nobody was properly inspired by them

Not off topic at all.. My third favorite director, and just an hour ago, I saw this e-book I had, which seemed like theory. If you're interested, I'll look for the title.

[Twit 2]

a bit off topic
I love some of Bresson's films but his theories might be his most important work. shame nobody was properly inspired by them

Tarkovsky and Wenders both wax lyrical about him in interviews and you can see his clear influence on their work. That's two off the top of my head, must be more.

[PeasOnSticks]

I used to love Herzog but I can't stand his self-aggrandising persona anymore. thankfully some of his films (Aguirre, Kaspar Hauser) are more clever than he is

I feel similarly. The self-aggrandisement has become more grating in recent years, ironically as his films have been getting less impressive. He can be quite tedious now, as he spends a lot of time in interviews perpetuating his own myth, repeating the same old anecdotes. Kaspar Hauser, Stroszek, and Aguirre are all a much more interesting watch than any of those interviews.

Not a film director, but J.G. Ballard is someone whose work doesn't seem all that great to me, but whose interviews I find delightful, and strangely comforting.

[Twit 2]

Herzog's always had that self-aggrandisement - a megalomaniacal swagger, even. He's always been keen to play up his myth and use it for promotion of the films. The only thing that's changed is that we're saturated in social media and online culture and so there's much more of him about. You can just switch all that off and return to the films. Of his more recent stuff I think the volcano and Chatwin docs are both superb.

[Smeraldina Rima]

chviek, could you say more about Bresson's theories and what you think has not really been taken on by directors who admire his films or have some similarities? And Monsieur Verdoux, could you write about what is excellent about his book? Sorry if this is all a bit pushy.

[MortSahlFan]

Herzog's always had that self-aggrandisement - a megalomaniacal swagger, even. He's always been keen to play up his myth and use it for promotion of the films. The only thing that's changed is that we're saturated in social media and online culture and so there's much more of him about. You can just switch all that off and return to the films. Of his more recent stuff I think the volcano and Chatwin docs are both superb.

Speaking of Herzog, I was on another board discussing his movies, and it seemed like 90% only discussed his movies from the 70s and early 80s.

[chveik]

Herzog%u2019s always had that self-aggrandisement - a megalomaniacal swagger, even. He%u2019s always been keen to play up his myth and use it for promotion of the films. The only thing that%u2019s changed is that we%u2019re saturated in social media and online culture and so there%u2019s much more of him about. You can just switch all that off and return to the films. Of his more recent stuff I think the volcano and Chatwin docs are both superb.

true but there is a point (I dunno exactly when, possibly in the 80s) that it's started to be detrimental to his work. you can clearly see a difference between old docs like The Great Ecstasy... or Land of Silence and Darkness where he seems to genuinely care about his subject and doesn't always put himself in the forefront and more recent ones (I remember Into the Abyss being particularly tedious in that regard). the problem is that his opinions aren't specially interesting or 'deep' in themselves, what made him a great director is the particular perspective he took on his subjects . also I think at some point he started to see himself as invincible and he endangered his actors and crew more than once, I mean he could've been trialed for manslaughter for what happened during Fitzcarraldo's filming. Herzog is the first 'serious' director I truly cared about and I can still enjoy some of his films without 'switching off' anything though.

[Twit 2]

Interesting points. Will respond at length at some point, as I can talk about Herzog until the cows open a film come home.

[chveik]

chveik, could you say more about Bresson's theories and what you think has not really been taken on by directors who admire his films or have some similarities? And Monsieur Verdoux, could you write about what is excellent about his book? Sorry if this is all a bit pushy.

I reckon this interview would be much more instructive than my clumsly explanations. :)

as for the other question, I'm mostly thinking of his dedication to only film with non-professional actors and his rejection of any kind of theatrics and overdramatisation. also I find that art house cinema has been mostly obsessed with long takes for quite some time (just take a look at the most praised directors of recent time - Tarr, Diaz, Ming-Liang and many others, particularly in Asia) whereas Bresson's work was more focused on a more 'dynamic' type of editing to convey his ideas (hard to describe really but for instance the way the hands of the pickpocket create a link between different takes).

I was probably too dogmatic concerning the directors he's been influencing. imo Godard and Haneke, for various reasons, have exploited his theories in a meaningful way (for instance, the actors' direction in Godard's films since the 80s).

in terms of his films' themes, mostly concerned with the idea of 'grace' and the particular brand of tortured christianism from the authors he adapted, I think Dumont is clearly influenced by them (but I don't really care for his films).

[Smeraldina Rima]

Thanks. I was trying to ask the question that you answered. The comment at the beginning of the video about the hands of actors reminds me that in The Silence of the Sea the narrator describes seeing the truth in the lieutenant's expressive hands more than in his face. I mentioned in another thread that Melville apparently saw The Silence of the Sea as a forerunner of The Journal of a Country Priest. Jonathan Kirschner writes this about it:

The Silence of the Sea is not so much "Melvillian" (long takes,  complex constructions,  edge-of-the-seat suspense) as it  is "Bressonian" (quiet,  minimalist,  elliptical).  Of  course Melville, never wanting for confidence, always insisted that it was Bresson who copied him. [..] The point is moot, since Bresson by now holds the implicit trade-mark on that style—but Melville has a case. Bresson's first two features, Les anges du Péché(Angels of Sin, 1943) and Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945), are shot fairly conventionally; Bresson was not fully Bressonian until Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d'un curé de champagne, 1951), which was released two years after Silence, Melville's debut.

The modern films that I always think of as being Bressony are the Dardenne brothers'. They also use a lot of (but not only) non-professional actors and care about having the right bodies and movements, but I'm not sure whether you would consider them to use Bresson style dynamic editing or be more reliant on long takes. In one interview they talked about hiding certain gestures or parts of the body of the actors as being of equal importance to them as highlighting the ones that they wanted to be seen. Sorry for spelling your name wrong.

[greenman]

A lot of Bresson's castings though did go on to have significant careers afterwards so I'm not sure you could say it was a lack of ability that was demanded so much as there being non established and easier to bend to his style of working.

I'm guessing part of the appeal of Tarkovsky over Bresson is that the former's sense of spirituality was more non specific than the latters clearly strong Christian focus.

[Smeraldina Rima]

I think you're right about those benefits of using the non-professional actors but I don't think either of us meant to imply that a lack of ability was demanded of the actors. I was under the impression that the main aim of the style of working was a negative one: as chveik mentioned above, to avoid various problems of the "theatrical" performance habits of trained actors, which Bresson broadly considered to be less truthful and less graceful. I wanted to ask chveik not really about Bresson's theory but about which aspect of the theory he felt was sort of unfulfilled and I found the answer about editing and lengths of takes interesting. I think you're right that the specific Christian ethics could work against Bresson today in some ways, especially if they are seen as bound up with the theories of graceful movement. The Dardennes slightly similarly speak about not asking questions about the psychological motivations of characters (which their trained actors are more inclined to want to do). There was a documentary on Mubi tracking down the actors from Pickpocket, but I missed it.

[Smeraldina Rima]

One thing I love about the Dardennes is the relationship between trained actors (Olivier Gourmet mainly) and the untrained or discovered young actors (like Jérémie Renier): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSCe0b03bG4

[greenman]

Maybe Kieslowski? visually I spose you could argue he became flashier in France but circa The Dekalog I think you have a lot of the same considered closeups and cuts rather than just long takes. There is a pretty strong sense of Christian morality as well although I spose you could argue not in the sense of the characters being Christ like in their suffering. Kiarostami perhaps even closer to his visual style but I think more intellectual and interested in film making itself as a subject rather than just religious morality.

In the modern era I'd agree it does tend to feel like film makers are more comfortable with making Tarkovsky influences open, someone like Nuri Bilge Ceylan making direct references to him in Uzak and being willing to have long atmospheric obviously considered environmental shots. When you look at most directors who work more with closeups and cuts like the Dardennes I think the biggest commitment seems to be to naturalism, less willingness to have very considered compositions and show the hand of the director more.

Kechiche does seem more willing to "show his hand"(dirty old bollocks, etc) in terms of more obviously composed/lit shots and indeed in making films that are very "procedural", lots of time spent on carrying out tasks as a reveal of character. Indeed looking at it in that wau but in a totally different area perhaps you could argue Michael Mann is maybe closest? something like Thief you could say is the anti A Man Escaped, very procedural indeed but breaking in rather than breaking out, becoming more isolated rather than more trusting.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Alex Cox. I find him fascinating to listen to, but aside from some aspects of Repo Man I can't really stand his films.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I got really confused when you lot were going on about Tarkovsky and Wenders bigging up Bresson because I thought you meant Luc.

[greenman]

Tarkovsky was working on a film about a pedo assassin when he died.

[Smeraldina Rima]

Thanks for sharing those further thoughts, greenman - a lot of references I'm not familiar with though. We all seem to have quite different impressions of what is most distinctive in Bresson's films and what his interesting cinematic relations might be. It's maybe too nuanced or complex a topic to talk about without nitpicking about each other's diversions or going into a level of detail that would be inappropriate/embarassing for this forum. I haven't seen any Tarkovsky films and have only seen three Bresson films so I won't add anything else here but would still be interested to know what Monsieur Verdoux particularly liked about Bresson's book if you get the chance.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

I tell ya, it's actually been a while since I read it (Notes on the Cinematographe) and I think what struck me the most about it was Bresson's search for a kind of radical clarity of expression, a purity of movement, his restless sifting through ideas about film form as a fabric of transcendence, but also, there is something compelling about how the book's aphorisms and little stabs of ideas resemble that of the diarist in his Diary of a Country Priest and the diarists of the films of one of Bresson's most faithful acolytes, Paul Schrader. Bresson is a man who is haunted by his mission to a certain degree. It's also one of the few director books where you get feeling that the author has actually achieved what they set out to do. Impossible to read the Raul Ruiz or Jerry Lewis books and not think "Well you didn't always quite manage this, did you?"

[Smeraldina Rima]

Perfect. What a scene I've made in the thread. Thanks.