Robert Bresson

French film director of 14 films in 40 years; he left a reputation as one of cinema's most austere artists. His first films were stylized pieces begun during the German occupation. After the '50s, he pared down his style and his vision darkened to bleak and remorseless pictures of failure. The most frequent viewpoint ascribed to his work is Jansenist, named for the 17th century bishop of Ypres who believed in a particularly bleak reading of human experience. Most of his films remind us that life is not a cabaret.

A private person, little is known about Bresson personally. A Catholic by birth, he has since been said to label himself "a Christian atheist." He studied classics and philosophy before deciding to become a painter. When the painting fell through it was replaced by a dedication to cinema. His film debut was in 1934 with "Public Affairs."

From 1940-'41 Bresson spent some nine months as a prisoner of war in Germany. Returning to France, he made his first two full-length films, "Angels of Sin," 1943 and "The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne," 1945, out of a total of 13 features. "The Ladies" was poorly received at the time, but its classic status is now as solid as "Beauty and the Beast" or "Orphee." In his films he permits no stars, no performers of any kind and disdains the word "actor," preferring "model," as if he were a painter. In the 1950s, at the peak of his career, he made the movies "Pickpocket" and "Diary of the Country Priest." Of the 14 films he made, only one lasts more than a hundred minutes. In 1956 Bresson became a hit with his film "A Man Escaped." The movie redefines suspense: the traditional question of whether something will or will not happen becomes instead, the urge to discover "how" it comes about. It is also an allegory of the soul's flight from the body or a dramatization of the contest between predestination and free will. Some of his later films include "A Gentle Woman," 1969, "Four Nights of a Dreamer," 1971, and "Money," 1983.