PICKPOCKET (1959) / Robert Bresson / Film Excerpts

Film Excerpts from Robert Bresson's Masterpiece.

Bresson evolved the technique of "fragmentation" in order to discard the tradtional method of "representation". In a word, fragmentation meant the creation of unique fragments that produce meaning only upon juxtaposition whereas 'representation' involved variations on the principle of mise-en-scene. Whereas a fragment does not stand for a meaning on its own but lights up on contact with another fragment, the mise-en-scene of any kind builds a master plan and details through an execution of certain known and verbalized intentions within the framework of a master shot. In Bresson, The only intention that is a decision to place every fragment in a definite position in a given sequence of fragments. For purposes of cinematography it would mean that the image achieves an emptiness of a sensation through lightning and exposure, through contrast and diffusion. Opposed to the technique of mise-en-scene where scene, scenery, set, setting and actor's movement relate to a whole intentional environment(as in Eisenstein), Bresson 's single shot present itself as fragment(often with only hands, feet, door, faces, bodies, etc) of an intangible whole not displaying any particular intention. It is the ellipsis between fragments, the difference between fragments which finally conveys a sense of intangible intentions. That difference becomes a specific relation between the two fragments when bridged in the head of a spectator. Not on the screen but in the head of the spectator making him or her subjectively active participant. Cinema itself then appears a hub of multiple intentions in conflict with each other like music.
- MANI KAUL-

Category:

Film & Animation

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