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"Seventeen Years after Diary of a Country Priest " "Seventeen Years after Diary of a Country Priest " March 16, 1967, " Le Figaro littéraire"
Napoléon Murat: Robert Bresson, when did you first meet Bernanos?
Robert Bresson: I have never met Bernanos. He fell ill when he came to Paris from Tunisia in the summer of 1948. Hospitalization, surgery, and death followed at a dizzying speed. Regarding the Diary of a Country Pastor, I have no contact with him—not even indirectly. At that time, I said that the dead Bernanos was more of an obstacle to me than the living Bernanos.
Murat: Why did you decide to make "Diary of a Country Priest"?
Bresson: This is a commission. I feel honored to be invited not only to make a film, but also to make a film that is not based on a simple story or novel. My main consideration is to serve this book, not myself. Since then, I have gradually doubted (my work on "Muchette" lights up a light bulb in my mind) whether film writing can gain anything from literary adaptations-I mean a complete Faithful adaptation.
Murat: What is particularly interesting to you in "Diary of a Country Priest"?
Bresson: The most striking thing for me is the study notebook—the diary—in which the pastor’s pen turns an external world into an internal one, accompanied by a kind of Spiritual inflection (spiritual inflection). This is the focus of my script, more than a plot point that a filmmaker would normally focus on. There have been objections. I had to leave one producer and find another one. How much time I wasted chasing producers (until recently)! I was not able to make a film until 1950, two years later.
Murat: How did the "People of Bernanos" react to your film?
Bresson: Good, I think.
Murat: In your film collection, how would you position "Diary of a Country Priest"?
Bresson: In the process of making it, I started to better understand what I did. The field of film writing is immeasurable and full of shadows. I feel like a blind person in an involuntary realm (or, perhaps voluntary?) groping my way. To capture the reality of flying vertical. However, it would be completely meaningless for me to use this amazing camera to just reproduce the imitations of the actors-even the talented ones. I have a solid system (better described as an anti-system): no actors, no dramas, no “directors”, about the difference between performers and fabricated roles, about “mistakes” (mistakes) -takes) instead of the surprise of "takes", etc.
Murat: Do you think the characters of Bernanos are particularly helpful to this "non-performance" style?
Bresson: Yes, because with Bernanos, you get pictures—not analysis or psychology. The absence of analysis and psychology in his book is similar to the absence of analysis and psychology in my film. If there are analysis and psychology in my film, they will {appear} like a portrait painter. Another thing I like about Bernanos (and this is directly related to his characters) is that his supernatural is constructed from reality.
Murat: The Christian spirit of Bernanos-is he a deviationist? What is his understanding of disobedience?
Bresson: I guess he will accuse the Christians of his time who used Christianity as an excuse and did not follow the words of Christ. Dissident? I don't have a good understanding of this topic. I believe I am not capable of studying Bernanos-especially from the perspective of religious philosophy. My belief is simple.
Murat: Do you think Bernanos' despair is essential to his work?
Bresson: If there is despair in his work, it is due to a negligence in writing, or more due to poor reading. Even suicide...Muchette's, for example-Bernanos used so many words to describe it-was not the cause of despair. Her innocence, her fear is like that of an animal being tracked. In the film there is a parallel between the bird being hunted and the Muschett. For her, death is not an end, an end (Bernanos asserts [dixit] arbitrarily), but on the contrary, it is a beginning. She is waiting for a revelation.
Murat: Are you attracted to Bernanos's combative side-Catholic and political views?
Bresson: Not only was I not impressed by it, but in his political and Catholic views, Bernanos was an active fighter, and I didn't count as a fighter.
Murat: What about "Muchette"? Why, after an interval of fifteen years, you would go back to Bernanos' text and adapt it into a movie?
Bresson: I was eager to make a film last summer. But I don't have time to write things completely from scratch. And I like Muschett—the underage, civilian protagonist. At the same time I feel cautious about its brutality. Can I make Mouchet tolerable without making her likable?
Murat: Why is there a story about Mouchet first, and then there is a second one?
Bresson: Bernanos himself said that he cherished the name "Muchette" and couldn't resist the girls who named it so different. The difference is not only in age. The girl in " Sous le soleil de Satan " ( Sous le soleil de Satan ) is sixteen years old, and the girl in " La Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette " ( La Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette ) and my film is younger and fourteen years old.
Murat: A flash of happiness in a scene of bumper cars in your film. why?
Bresson: I made up an open-air playground with a boy who made Mouchet feel attractive. He appeared and disappeared like a ghost. The disappearance of hope does not always bring despair. Another more obvious reason for this open-air playground and this boy is that this lightness and joy makes the subsequent darkness more intense.
Murat: What about a scene in the shack?
Bresson: That's from Bernanos. All I did was release my two protagonists into the events in the book and capture the flashes of their faces. I resist words.
Murat: Do you think loneliness is at the center of Bernanos' work?
Bresson: In my opinion, Bernanos only deals with some problems rarely: he {more is} observes the performance of his characters on specific occasions. What emerges from the film is not so much loneliness, but perhaps incommunicability.
Murat: What do you think represents the pain caused by the lack of God and the lack of self?
Bresson: In the "Diary of a Country Pastor", the name of God is said at every turn. Not once in "Muchette". This is the difference. Only the language written by the film—I firmly believe that—can make the ineffable be felt.
Murat: Can you give a critical evaluation of Bernanos's portfolio?
Bresson: I am not qualified to evaluate it. I often find some sublime things in his works. It would be fair to count Bernanos among our great writers if we only attribute the element to the sublime.
Murat: Is there a compatibility between the works of Christian Bernanos and the works of Christian Bresson?
Bresson: My work? I think they are essays and attempts. It is not very practical to compare two things that are so different from a book and a film.
Murat: What about the person himself?
Bresson: It is difficult for me to imagine someone who is less like me than Bernanos-in terms of taste, thoughts, and means of expression. What really brings us together is inevitably our Christian tradition, even though we do not all share the same beliefs, as far as I know.
Murat: Do you feel connected with the presence of Satan in Bernanos?
Bresson: I have only seen, or felt, the devil once, at a dog I found. I must get rid of it immediately, even though I love animals. This is strange.
Murat: Do you think Bernanos is a contemporary writer?
Bresson: I don't have a very clear idea about this. Everything changes too quickly. In form, it is not; in substance, it is—if it is possible to separate the two.
Murat: Do you think his influence will continue?
Bresson: When he thinks he is right, he tries to express it, and those who are different from what he thinks are wrong. He doesn't care about all this. Not an understatement, but a big book.
Murat: Bernanos' works, basically, take place outside the city and connect with the land. Do you have any thoughts on this?
Bresson: He knows very well the life in the village-the life in the small town, where people stab the neighbors in the back... The three women who attracted her curiosity before the death of Mouchet were very good. horrible.
Murat: What about Muschett?
Bresson: Bernanos herself said that she seemed like a bull that was repeatedly stabbed with a short gun, a spatula, and a good sword.
Notes:
Literary Figaro ( Le Figaro littéraire ) 1946 Nian first issue of the French newspaper, since 1947, as "Le Figaro" ( Le Figaro ) release of four weekly supplement.
Mis-takes is a word game. Mistake means mistakes and mistakes. The spelling includes the root "mis-" which means "mistake" and the "take" of the film shooting.
In the Sun of Satan ( Sous le soleil de Satan ) Bernanos' first published novel, in 1926. It tells about a young and fanatical priest who was tormented by the ungodliness of his people and doubts about his own abilities. Muschett is a girl who is surrounded by demons. The priest wants to save her, but also suffers from Satan. Temptation.
La Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette ( La Nouvelle histoire de Mouchette ) Bernanos's novel published in 1937.
Satan, also known as Devil, and many other names, is an entity in Abrahamic religions, which lures humans into sin or falsehood. It is generally described as a fallen angel in Christianity, and as an elf in Islam.
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