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Neither God Nor Master
Robert Bresson and Radical Politics
by Brian Price
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Book Presentation:
The French auteur Robert Bresson, director of such classics as Diary of a Country Priest (1951), The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), The Devil, Probably (1977), and L’Argent (1983), has long been thought of as a transcendental filmmaker preoccupied with questions of grace and predestination and little interested in the problems of the social world. This book is the first to view Bresson’s work in an altogether different context. Rather than a religious—or spiritual—filmmaker, Bresson is revealed as an artist steeped in radical, revolutionary politics.
Situating Bresson in radical and aesthetic political contexts, from surrealism to situationism, Neither God nor Master shows how his early style was a model for social resistance. We then see how, after May 1968, his films were in fact a series of reflections on the failure of revolution in France—especially as “failure” is understood in relation to Bresson’s chosen literary precursors, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and Russian revolutionary culture of the nineteenth century.
Restoring Bresson to the radical political culture from which he emerged—and to which he remained faithful—Price offers a major revision of the reputation of one of the most celebrated figures in the history of French film. In doing so, he raises larger philosophical questions about the efficacy of revolutionary practices and questions about interpretation and metaphysical tendencies of film historical research that have, until now, gone largely untested.
About the Author:
Brian Price is associate professor of film and visual studies at the University of Toronto. He is coeditor of two volumes, On Michael Haneke and Color: The Film Reader, and a founding editor of World Picture, an online journal of critical theory.
Press Reviews:
"Neither God nor Master, which resituates Robert Bresson’s films in their complex relationships with literary, cinematic, and mass culture, addresses a major gap in film criticism. This exemplary book will reshape future debates about Bresson, and his place, not only in the French cinematic canon, but in French culture." —Scott Durham, Northwestern University
See the publisher website: University of Minnesota Press
See the complete filmography of Robert Bresson on the website: IMDB ...
> From the same author:
The Lost Cinema of Mexico (2022)
From Lucha Libre to Cine Familiar and Other Churros
Dir. Olivia Cosentino and Brian Price
Classical Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting (2018)
Aristotle and the Modern Scriptwriter
by Brian Price
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
Color, The Film Reader (2006)
Dir. Angela Dalle Vacche and Brian Price
Subject: Technique > Aesthetics
> On a related topic:
Cinema and Contact (2020)
The Withdrawal of Touch in Nancy, Bresson, Duras and Denis
Late Bresson and the Visual Arts (2018)
Cinema, Painting and Avant-Garde Experiment
Subject: Director > Robert Bresson
The Bond of the Furthest Apart (2017)
Essays on Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Bresson, and Kafka
Subject: Director > Robert Bresson
Looking Beyond Neoliberalism (2024)
French and Francophone Belgian Cinema and the Crisis
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