Original subtitles

Can I have that mic back?

The mic on the table.

We'll begin the press conference for the film you just saw...

"L'argent."

I've already introduced everyone.

Who has the first question?

I don't understand exactly why the character's wife left him.

Whom is he asking?

To whom are you addressing the question?

I don't understand either.

The question is why Yvon's wife leaves him.

- There are things we don't understand. - Speak into the mic!

It's not working.

I said I don't understand either.

Neither does the wife. No one does.

It's not about understanding but about feeling, which is different.

You've often adapted works of Russian literature.

Go on.

Is that because it's a literature of extremes?

The question is: You've often adapted Russian works.

Do they interest you because it's a literature of extremes?

No, it's because there's truth in them.

A more profound truth than in contemporary authors.

Feelings were the same 200 years ago as now.

It's just a question of transposing them to our time.

Mr. Bresson, I find your film admirable from start to finish.

But I do have one question:

In all your other films, there was always an element of hope,

perhaps expressed by music, for example.

Here there's no music.

No, it wasn't only music, but there was something to hold on to.

But here there's nothing we can hold on to.

We leave the film with a sense of fulfillment but also despair.

First, there can be no hope without despair.

Despair can...

and should be pushed very far

so that hope can arise.

The greater the hope,

the heavier and more oppressive the despair was.

Mr. Bresson, your film wasn't very pleasant,

but it was interesting.

Your style is quite unique. I consider it frustrating for viewers.

If you agree with that description, what do you think of it?

Why do you make films that are frustrating for viewers?

- Films that are what? - Frustrating.

- What sort of films? - Frustrating for the viewer.

Frustrating.

What viewer are you talking about?

Nobody?

Wait.

Why do you prefer to make films about youth?

Why do you prefer youth as a subject in your films?

Why prefer youth?

Because youth is full of genius.

Genius and suppleness.

Up until the age of 35.

These people are enemies on the attack!

Can I hide?

That's enough.

We can't hear you without the mic.

You say there's genius in youth up to the age of 35.

So at your age do you have no more genius?

First, I'm no genius.

If I were, it wouldn't be the same kind of genius.

I'd like a bit of clarification about the ending.

I read the text you wrote that said...

"In the end, good comes through."

Good lies in the act of turning himself in.

Good comes in the form of confession...

a concept dear to Dostoyevsky, one he often used.

I find it still fitting today.

We can't hear you!

What I mean is...

good lies in the redemption of the character

for the terrible things he did.

It lies in turning himself in to the police and confessing.

In the confession

is the proof

that he disavows what he did.

Is it a kind of expiation?

- A what? - A voluntary expiation?

Of course.

In Tolstoy's novella,

good arrived much earlier,

and then the story took off in another direction.

Evil regained the upper hand

and the story went in another direction.

But in the film I wanted above all...

to give a sense of uncertainty.

I wanted to push it to the limit

so that it's only at the end

that we get the conclusion of the whole terrible story.

The language of your film seems like an extension of silent film.

- No! - Do you deliberately try to -

You astonish me, sir,

because for me, sound and noises are really -

The human voice is one of the most beautiful noises.

The more films I make, the more I think

we could almost do with just sound and no image.

You speak of good and evil.

Is that something of your own or something you adapted?

Where do you stand in this version of good and evil?

It's not easy for the character to spend years in jail

to atone for his actions.

After he's sewed his years in prison,

do you think he'll leave there a decent man?

The characters never fully accept responsibility

for what they did.

Is that your version?

Do you think that through confession or prison, which are the same thing -

You say, "I did this. Forgive me." "You're sentenced to ten years."

ls that your idea of good and evil?

There are a dozen questions in your question.

I'll answer each individually.

I don't know. I've yet to be in prison.

I don't know its effect.

I'll elaborate. The responsibility for his actions -

He's not listening.

Oh, well.

Here's a question for the actors instead -

Why ask that question

when most newspapers claim

that in most cases it's just the opposite?

For very complex reasons that I'm unfamiliar with.

Do you belong -

This will get a big laugh from the crowd.

Do you espouse any particular ideology?

I don't know what an ideology is.

- That's too easy. - You'd better stop.

- You're not going to get anywhere. - Here's a question for the actors.

For actors - this interests me very much -

is it difficult and what is the process

of working with Mr. Bresson?

In acting classes, it's exactly the way -

Why talk about acting classes?

These actors haven't taken acting classes. They're nonprofessionals.

Read the press book. That's what it's for.

They're virgins. They're acting virgins.

That's not true.

The question is null and void.

It is!

We can't talk about acting classes if they haven't taken any.

I'd like to ask Mr. Bresson why he chose Caroline Lang.

That's not hard to answer.

First, she has a wonderful face.

Second, she doesn't look Parisian,

or like a factory worker,

or like a country girl.

She's something different,

something I've sought since I started making films, and I found her.

I'd like to add that, as Cocteau said of himself...

“I'm on my own side."

Understand?

Mr. Bresson. ls this mic working?

Mr. Bresson, I'm an actress.

What can I do to work with you?

I'll tell you something Michel Piccoli said, who's a great actor.

Is he here?

He didn't say this. He wrote it.

He wrote, “I'd like to meet Bresson without him knowing who I am,

and ask if I could work with him. And I'd start over from scratch."

So I can work with you?

That wasn't exactly the point.

But first you'd have to forget.

I truly think -

I'm going to speak freely now, and possibly spout nonsense.

But I truly think that cinema...

has to evolve.

It could be something great and admirable

if we don't remain stuck doing "filmed theatre" with actors.

There are lots of young people who agree.

Mr. Bresson, in the last scene in your film,

what does the crowd looking into the empty restaurant mean?

They're looking at nothing.

There's nothing left. There's nothing there now.

Good has left in a police car.

I can't explain a film.

It explains itself.

I can't explain it.

I do most things spontaneously.

There isn't much left of what I put down on paper.

I've said before that when you work,

whether you're a writer, a painter,

or a sculptor...

when you work, you mustn't think.

Actors think. They're self-conscious.

And I shouldn't think either.

I should work.

I'm allowed to think in between films.

So it's very hard to answer such specific questions.

I don't know the answers.

What I find so notable about your film is the use of sound.

Can you tell us about your interest and your work

on the sound design?

I can't talk about it specifically, but I believe -

While editing, while the film's rolling,

I've been surprised to find myself...

no longer watching the images

but only listening to the sound track

and modifying it when I sensed it wasn't right.

There are two tracks - sound and image -

that advance in parallel.

Sometimes one goes faster, one slower.

Then they come together and join hands, then they move apart.

I'm saying that the work I try to do -

I try. I'm not saying I succeed.

If one really wants to succeed in becoming a cinematograph,

it's through bringing things together,

through exchange,

by constantly transposing one world to another,

the world of sound to that of image, and vice versa.

These days I prefer to move from the world of image

to the world of sound, which is richer and deeper.

I'm amazed that people today still wonder if silent film wasn't better.

I don't understand that.

You have two machines,

and both are wonderful,

but one reproduces the world...

in a deceptive way.

Rodin used to say, “A photograph is a lie."

And he was right.

The other machine, the tape recorder,

perfectly reproduces sound itself.

What can you do with these two things,

one that's too unreal and the other too real?

You must get them to exchange their virtues and their flaws.

The image tries to gain realism from sound,

while sound tries to lose its excessive realism.

That in itself is extraordinary.

You must work with these two machines

like a surgeon working with two completely different instruments.

He manages to operate by the grace of... I don't know what.

It's not by having actors talk,

explain the story and their feelings,

and following with the camera like you watch a play.

Another very important thing:

In this film you probably noticed

that I often don't show people from head to toe.

Doing so is an artifact from theatre, where we see everything.

But when we look at things -

Sitting at this table, I see a glass.

I see the man taking pictures of me.

I don't see all of him.

I see two hands, one eye looking at me,

another doing something else - but that's all.

I don't need to stand up and see his feet

to know he's a photographer.

I wrote a short book four or five years ago.

It doesn't contain everything I just said,

but the starting point for what I just said.

...in which you'll find not exactly what I just said

but the same, more or less.

No, the starting point for what I just said.

Do you still write, Mr. Bresson?

On paper?

You mean books? Yes, but I stopped for the film.

I'd like to dig much deeper into what I wrote

and perhaps make it clearer.

I'd like to find young people

who are true artists.

Right now, cinema isn't an art.

If it continues as it is now, it never will be.

It's a sort of craft.

But cinema must become an art.

Not the synthesis of other arts

but something extraordinary in itself due to these two machines.

We live in a marvelous time.

These two machines have happened along

just when painting and so on is declining.

Unfortunately, behind all this is... "l'argent."

Which is no secret.

Do you feel that this film is full of quiet violence?

What is quiet violence? I've never seen such a thing.

What is quiet violence?

What is quiet violence?

Someone who doesn't move?

It's a violence that's calm, without a lot of bloodshed.

I don't know what that is.

Is your film about real violence?

Of course. Everything in the film is real.

You mentioned young metteurs en scène behind you.

Who are you thinking of?

Have you seen Beineix's film "The Moon in the Gutter?"

- I don't know him. - No?

Have you seen Beineix's film?

The term "metteur en scène" is, again, borrowed from theatre.

It ruins everything.

There is no mise-en-scène. It doesn't exist.

There's just a person who feels things

and tries to reproduce them so others feel them.

That's all. There is no mise-en-scène.

You can't keep going to movies forever

just to see an actor's performance or vocal modulations.

You can't do that your whole life!

Then what do you call yourself?

What do you call yourself?

- What do I call myself? - What term do you use?

When I wake up, I don't call myself.

In the credits he's listed as "director."

I don't give myself a title.

I look at things and people.

I don't give myself a title. I wouldn't know what to use.

Yet the credits say "directed by."

Excuse me?

In the credits it says “directed by.”

- That wasn't my choice. - Really?

What's kept you from making a film for the last seven years?

Money that I didn't have.

I'll explain.

I presented the same story, written the same way,

exactly the same thing,

four years ago

to the Commission of Advance Against Revenue,

which gives us starting funds for the budget.

They didn't say no,

but they only gave me enough to not make the film.

A question for the actors -

who aren't actors, because Mr. Bresson doesn't use actors.

What's the point of being in a film

if you don't intend to pursue an acting career?

Just to be in front of the camera and enjoy a moment of glory?

What glory are you talking about?

I heard the word, but I don't know what it means.

Glory meaning the pleasure of seeing one's image

and one's name in the papers.

I love being photographed. It's my favorite thing.

Everyone knows that.

Are you sure it's a pleasure?

Let the actors answer.

Because it makes me happy - me.

In terms of glory and all that, it's more -

You speak of glory. This is glory.

It's not about glory.

At first we're sort of unaware.

If we agree to do it, we all have our own reasons.

I'm an architect by profession,

and maybe the similarities are what tempted me.

It's just expressed a different way.

You're not drawn to the idea of acting?

- If a producer asked you - - What a boring question!

No, it's interesting.

- Let's just stop. - That's not the question.

Initially, when given the role, I was at home, looking at blueprints.

I wasn't daydreaming and looking at movie-star magazines.

I was pulled out of architecture and asked to collaborate

in another experience using another language, that's all.

I never dreamed of being in a film.

Mr. Bresson, in your early films, we felt in your characters

a spiritual communication,

whether at the end of "Angels of Sin" -

Even if you didn't like that film,

at the end there was communication between Anne-Marie and Thérèse.

The empty hands in "Diary of a Country Priest."

"A Man Escaped," through Jost as intermediary.

At those moments there was communication between human beings.

I didn't sense that communication in this film.

- They don't communicate. - They don't communicate.

Is it a gradual drying up,

not in your own personality but in your characters?

In this film Targe is all alone.

It's hard for us to understand why, at the end, he abruptly -

We're not meant to understand, but we sense that he changes,

and so quickly that we're very surprised.

Does human communication, even in unexpressed form,

no longer exist for you?

Targe communicates in the wrong way.

If evil becomes more and more evil,

that necessarily means communication and exchange.

Communication doesn't always have to involve good.

Communication can involve evil.

It's the spirit of evil at work from start to finish.

You're right to speak of communication.

We have to feel it.

But we're not used to feeling it in evil.

- Mr. Bresson told us - - Can't hear you!

Sorry.

Mr. Bresson said that what interests him

and what's behind his desire to make films

is his attempt

to reproduce something he feels.

I'd like to ask him whether,

in making this film or some other film,

he's ever failed to achieve that reproduction...

for any reason.

I wonder if he'd talk about that.

I don't understand the question.

Could you repeat the question, please?

Make it simpler. What can I say?

Earlier you said that what you sought

was to reproduce something that you felt.

- Speak into the mic. - It doesn't work.

Then speak loudly.

Earlier you said that what you sought,

what was behind your desire to make films,

was to reproduce something that you felt, a feeling.

Exactly.

My question is if you've ever failed, over the course of your career,

either with this film or some other film,

in the use of the means you mentioned for any reason.

I can't tell you that. You have to tell me.

If what I do doesn't speak to you, then that's that.

Then I didn't do my job well.

If you didn't feel anything, I haven't done a good job.

So you're not interested in talking about -

I am, but not about the same things as you.

Not at the same moment as you.

I fear that audiences accustomed to the sort of films

that I myself no longer watch

but which I "feel" - that word once again -

through their titles, what I hear about them,

those audiences are incapable of feeling

what I attempt to make them feel.

We're in entirely different worlds.

To compare it with other films leads absolutely nowhere.

A film should not be entertainment.

All films shown in theatres are entertainment.

I don't want my films to be - My film can't be entertainment.

If Mr. Bresson doesn't work with actors,

why are there acting schools?

I'd like to know too!

They exist for "movies."

“Movies" are fine. They make money for producers.

But cinema cannot remain forever just movies

and only movies.

Take painting,

which is more serious and more established.

Painting has evolved.

It's not just primitive painting anymore.

It's become other things.

It has constantly evolved.

Why do you want to stick with your “movies”?

Aren't you curious or interested in something new?

Aren't you curious? You always like the same things?

Always the same actors and actresses?

You like lovely postcard images, things like that?

Is that it?

Last question.

Just two more questions.

One.

I hope it's a good one.

Really good.

Since you say you don't seek glory or renown -

Let's stop talking about glory. It doesn't interest me in the least.

Okay. Here's my question:

Why do you agree to attend a competition like Cannes -

I wonder that myself!

Before my film, they screened a film that derailed everything

for at least half an hour.

A lovely film to look at, smart and well done,

that had nothing to do with my film.

If you were a chef who'd perfected a dish,

you wouldn't serve an appetizer before it with a spicy sauce...

that made it impossible to taste the main dish, would you?

That happens constantly. It happened to me here.