Critics have largely neglected the colour films of French film director Robert Bresson (1901—99). To correct that oversight, this studypresents a revised and revitalised Bresson, comparing his style to innovations in abstract painting after World War II, exploring hisaffinities with such avant-garde traditions as surrealism, constructivism, and minimalism, and illustrating how his embodied style leadsto a complex form of intermediality. Through that analysis, Raymond Watkins shows clearly that Bresson still has a good deal to teach us about cinema’s distinctive ability to draw on painting, photography, sculpture, and the plastic arts in general.

Raymond Watkins currently teaches at the Pennsylvania State University. He received his Ph.D. in comparative literature and cinema from The University of Iowa, and has published in Cinema Journal, Studies in French Cinema, and The Quarterly Review of Film and Video.

IntroductionBresson in Color: Reinventing History through Avant-Garde ExperimentPart 1: Classical and Post-War PaintingChapter 1Bresson's Debt to Painting: Iconography, Lighting, Color, and Framing PracticesChapter 2The Turn to Post-War Abstraction: Action Painting, L'Art Informel, and Le Nouveau RéalismePart 2: Avant-Garde ExperimentChapter 3Bresson's Flirtation with Surrealism: Sexual Desire, Masochism, and AbjectionChapter 4The Design and Pattern of the Whole: Constructivist Painting and TheatreChapter 5Between Constructivism and Minimalism: Bresson's Ambivalence Toward the ModernBibliographyIndex