- According to Andrei Tarkovsky, Bresson is "perhaps the only artist in cinema, who achieved the perfect fusion of the finished work with a concept theoretically formulated beforehand".
- Jean-Luc Godard once wrote, "Bresson is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music.".
- Did not direct his first feature film until he was 42 years old.
- Andrei Tarkovsky held Bresson in very high regard, noting him and Ingmar Bergman as his two favorite filmmakers.
- In his development of auteur theory, François Truffaut lists Bresson among the few directors to whom the term "auteur" can genuinely be applied.
- Bresson's actors were required to repeat multiple takes of each scene until all semblances of 'performance' were stripped away, leaving a stark effect that registers as both subtle and raw.
- In a career that spanned fifty years, Bresson made only 13 feature-length films.
- His early artistic focus was to separate the language of cinema from that of the theater, which often relies heavily upon the actor's performance to drive the work.
- Has influenced a number of other filmmakers, including Andrei Tarkovsky, Michael Haneke, Jim Jarmusch, the Dardenne brothers, Aki Kaurismäki, and Paul Schrader.
- Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 55-63. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
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