6 ideas
Most cinema, in Bresson's view, is photographed theatre: it uses the camera to reproduce performances built for a stage. Cinematography is a separate writing that makes its meaning from the relations between images and sounds. It goes wrong the moment it imitates another art's means of expression.
Bresson uses non-professional 'models' in place of actors. He asks them not to project a character outward but to hold their own inner nature, which the camera catches without their knowing it. Acting adds a layer of intended expression, and that layer hides the person. The model gives up something truer because it is not performed.
Models repeat words and gestures many times until they come out mechanically, with no thought about meaning or effect. Once gesture is automatic, conscious intention stops interfering, and something unwilled and genuine shows through. Bresson treats this as a way to get past the self-consciousness that ruins spontaneity.
A single image should be flat and neutral, carrying no strong meaning of its own. Its power comes from contact with the images around it, and editing is what gives it life. An image that is too expressive by itself resists this change and breaks the chain.
Treat sound and image as parts that can stand in for each other, not as duplicates. Bresson says that when a sound can replace an image, you should cut the image or neutralize it. The ear reaches inward and stirs the imagination more than the eye, so letting sound carry a moment makes the viewer take part.
It is born in the head, dies on paper, is revived by the living people and objects used in shooting, and is killed on film. It then comes back to life in the editing, where the pieces are put in their true order. Each stage should be allowed to change the work, not just carry out the plan from the stage before.