In 1965, after making six films over twenty years, Robert Bresson began work on Au hasard Balthazar. Reserved and not very talkative, he had never given a filmed interview. He accepted to be part of “Cinéastes de notre temps” and answered the questions of a then very young and unknown François Weyergans. Thirty years later François Weyergans, today a well-known writer, presents the film and reconstructs the atmosphere of the film’s making. “Shooting a film means understanding, but understanding in the sense of… not in the sense of explaining, but in the sense of loving, of relishing. Shooting a film is also a taking of property. For instance, even what you are doing now with me is in a way taking possession of my person, and I think that when I film my protagonists it is as though I am stealing something. There is a very fine expression that Cocteau said, I think, about this very point: ‘It is like stealing a pawn from death’, and this was precisely my impression when I saw on television Roger Stéphane’s film about Cocteau shortly before he died: taking possession of someone, a type of theft. This is my impression when I am shooting, when I try to film what my protagonist is trying to hide and what he does not think is at play in that very moment. In my opinion, there is only point of view from which to see a thing, and it is not really a question of sight but of vision, vision through just one eye; some films are annoying because things are seen through many different eyes when there should only be one eye that sees, one mind that has interpreted the vision, and in some films, even in mine, things feel right when the camera is not where it should be, either too close, too far away, too high up or too low.”

Robert Bresson, Robert Bresson ni vu ni connu