Robert Bresson's surrealist ghosts

Despite evidence of Robert Bersson's strong affiliation with surrealism in the 1930s, almost no studies have examined the particular ways in which his films are influenced by surrealist practice. This study explores such connections the nought an examination of his late colour films. The focus is on fetishizing the human as object and on animating the object-world; the treatment of the female model as inanimate through allusion to similar representations in such static media as painting; self-consciously structuring the image as a voyeuristic act of scopophilia; and finally, connecting such desire to sadism, especially in the tension between the director and his actors. Such connections open the possibility for a new vision of Bresson at which his relationship to religion, surrealism and the avant-garde can be reassessed.