Cinema: The Single Most Important, Truthful Statement on Directing
I just realized its significance…
The cover of my well-worn Bresson. (Preferably titled Notes on the Cinematograph.)
How many times have I read the pages of this book? How I’ve appreciated Bresson’s views on the tyranny of theatre over so much of cinema, for example.
I love how the films of this master and his stripped down apothegms and insights reveal a mind at the peak of artistic, philosophical, intellectual, and cinematic greatness, a genius of what Paul Schrader calls transcendental style.
But lest you fear I’m talking a rarified discourse, I’m not, even if I’m not dealing with production, with the storytelling and technical skills of the filmmaker even, with their work with actors or their understanding and articulation of the language, what I call the practical aesthetics of the screen.
What Bresson gives us in one sentence in this book (and any others) lies beneath and informs all aspects of the director’s art. Simpler than any of them, it is comprehensive in ways their specificity cannot be.
Spend some time with this book (which is not about cinematography but the aesthetics and philosophy of cinema), coming back to it over years and you’ll find its wisdom eminently practical.
Whether you seek to emulate Bresson’s formidably uninflected visual language or strive for a more expressionist, flamboyant voice, whether you aim for intimate drama or action movie, the insights you’ll discover on these pages will leave you a better filmmaker.
So here it is. The one I value above all others. Number six in the list. The single most important, truthful statement on directing that I know.
Il ne s’agit pas de diriger quelqu’un, mais de se diriger soi-même.
In English:
The point is not to direct someone, but to direct oneself.
So simple. Nothing on the outside can work if one cannot recognize within oneself that which is true, authentic, organic, undeniable. And one has to direct oneself in order to know this. Only then can one direct others.
Easier said than done. How are we supposed to direct ourselves?
What can it be that directs ourselves if it’s not ourselves?
This has to be the detached observer, the “person”, the voice in us we spend so much time ignoring.
Time to recognize and tune in to this mysterious interlocutor no matter how inconvenient, how annoying they may be, challenging our assumptions, subverting our certainties and sowing doubt, positing alternatives we may not care to think of, whispering in our ear as if the susurrus of consciousness.
We need to listen to this insistent partner however inconvenient it may prove. It is they who will point us to how we might “direct” our self so that our self can then work to best effect.
Next. What then is this self?
An entity of many aspects.
Intuitive, practical, emotional, visceral, neural, enteric, intellectual. (Yes, forget the “overthinking” canard — the problem we face is under- even notthinking.) Mischievous, naive, experienced, inventive, visionary, practiced in filmmaking, with more to learn, questioning, exploring, selfless, selfish, shadow, childlike.
The self that receives messages from the material, the story, the characters, the film while weighing the counsel of those one trusts (and who may know us better than we know ourselves), of some one barely knows or even doesn’t know.
If that sounds like a committee of the self, it boils down to one thing:
Humanity. Not ego but our humanity — acculturated, raw, whole.
In directing one’s self, one activates the resource of the self as a functional agent in the creative process.
In this process meanwhile, one needs retain an opening for the contribution of the universe and its unexpected challenges and gifts. For the chance happening — the unexpected problem encountered on a scout perhaps, on set or location that turns out to be a pointer to some better approach. One leaves also a portal for the input of the actor, the cinematographer, the editor, the creative team.
An undirected self on the other hand, confused, in denial, seeking praise, dreaming of fame and fortune has no ability to direct others or to direct the film.
When we look to direct outwards only, we feel the need for empty control, to impose false authority, to hold up the mask of cleverness and infallibility, and to keep the blind machine of production on course to the exclusion of all the vital considerations of our role.
People recognize falsehood. The team and the cast can spot it a mile away. The actors can’t act. (Or the non-actors non-act.) The DP can’t lens and light. The editor can’t edit. The film can’t come to life. The viewer can’t engage, or if they do, it’s at the most cursory level only.
This isn’t to say that what one directs oneself to capture and put on the screen is necessarily resolved, settled or comfortable. It may be contradictory, ambiguous, puzzling.
One may be presenting the viewer with one’s deepest fears, greatest pain. One may be alarming oneself or may be revealing wonder one cannot explain. What matters is that in some way it rings true.
And so the resonance between the inner and outer, the truth within to which one orientates oneself and the fiction without which this act forms and modulates — surely at the heart of Bresson’s precious advice and which could even be said to apply to our daily lives, encounters, and sense of place in the world — this enables us like no other resource to do our work as our unflinching journey inwards takes us to the most effective, complete, rewarding connection and decision outwards…
Again:
Il ne s’agit pas de diriger quelqu’un, mais de se diriger soi-même.
The point is not to direct someone, but to direct oneself.
Peter Markham
Originally published in Medium
Author:
The Art of the Filmmaker: The Practical Aesthetics of the Screen (Oxford University Press) 10/23
What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay (Focal Press/Routledge) 9/20