ROBERT Bresson (1901-1999) believed that film was a pure form of intellectual expression. He dubbed theatre "a bastard art", hardly bothered with professional actors and had little time for plot ("a novelist's trick").

Bresson's appoach was lean and spare, unsentimental to the point of coldness. Working in France from the Forties to the Seventies (his last of 13 films, L'Argent, was made in 1983), he ignored every cinematic trend, remained faithful to his own vision, which hardly changed, and originated the concept of the auteur.

He was a purist and a recluse, very much of his time. He was unique, not a part of the Nouvelle Vague that spawned Godard, Rohmer, Chabrol and Truffaut, but an influence on them.

A painter turned filmmaker, he was concerned with truth rather than reality and the inner life of isolated souls. His best films -- Diary Of A Country Priest, A Man Escaped, Pickpocket -- concern men alone, discovering a certain grace in adversity.

Bresson has always been the darling of the intelligentsia. Now that New Puritanism has taken the place of Entertainment-A-Go-Go in the minds of thinking cinemagoers, his austerity offers absolution to those who secretly sneaked back for a second look at "The Matrix".

Filmography

Les Anges Du Péché (Angels of Sin) France 1943 100 mins
L'Argent (Money) 1983 85 mins
Au Hasard Balthazar (The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne) France 1945 90 mins
The Devil Probably (Le Diable Probablement) France 1977 90 mins
Diary of Country Priest (Journal d'un Reveur) France 1977 90 mins
Four Nights of a Dreamer (Quatre Nuits d'in Reveur) France 1972 94 mins
A Gentle Creature (Une Femme Douce) France 1969 88 mins
Lancelot Du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake) France 1974 95 mins
A Man Escaped (Un Condamné a mort s'est échappé ou le vent souffle ou il vent) France 1956 95 mins
Mouchette France 1967, 82 mins
Pickpocket France 1959, 75 mins
The Trial of Joan of Arc (Proces de Jeanne d'Arc) France 1962 65 mins
Robert Bresson: Ni Vu Ni Connu Francois Weyergans, France 1994, 63 mins.