The French film director Robert Bresson was one of the great artists of the twentieth century and among the most radical, original, and radiant stylists of any time He worked with nonprofessional actors8212models, as he called them8212and deployed a starkly limited but hypnotic array of sounds and images to produce such classic works as A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, Diary of a Country Priest, and Lancelot of the Lake From the beginning to the end of his career, Bresson dedicated himself to making movies in which nothing is superfluous and everything is always at stake Notes on the Cinematograph distills the essence of Bresson8217s theory and practice as a filmmaker and artist He discusses the fundamental differences between theater and film parses the deep grammar of silence, music, and noise and affirms the mysterious power of the image to unlock the human soul This book, indispensable for admirers of this great director and for 173students of the cinema, will also prove an inspiration, much like Rilke8217s Letters to a Young Poet, for anyone who responds to the claims of the imagination at its most searching and rigorous