Simple splendour: The director that always “astonished and attracted” Andrei Tarkovsky
A genuine visionary of cinema, the legendary Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky remains one of the medium’s most significant names and sits proudly at the table of those with the most refined talent behind the camera. Tarkovsky established himself as a true hero of European film by exploring profound existential themes with imagery that stays in mind long after the credits roll.
With countless masterpieces movies to his name, including Solaris, Stalker and Andrei Rublev, Tarkovsky always implored his audiences to ponder the deeper questions of human existence, and his films persistently provoked emotional and cerebral responses in those who viewed them.
As one of the true all-time greats of 20th-century cinema, though, Tarkovsky never shied away from offering his praise to his fellow filmmakers that he found deserving. The Russian film director had a series of predecessor directors who deeply inspired him and his contemporaries with whom he shared a mutual respect.
In the 1983 documentary Voyage in Time, shot in Italy while Tarkovsky had been taking care of pre-production for his film Nostalghia in Italy, the director pointed out some of his favourite filmmakers but paid particular attention to one of the most notable French film directors of all time, Robert Bresson.
“Bresson, Robert Bresson,” Tarkovsky began. “Bresson has always astonished and attracted me with his ascetics. It seems to me that he is the only director in the world that has achieved absolute simplicity in cinema. As it was achieved in music by Bach, in art by Leonardo… Tolstoy achieved it as a writer, do you understand?”
Indeed, Bresson was known for his aesthetic approach to filmmaking, frequently employed actors who had never been on camera before and used a minimalist style with little scoring to deliver his unique vision of the film medium. “Therefore, for me, he’s always been an example of ingenious simplicity,” Tarkovsky said. “Ascetics.”
Tarkovsky had compared Bresson to some of the most significant names in the history of art, and the French director’s compatriot, Jean-Luc Godard, had also uttered Bresson’s name in the same breath as the likes of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—icons of the cultural world. With serious contributions to the world of film, including A Man Escaped, Pickpocket and Au Hasard Balthazar, Bresson was undoubtedly one of 20th-century cinema’s most important names.
Tarkovsky had also given his highest praise to the likes of the pioneering Soviet directors Alexander Dovzhenko and Sergei Parajanov, plus Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Jean Vigo in the video, but it’s Bresson with whom the iconic filmmaker seems to have the most respect for, at least in the terms of his simplistic approach to the cinematic medium.
Check out the video of Tarkovsky’s praise for his fellow directors below.
