Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was an acclaimed French
film director. Known for a spiritual and ascetic style, he contributed notably to the art of film, and particularly the
French New Wave. Bresson is considered to be of paramount importance to
minimalist film, as most of his work featured non-professional actors, little use of music or scoring, and
ellipsis, in which events important to the narrative are not visually depicted. He is arguably, along with
Jean-Luc Godard, the most highly regarded French filmmaker after
Jean Renoir. Godard himself once wrote, "Robert Bresson is French cinema, as
Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and
Mozart is German music."