Robert Bresson: Genesis

Michael Ciment: A Man Escaped, with its stubborn protagonist, is like a new Robinson Crusoe. In his cell, he tackles a series of technical problems, like how to saw through the bars on his window. He does not indulge in metaphysical despair. He seeks the will to live within himself.

RB: You'll find much of the same in Genesis, pre-production for which will begin in a few months' time. Adam is like a shipwrecked sailor setting off to discover an unknown island. The beauty of Genesis is God asking Adam to name things and animals. I find that magnificent. And when he reaches this unknown island, everything is ready and waiting. I am reconsidering this project, which I gave up fifteen years ago. It will take at least one year to prepare. There is the question of getting birds, insects, big animals, a tree. There is the question when to set it. It is unending. The screenplay is progressing well, but it is still incomplete. It is a gigantic task. I am like someone from Marseilles: tired out before I begin.

MC Where does Genesis end?

RB: Either at the Flood or the Tower of Babel and the invention of language. It will be a long film, for television and spoken in Ancient Hebrew, which is a beautiful language, with bits of Aramaic. Adam cannot speak in French or English, he must speak in a language almost no one can understand.

MC: Will it be even more "musical" than your other films?

RB: Absolutely. Imagine all the animal sounds, not just at the Creation, but in the ark, during the Flood. A concert performance! The emotion. Silence, too, sometimes. I want to do it so badly. I'll rush at it the way one rushes into the ocean. We'll see what happens.

MC: Where will you shoot it?

RB: I don't know yet. Neither in Palestine nor in any other Middle Eastern country. I don't want stylized landscapes and anyway they've never mattered to me much. I'd rather see a camel on top of the Puy-de-Dome [an extinct volcano in central France] than on a sand dune. I'd like to shoot in the Auvergne, which is where I was born,
because the landscape is so varied.

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