random french art quotes

It's French cinematography week here at conflicted, and we'll be featuring the thoughts of Robert Bresson. Here's your thought of the day:

A film cannot be a stage show, because a stage show requires flesh-and-blood presence. But it can be, as photographed theatre or CINEMA is, the photographic reproduction of a stage show. The photographic reproduction of a stage show is comparable to the photographic reproduction of a painting or a sculpture. But a photographic reproduction of Donatello’s Saint John the Baptist or of Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Necklace has not the power, the value or the price of that sculpture or that painting. It does not create it. Does not create anything.