Essentially a quietist in the cinema, Bresson has devoted himself with a quite unworldly dedication to working out and putting on the screen his own vision, entirely without regard for what is going on around him in the cinema and the world at large, and it is this quality of remoteness, the hermetic perfection of the finished films, which many find off-putting. His films are not easy, they do not go out of their way to please or attract; they sometimes seem to be made in complete unconcern over whether anyone will want to see them or not. In this way they achieve a purity which makes even Antonioni seem in comparison rather flashy and vulgar; they may achieve it, however—or so those who do not like them say—only at the risk of deteriorating from the calm detachment of the philosopher to the mere inertia of...