It is easy to see why Bresson has rejected conventional 'realism' [in Le Journal d'un Curé de Campagne]—which, in effect, means that the director has to record many inessential and superficial feelings, whims and fluctuations in his characters' experiences. But a man's soul is more sullen, mysterious, withdrawn. In Bresson the monotone and the 'deadpan' represent, not a 'mask', but a revelation of the essential man. His personages seem aloof because they are naked. There is no question of 'expressionism' rather than 'realism'. The physical is spiritualised; the eternal verities permeate the material world. The location photography—'neo-realism'—expresses not just a particular place, a 'mood' (passing emotions) but a spiritual condition of man without God. (p. 31)

[We] see only the essential moment of each scene, a moment which acquires an eerie concentration from … isolation and emphasis. Often, paradoxically, the essential moment of each scene is omitted...