Robert Bresson, (born September 25, 1901, Bromont-Lamonthe, Puy-de Dôme, France—died December 18, 1999, Droué-sur-Drouette), French writer-director who, despite his limited output, has been rightly celebrated as one of the cinema’s few authentic geniuses. Details of Bresson’s early years are sketchy, though it is known that he began painting in high school, where he excelled in languages and philosophy; that he attended Paris’s Lycée Lakanal à Sceaux; and that he was married in 1926. He…