Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was an acclaimed French film director. Known for a spiritual and ascetic style, he contributed notably to the art of film, and particularly the French New Wave. Bresson is considered to be of paramount importance to minimalist film, as most of his work featured non-professional actors, little use of music or scoring, and ellipsis, in which events important to the narrative are not visually depicted. He is arguably, along with Jean-Luc Godard, the most highly regarded French filmmaker after Jean Renoir. Godard himself once wrote, "Robert Bresson is French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music."