Pickpocket

More interesting than any individual film, it's Bresson's philosophy that I feel is worth examining. He's all about striving, the question is what for? If it's purity, as most would agree, and purity always seems like something to aspire to, is it a purity that we can take as a base for living?

I don't think I will have conclusions before Balthazar, perhaps his most famous. Already, since Diary of a Priest, I can see him moving in a direction, growing that philosophy. Even more sparse, even more laconic, removes flourish and leaves bare floors so that we endure something being revealed in the pacing. That's fine. More revealing is another trajectory being delineated, human- based.

It's once more about a lone youth who struggles with a life that suffocates. In Diary he was a pious young priest who wanted absolute sincerity in the face of life; but people were complicated beings, the journey caused spiritual torment, questions of angst abounded. In Man Escaped the same youth becomes a prisoner, also endures a life of anguish, but now endures quietly, without torment and piety. It was Bresson peeling away the romanticizing of suffering of Diary, what was left was simply the work of breaking free from that prison- world, stoicism in place of romanticism.

So what does he do in this next one? The same youth once more, but now he's not bound by duty to truth or has any work set out before him. Now he's free to wander the world which the man in Escaped had struggled to break free to. Without an intellectual or other struggle before him, he's simply awash with time. He's stifled by the freedom, he has no place. He perceives himself as a man of lofty talents, possibly a genius, but wastes these talents in being a pickpocket around town who won't even go see his dying mother. He always comes and goes from his tiny apartment to no real purpose.

Observant viewers will note the equation of pickpocketing as presented in the film, an elaborately precise choreography of hands and motions, with Bresson's own filmmaking. Film lore touts him as pure and simple as if that simplicity is conquered without effort, in truth he's all about the meticulous timing and moving of exact pieces. His favorite tool is exactly this game of hide and show that controls what we see; for example a scene like in Man Escaped where the new cellmate is introduced off-camera, we don't know who our man is talking to until we turn to see. He does it here too, often by having characters turn and leave, questions hanging, creating gap and resonance. He's the opposite of natural.

Back to the conundrum expressed at the beginning however; if this is pure, what does it strive purely for?

The only answer I get here is that we no longer have a man who is trying to understand life, or someone who works towards an end, these selves have been shed. Now we have someone who endures, but has no idea exactly what or what for. It's Bresson inching towards the same cessation that he strives for visually. What stands before him now is what he sketches in the opening intertitle; something pushes the man from the inside.

He bangles this all up at the end, and I believe that looking back he would probably have been unsatisfied himself. He reverts back to his romanticism where the tormented young man has love reserved for him, but a wistful love that doesn't feel earned, there's simply nothing that rings true about her infatuation with him. This is Eva Green's aunt by the by.

So this has done its job, shed one self and one set of conundrums and replaced them with another. Onwards to his next, which looks like another draft of the same philosophy, and then Balthazar is around the corner. I already believe I disagree with Schrader.

• Do you feel lonely ? -Bresson : very lonely …. Very … but I don't like it to be lone !!

It would be hard for a regular movie-watcher , some one who just watches for fun , to like the movies made by formalist , strictly stylist director , Robert Bresson . But when we are aware of his elaborate work and subtlety , we admire his skill , undoubtedly .

Pickpocket ( 1959 ) , is one his best and most thoughtful films and has a key role in recognizing both Bresson and his works .

Pickpocket is about an alone and desperate writer who think of himself as a superior to the society ; He thinks he is better than others and believes to be in the right of breaking the rules and neglecting the social Contract .

He defines justice for himself as " some people have the privilege to break the laws , willingly " . He feels humiliated to do regular jobs and thus , begins pocket picking .

And from one of the most basic elements of the story , i.e. main character , there is a gap , a distance , between us ( audience ) and the film . In fact , because of non-naturalistic quality of the plot , we can't sympathize with him ; and what makes him even more distant , is the Bresson's personal touch and fond of "deadpan acting and not showing emotions " . Bresson says himself that " if possible , he prefers to utilize an image , a sound , and any other elements ( and metaphors ) instead of actors " . He wants the actors ( as a matter of fact he uses non-professional actors after his second movie ) to act deliberately and be aware of a witness called camera . In other words he wants them " not to act " .

In this movie , the cast and specially the hero are totally flat and expressionless ; even his walking style is sort of flat . But we can't reject his way of acting ( in fact , not acting ) . There is a deep coldness in this style of performance which makes it surprisingly and paradoxically acceptable and fits well in the world of the movie ; particularly , sympathetic face of the main character which increases contributes in this plausibility .

The cinematography , lighting and playing with shadows and lights in this movie is truly delicate and these factors in addition to a cold open and sort of suspension , forms the idea of a thriller movie . Yes ! Suspension is a key factor here ; and not a regular kind of suspension ; but a Bresson type .

Even , some think that sound editing in this movie , decrease the suspension in some scenes and increase it in some other scenes . For example , in some occasions , a sound or noise , inform us of the occurrence of an incident ; or repeating a sound in another scene can mitigate the effect of suspension . Also there is a scene in which the main character is walking anxiously in a crowded sidewalk ; we can not hear the sounds , the street noise and even the cars ; the only sound is his footsteps , which makes suspension .

It is true that use of music is not considerable in this film , but we can't renounce the sound effects here .

Another point is that Bresson never lets the main character to show fear and anxiety ( unlike Hitchcock who loves to do so ) ; instead he depends on images and sounds to supply the fear : sound of footsteps , images of shaking hands and cold faces ( the opening scene ) , door handle turned quietly … and actually anything .

There are some references to" Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment" ; like the basic similarities between the heroes : Michel and Raskolnikov who both tend to commit crimes ; both being lonely and isolated … and even the hole behind Michel's bed he use to hide the stolen valuable goods ( like Dostoyevsky's hero ) . Knowing these references , is a suspension itself ; some kind of fear .

Yes ! most of the times , we don't have music ; the music remains silent , and waits ; ( something unusual in those days of film-making ) ; yet , this small appearance of music , is fitting and timely . There is no such a thing as spare scenes or excess dialog in this movie ; everything is in its right place and for those who can't comprehend the non- naturalistic structure of the film , and can not accept fears , anxiety , and emotional disturbances of this cold hero , Bresson arranges the famous final scene in which the main character redeems through love ; with music !! Now , let us come back to the QA we had at the beginning of this article ; we see Bresson , lonely like the hero of his film ; self-consciously tries to break the rules ( another kind of rules ) ; and has a style of his own … ! … And make us to admire his mastership and loneliness !

This slow burn film from Robert Bresson is not going to be to everyone's taste, and I'm not sure it was to mine. It's a film I admired more than enjoyed.

It tells the story of a man who's addicted to theft, or maybe more accurately addicted to the rush of getting away with theft, or maybe more accurately addicted to the rush of possibly being caught thieving. It's not a long movie but it may try your patience, as it's very slow and very quiet. The main character is a bit of a blank slate, and he remains so. We never learn much about him, and I personally didn't feel especially invested in what happened to him. It was only in reading about the film after seeing it that I found out the ending is considered to be remarkable among film scholars, but I didn't react to it much myself.

The best scenes in the movie are those that show the elaborate rituals that exist among pickpocket teams, and the pretty amazing feats they pull off. They're like magicians who use sleight of hand for nefarious purposes.

Grade: B+

A remarkable film even though the ending is anti-climactic. An amateur pickpocket gets lucky and meets Kassagi, the real-life pickpocket who served as the film's technical consultant. The most amazing scene is the one where three pickpockets rob one passenger after another on a train, taking wallets, passing them off to each other, then emptying and dumping them (or in one case, neatly replacing the lightened wallet in a man's pocket!). The light-finger techniques seem more or less authentic, although I imagine the director's script might have called for inauthentic bits of business. (No, I am not a pickpocket; I was a mark once, and they really messed up my life for a couple of days, but I have been fascinated ever since.)

The pickpockets in this movie follow the European style of stealing men's wallets practically face-to-face. (American pickpockets traditionally prefer to steal from behind to avoid any chance of a mark seeing their faces. When I was taken, I never saw, heard or felt anything.)

LaSalle as Michel is deadpan, but that seems to be part of his character. Now and again, he bubbles a little with suppressed feeling, mostly anger. His passion for Jeanne (Marika Green) is so completely submerged that it does not come out until the end. (If you think I'm spoiling anything, you will want to skip the on screen legend that opens the film because it gives away even more.) As a love story, this does not work. I get it, though: Something happened before the film begins that makes Michel extremely ashamed. He can't be with his mother or anyone he cares about because of his guilt.

To my previous comments, I should like to add/correct. When I said that Kassagi, who plays "first accomplice" (1er complice), was a 'real-life pickpocket who served as the film's technical consultant' I was not only inaccurate, but the fact that Kassagi was actually a stage magician has some bearing on the film itself, for although the scene in which the pickpockets rip off a series of train passengers is authentic in that it shows how pickpockets operate in terms of teamwork and speed, nevertheless, the moment when Kassagi (?) 'neatly replac[es] the lightened wallet [back] in a man's pocket' is not something a real pickpocket would likely do; it is, however, exactly what a stage magician would do. A real pickpocket has no audience (or so he hopes) whereas a magician wants the audience to see him make a monkey of the hapless "volunteer from the audience." In this case, Kassagi's idea (as I am sure it was) provides a brief moment of comic relief in the middle of a movie that is otherwise without a lot of humor. It is a welcome touch and Bresson was wise to keep it in. Now, I also engaged in a fallacy when I said that 'American pickpockets traditionally prefer to steal from behind to avoid any chance of a mark seeing their faces.' In reality, American pickpockets take from behind because of necessity: even by 1959 when 'Pickpocket" was released, American men more and more carried their wallets in the hip pocket whereas European men, as can be seen in this film, continued to use the inside breast pocket. While the business about seeing the mark's face is part of the lore of American petty criminals, it is not the cause of the American style of picking pockets, but rather a rationalization after the fact.