Pickpocket
by Robert Bresson
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Actor: Dolly Scal, Jean P?l?gri, Marika Green, Martin LaSalle, Pierre LeymarieDirector: Robert Bresson
Cinematographer: L?once-Henri Burel
Writer: Robert Bresson
Editor: Raymond Lamy
Producer: Agn?s Delahaie
Writer: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, NTSC, Subtitled
Running Time: 75 minutes
Release Date: 2000-06-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Studio: New Yorker Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Pickpocket
Movie Review: Gallic Raskolnikov
Summary: 5 Stars
It's taken me awhile to learn how to appreciate Bresson's films--my fault entirely, not his--but now that I've cottoned onto his cinematic way of speaking, I'm progressively overwhelmed with admiration for what he does. No wonder he only produced a handful of films in a lifetime that spans almost an entire century. He's a meticulous master who carefully and unhurriedly plans each of his movies down to his actor's smallest gesture.
"Pickpocket," like so many of Bresson's films, is a combination of visual story-telling and narrative overlay. One hears the story and sees the story in that duplication that is Bresson's signature. (Sometimes, in fact, there's a tripling effect.) A young intellectual convinces himself that he wants neither human attachments nor conventional lifestyle. He is an ubermensch, above the norms of morality and society. Like Raskolnikov, although without the Russian character's horrible transgression, he begins to live outside the law. He becomes a pickpocket, eventually throws his hand in with a gang, and is finally caught and thrown into jail where, with the help of a young woman's love, he realizes that he neither has nor wants the stuff to be an ubermensch. To put it in a biblical phrase that Bresson would probably like, his heart of stone gets replaced with one of flesh.
"Pickpocket" propels the viewer into a kind of denuded landscape in which frills are totally absent. Bresson always used nonactors--he called them "models"--to avoid theatrical falsehoods. He avoided conventional cinematic techniques such as follow-through between scenes. He coached his models in avoiding facial expressions, voice tones, or mannerisms that would manipulate the emotions or empathy of the audience. The flatness of "Pickpocket" is so effective that the final scene, in which the protagonist's cold aloofness melts, at first seems too abrupt, too artificial. Whether it works or not is up to the viewer to decide. But clearly what Bresson is striving for is a sudden whammy effect--a breaking-of-the-ice response on the part of the audience that mirrors the conversion experienced by the protagonist.
The Criterion edition of this film is wonderfully remastered, and its supplemental materials are fascinating. They include interviews with the principle actors 40 years later, a marvelous clip of a pickpocket artist who influenced Bresson's decision to make the film, and most significantly a stunningly brilliant analysis of the film by screenwriter Paul Schrader. Schrader describes Bresson's film as "perverse"--but for Schrader, this is a high compliment, because Bresson's cinematic perversion consists in violating the conventionalities of film making.
At least 6 stars.
Movie Review: Watch the "support" pieces too!
Summary: 5 Stars
Watch the movie slowly, if you think you missed something you probably did. Play it back. After you watch it the first time look at all of the extra features that are part of the Criterion Collection; especially the Models. Then watch again. Spread all of this out over a week or two...I understand Bresson better and even his rationale and it makes it a great movie without question.Movie Review: Bresson's Pickpocket will steal your heart.
Summary: 5 Stars
"Robert Bresson is French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is the German music"--Jean-Luc Godard.
Inspired perhaps by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Bresson's 1959 film, Pickpocket, offers a fascinating study of the criminal mind of a petty thief who deliberately places himself above the law because he considers himself superior to ordinary men, and because he is drawn to punishment. Michel (Martin LaSalle) is a nondescript intellectual who, when he is not reading books in his small Paris room, haunts the city's streets, subways, and train stations stealing wallets. He gets an almost erotic thrill from stealing, though his blank expression would never reveal it. Michel's girlfriend, Jeanne (Marika Green), is a good influence who ultimately offers him the possibility of redemption through her unconditional love. Bresson brings a profound almost spiritual quality to his black and white film. Director Paul Schrader (American Gigolo; Cat People; Light Sleeper) describes Pickpocket "as close to perfect as there can be."
The Criterion edition of Pickpocket offers a new digital transfer, an audio commentary by film scholar, James Quandt, a video introduction by writer-director Paul Schrader, the models of "Pickpocket," a 2003 documentary by filmmaker Babette Mangolte, featuring actors from the film, a 1960 interview with Bresson, from the French television program Cin?panorama, footage of sleight-of-hand artist and Pickpocket consultant Kassagi, from a 1962 episode of the French television show La piste aux ?toiles, the original theatrical trailer, and new and improved English subtitle translation.
G. Merritt
Movie Review: Are you above normal men?
Summary: 4 Stars
Robert Bresson can be chalked up as yet another director whose films I have heard about for years but which I have never watched. However, the other day I went by my local independent video store and decided to give Bresson's 1959 film a try and I must say that I did indeed enjoy the film experience. Having only recently begin watching French films, and those mainly being limited to those of Truffaut and Godard, I am quite limited in seeing how Bresson's films stack up in comparison to other French director's films, but through the films sparseness of dialog and sparseness of location design, I was able to enjoy a film that was nearly stripped down to the core of story and storytelling.
Pickpocket tells the story of Michel, a young man who fancies himself a writer, but who is in fact penniless and living in a flop house, he can't even lock the door when he leaves because the door is in such ill repair. One day Michel decides to give pickpocketing a try and his first victim is a woman at the horse track. Michel is soon caught, but because of lack of strong evidence the police have to let him go. However, now he is being kept under close watch by the police.
For his personal relationships, Michel seems to only have his friend Jacques and his elderly, ill mother who he tends to avoid. Jacques attempts to help Michel get a job and to live a life on the straight and narrow. However, Michel wants none of this. Holds a theory that the men who are above normal men should be allowed to do as they wish so they can change a stagnant society, however, after meeting a young girl named Jeanne, will Michel stick with these views?
Besides the aspect of criminality and its effects on society as a whole, another aspect of the film that fascinated me was the elegance and nearly choreographed movements of Michel and his two fellow pickpockets. The scene of the train station was absolutely amazing. An enjoyable film overall, Pickpocket is a good and short introduction to Bresson's films. I will definitely watch more in the near future.
Movie Review: "I was walking on air, with the world at my feet."
Summary: 4 Stars
"Pickpocket" (1959), directed by Robert Bresson, is inspired in a novel written by Dostoievsky, "Crime and punishment". This film tells us the story of Michel (Martin LaSalle), a young and very self-absorbed man that becomes a thief not out of need, but rather seduced by the possibility of being one.
Bresson follows Michel's path, and allows us to be privy to his thoughts, as he tries to decide what to do with his life, and how to avoid being captured by the police. Michel has an opportunity of redemption, but will he take it?
In my opinion, watching "Pickpocket" is worth your time, because it is a film that convincingly depicts how a young man justifies his criminal leanings, and the ever-present possibility of change, if we care enough to take it.
Belen Alcat
Summary of Pickpocket
Robert Bresson drew inspiration from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment for this examination of an arrogant young pickpocket who deems himself above the laws and conditions of ordinary men. Michel (Martin LaSalle), a rather bland-looking young man with a perpetually blank face, haunts the subways, city streets, and racetracks to ply his trade. He plays a game of wits with a fatherly police inspector and walls his heart off from the affections of a quiet young woman, Jeanne (Marika Green), who looks after his dying mother. Bresson's direction of his "models" (as he calls his nonprofessional performers) strips them of affectation and motivation, making them blank slates defined by the accumulation of precisely drilled actions and words. Pickpocket is no thriller, though Bresson offers impressive, meticulously detailed scenes of daring and intimate robberies (one sequence on a subway feels like an homage to Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street). Rather, it is a powerful, profound search for meaning and spiritual enlightenment by a man who believes in nothing but himself, and many critics consider it Bresson's masterpiece. Paul Schrader, whose book Transcendental Cinema offers a detailed analysis of Bresson's work, has quoted the famous, emotionally restrained yet spiritually moving conclusion in two of his own films: American Gigolo and Light Sleeper. --Sean AxmakerGeneral Video
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