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Pickpocket [1959]


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A masterstroke in understatement.
Review date: 2008-02-12 Rating: 10 out of 10

Robert Bresson's quiet, understated tales can take a little getting used to. Don't expect any loud explosions, character development, or in some of his cases, any kind of closure at all. A leap of faith is needed, and ultimately rewarded, and 'Pickpocket' remains one of the French master's finest films.

A young man named Michel (Martin Lasalle) becomes disaffected with life and embarks upon a pickpocketing crime spree. After several botched attempts, he hones his skills to perfection, performing several wallet heists so audacious, they would have the artful dodger green eyed with envy. But soon he attracts the eye of not only the law, but a local crime syndicate as well, and the prison bars are hovering too close for comfort.

Pickpocket's true masterstroke is how Michel becomes almost sociopathic in his ventures. By the end, stealing for the thrill instead of financial gain, he seemingly invites the police to come and find him. And the scenes of pickpocketing are truly breathtaking. Michel may be a criminal, but you'll be behind him all the way, desperate for him to not get caught. His canny, virtuoso techniques will have you on the edge of your seat, putting all of Hollywood's derivative action movies to shame.
And by the end, his nimble fingers can do no more good, and a woman's love may be his only salvation.

Received rather poorly in its heyday, Pickpocket stands the test of time with distinction. At only 73 minutes, this absolutely flies by, leaving you desperate for more. And Bresson, ever the master, refuses to let the proceedings get bogged down with sentimentality. Truly one of the greatest films i've ever seen, and you should see it too.

The extras are ace as well. A wonderful 5 minute interview with Bresson sees him answer difficult questions with an intelligence clearly years ahead of his time. Plus tons of retrospective interviews with the original cast and various perspectives on the film itself. Absolute gold.




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Reviews


"I was walking on air, with the world at my feet."
Review date: 2007-08-11 Rating: 8 out of 10

"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

Basic Bresson
Review date: 2007-03-30 Rating: 6 out of 10

Quite absorbing character study focusing on one man's addiction to petty crime.The film follows him from his early forays into pickpocketing to a level of skill that consumes him completely in the pursuit of illicit gain.But then he becomes noticed...
Based on Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, Bresson's minimalist style compliments (as it has to ) the limitations of his non-professional cast. He believed that trained actors brought false emotions whereas non actors came with a heightened sense of realism and emotional honesty.This theory works far better here than in say L'Argent but it is an acquired taste.
Striking location work adds immensely to the film's appeal.


Classic Bresson, great extras.
Review date: 2006-10-07 Rating: 10 out of 10

For someone familiar with this film, the most fascinating aspect of this 2-disk DVD is the "extras", particularly an interview with the reclusive Bresson and a 52-minute documentary, The Models of Pickpocket, consisting of recent interviews with three of the leading actors.
First, Pickpocket itself. Made in 1959, a commercial and critical failure at the time, it is now considered to be among the two or three greatest and most seminal films of the French master. It was loosely inspired by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment whose central character regards himself as a superior moral being who, unlike the common herd of people, is entitled to rob and murder. In Pickpocket, the young man Michel feels a compulsion, almost a divine obligation, to become an expert pickpocket, not for the material gain but simply for its own sake. He is shadowed and eventually trapped by a police inspector, and only when he is in prison does he realise that his true vocation was to be with the young woman who loved him, Jeanne. These other two characters have their counterparts in Crime and Punishment.
Like the director's 1950 film Diary of a Country Priest, Pickpocket takes the form of a diary, presumably being written in prison. We hear Michel's voice describing what happened, sometimes preceded by his writing it on squared notepaper, and then we see the scene in question. Strictly speaking, therefore, what we are seeing is not the actual events, but the events as recalled later by Michel. Perhaps this helps to justify Bresson's highly elliptical method of showing only what he considers essential, and of galloping through long sections of the story in literally seconds.
Bresson had long developed his unique method of training his (non-)actors, or "models", to eschew all expressionism and theatricality in their performances. They act largely with their eyes, nearly all the spoken dialogue being in a kind of fast monotone. They are chosen for their facial expressionlessness, Michel being played by Martin Lasalle, reminiscent of the young Henry Fonda or Montgomery Clift. Jeanne is played by Marika Green, a pretty blonde 16-year-old. I do not recall a single character smile throughout the entire film.
Bresson always opposed the notion of psychological motivation, and his characters often perform actions for no apparent reason. Michel's motive for thieving is as if he is being driven forward by some irresistible force. This is in tune with Bresson's supposed Jansenism, a kind of Catholic heresy which emphasised predestination and one's inability to influence one's fate. Pickpocket repays repeated viewing, and has hugely influenced other film-makers such as Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader.
To turn to the DVD extras, and particularly to The Models of Pickpocket. The actors playing Michel, Jeanne, and Michel's friend Jacques were sought out and interviewed 45 years later, and they each reminisced about their experiences with Bresson, about his numerous "takes" (Martin Lasalle had to walk upstairs about 50 times for one brief shot), his particular interest in very young women (in a perfectly gentlemanly way), his original intention to entitle the film Uncertainty, and many other interesting reflections. One discovery for me was that both Martin LaSalle (now totally unrecognisable from his pickpocket role) and Marika Green subsequently became professional actors, which I had thought applied to only two of Bresson's "models" (Anne Wiazemsky of Au Hasard Balthazar and Dominique Sanda of Une Femme Douce). According to their filmographies Green has played in 30 French films while Lasalle, who trained at the famous Actors' Studio in New York (associated with such icons as Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift) and lives in Mexico City, has appeared in no fewer than 60, mostly obscure Mexican movies.
The remaining extras, besides the short Bresson interview, are a short stage interview with Marika Green along with (I think) a French critic and a director, and a cabaret performance, filmed for French TV, by Kassagi, the master pickpocket in the film who in reality was a stage magician who specialised in swallowing razor blades. Altogether, a highly commended DVD of a classic film.



Crime and Punishment, Bresson style
Review date: 2006-07-15 Rating: 10 out of 10

Looking like a French movie but sounding like Russian literature with all the furniture cataloguing removed, Pickpocket is from the days when Bresson still drew more naturalistic performances from his non-professional casts rather than turning them into stilted and self-conscious mannequins (although Marika Green falls into the latter category, always looking at her feet as if her lines were written on her shoes in classic Bresson automaton mode), and combines the sleek look of a studio policier with a pared down moral debate from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, with theft replacing murder.

Unlike Bresson's more obviously spiritual films (A Man Escaped, Au Hasard Balthazar, Diary of a Country Priest), there's no religious quest here: instead, there's a determinedly atheistic one, with Martin LaSalle's would-be Prince of Pickpockets pursuing an ideal of intellectual elitism as justification for crime against society's morality, failing to realise that he's just another of the thousands of petty egotist in the criminal little leagues. He simply has the ability to articulate his own notions of superiority, completely unaware that he probably works harder at his criminal skills than he would ever do at a proper job.

It's also possibly Bresson's most overtly cinematic work despite the underplaying of the dialog scenes. The fluidity of the railway station sequence, with its extraordinary display of tricks of the trade that seem more magic act than crime (the DVD also includes an extract from sleight-of-hand advisor and supporting player Kassogi's cabaret act) and the stylised nature of the sound that always keeps LaSalle at a slight remove from the world around him are much more exhilarating displays of technique than you usually associate with Bresson's more controlled and understated approach in his other films, as even he gets caught up in the LaSalle's addiction to the perfect high that only crime can give him. In that respect, it's the Bresson film you can safely recommend to people who hate Bresson fans without losing points with the faithful.

The UK DVD is a good one, boasting an excellent transfer of the film on disc one with several interviews - including a virtual interrogation of a faltering Bresson on French TV and a trio of interviews with LaSalle, Green and the articulate and intelligent Pierre Leymarie that are all to often broken up by the interviewer's self-indulgent naval-gazing - as well as TV footage of Kassogi's cabararet act. The R1 Criterion disc also has an audio commentary and an introduction by Paul Schrader which didn't make it to this version.


Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Martin La Salle

Creators:
Martin La Salle (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Artificial Eye
Manufacturer: Artificial Eye
EAN: 5021866295305
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 2
Format: PAL, Widescreen,
Release date: 2005-04-25
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Audience rating: Parental Guidance
Region code: 2
Running time: 73 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1959
Language: English (Unknown)
Language: French (Unknown)
Language: English (Subtitled)
Language: French (Original Language)

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