Simple realistic approach to a life of crime
- Pickpocket review by Oli
I’ll first add we have 2 bad reviews and 1 good review, it may be worth adding, if you’re getting into Bresson (like me!) then watch A Man Escaped first, which BFI recommended as it will give you a good insight into his thoughtful realistic approach. Now onto Pickpocket, it’s great when you watch something that doesn’t try too hard to impress, but manages to do it in a suttle simple way anyway. Michel begins the film as a novice pickpocket, we presume bad times have brought him here and that the only way he feels comfortable earning a living at this time is by picking the pockets of others! We are then entranced into a beautifully shot story of his past, his present and his future. I can’t add enough that this film is a one of a kind, sure some people might not understand/like it, I don’t know quite why but take it from me, it was a really pleasant, albeit short, simple, well shot, smart, thoughtful movie with lots to say inbetween!
3 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
The Loneliess of the Middle-Distance Thief
- Pickpocket review by CH
What pleasure can there be in a criminal life? Any job which has been pulled off soon entails continuing uncertainty, as much from others involved as any pursuers. The task is not something about which one can speak, no chance of adding it to general conversation. It is a solitary pursuit born of social ineptitude.
These are but some of thoughts prompted by Bresson's Pickpocket (1959). Of course. to watch a film about criminals can be entertaining; they are a better on-screen presence than the saintly – doing bird rather than feeding them. The technique of lifting wallets from jackets and hiding them in a folded newspaper is as close as Pickpocket comes to any form of heist. Its interest is not so much in suspense as its attempt to enter a criminal mind – that of Martin LaSalle, who appears satisfied, however much he lifts, to eke out life in a scarcely-furnished bedsitter while, elsewhere in Paris, his mother is seriously ailing, not visited by anybody except her young neighbour, Marika Green.
Partly inspired by Dostoevsky, all this is redolent of that post-war French thought popularly deemed to consist of sitting in cafés and sporting a black, roll-top jumper.
There are some locations, including streets, a railway station and the glimpse of a race course, but much of the narrative haunts mundane premises in which those involved are more likely to be looking into the distance than at one another.
Made in black and white, the film turns around three main actors (including LaSalle's friend Pierre Leymarie) who were all new to acting, their seemingly gauche attitudes no accident but the result of Bresson's insisting upon dozen of takes: LaSalle had to toil up a curving staircase some forty times. This hour and a quarter is no B-feature. It has a studied air, one – as always with Bresson – which sets it apart from, say, the emergent nouvelle vague.
Symbolic of all this is the jacket – perhaps fashionably unlined - worn throughout by LaSalle, even when gaoled.
The edition of the film issued by Artificial Eye has an extra disc, much of which is a documentary with visits to those three actors for their reminiscences across almost half a century. No easy task, for one part of this involved a visit to somebody who had taken up a medical career; another who, via New York, now lives in a remote corner of Mexico City: twists and turns as fascinating as any in Pickpocket, and an aside which prompts one to seek out Bresson's book Notes on Cinematography, which is not, apparently, as dry as its title might suggest.
2 out of 2 members found this review helpful.
Painstakingly Brilliant
- Pickpocket review by Avijit
Painstakingly Brilliant. Fascinating to what extent Bresson would go in search of saying the unsaid. A bit difficult to watch!
1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.
Avoid
- Pickpocket review by JD
The acting was almost as bad as the plot. I have never seen such a boring poorly acted film in any language.
1 out of 3 members found this review helpful.
Paris Thief
- Pickpocket review by NO
Very austere film,unemotional character,poor dialogue.No real story just his ideas & thoughts.Confusing start-was not sure who the police were & how he met the other thieves.
Strange how some viewers gave it 4 stars & some two.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Don't Bother
- Pickpocket review by RN
Bresson is the darling of critics and indeed French film makers. But this is one of the most solemn and boring of his films. The main character tiwtches & grunts his way through his uninteresting criminal caree, keeps a dull diary & pontificates about the need for supermen and criminals to bring about human progress. Weirds. I love French movies of the 30s-60s but I fast=forwarded this so much the agony was soon over.
0 out of 2 members found this review helpful.
Masterpiece
- Pickpocket review by sb
FILM & REVIEW Robert Bresson was the Master of French Minimalism and this is his finest film. LaSalle plays Michel whose life is going nowhere and who decides to undertake a life of crime. His first effort fails and he gets arrested by a kindly Police Inspector (Pelegrí) who cannot prove the case and let’s him go. With practice his skills improve and soon he is lifting wallets on the Metro with aplomb. He hooks up with another thief and with a third accomplice turn picking pockets into an art form. He also has a sickly Mother who he never visits and this brings him into contact with Jeanne (Marika Green) and slowly an affection builds. The Inspector has kept in touch and they debate the idea of the Nietzschian idea of a superman who society should not judge with elements of Raskolnikov to add another element. Of course it’s only time before he is caught which he accepts with philosophical resignation and this brings out the true love he has for Jeanne. It’s a real little masterpiece without a single wasted shot or word with LaSalle in his debut very good as the remote detached lead with Green bringing a softer human quality to the film. Spookily she is the spitting image of Natalie Portman and is in fact Eva Green’s Aunt. It turns up in various best ever lists and Paul Schrader admits he has basicly made a career out of it - quire superb - 5/5
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.
Stripped down emotions
- Pickpocket review by DF
A fascinating movie both in style and content. Late 1950s Paris and the main character Michel, a sombre intellectual is riven by existential angst and very much an outsider. His contingency plan is to take up a life of petty crime. This is based on his notion that some sort of ‘elite’ members of society (such as he) are free to use crime for ultimately bestowing a ‘better good’. Michel takes a crash course in the art of pickpocketing and sets forth to seek due recompense on the Metro and racecourses. Michel’s friends and mother are in despair because of Michel’s emotional remoteness and are duly concerned. How Bresson deals with this in the movie is exceptional and fascinating. Characters are stripped of any excessive emotion; their interactions are brief, sudden and abrupt, almost accidental. Parisienne crowds in the Metro and the racecourses often appear frozen and remote. Eventually a curious police inspector (randomly introduced to Michel) begins to take an ‘interest’ in Michel; what is he up to, and… why? Bresson freely takes content and storyline from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The main characters of the novel are also central in the movie; Michel (Raskolnikov), Jacques (Razumikhin), Pélégri (Porfiry) and Jeanne (Sonya). If i were to ‘imagine’ Raskolnikov’s room in Crime & Punishment, it would be Michel’s room! Bresson’s movie stands, in its own right, as a masterpiece.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.