Rent Pickpocket (1959)

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!

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.

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!