Criterion Collection: Pickpocket [DVD] [1959] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

"Pickpocket" never grabs us the way a standard movie does. The plot is difficult to extract, and the storyline is never as easy to understand as we might like. Minimalism is at play, although it never overtakes this complex film about a man's search for meaning in the bowels of his own soul.

Just as with movies like "Passion of the Christ," or "Clockwork Orange," my appreciation of the movie is not because I felt good throughout, but because throughout the movie, I was able to think about what makes humankind and the shape of redemption.

"Pickpocket" is an art house film, with its long vignette style, with Hitchcock-like shots and film noir-like shadowing.

Michel, the main character, develops a desperate fetish for pickpocketing. He learns to be good at the techniques of pickpocketing. He practices wrist watch stealing with the leg of a table as the arm.

No one is lonelier than Michel in his fetish. He knows it is wrong and is unable to face his own mother. His eyes are almost always downturned. They are partly looking for the next steal, and partly unable to face the real world.

All of Michel's relationships are void of passion and intimacy. The closest relationship is that with a police inspector who knows Michel is a thief but chooses not to prove it. He sees good in Michel and tries to steer him out of the lifestyle.

Throughout, Michel is selfish, even when he gives his mother money. That is to appease his guilt, not to lift his mother's finances or encourage her spirits.

Michel, unable to escape his fetish, justifies criminals at large by suggesting some, as artisans of their craft, should retain a kind of freedom to steal. However, he never describes the noble benefit, like James Bond's license to kill provides, which in Bond's case is to save the Queen, and, ostensibly, the world. Rather, it is by the merit of being good at his craft that he would thinks should be enough, but the inspector, nor Michel himself, are ever truly convinced.

Jeanne, the plainly attractive neighbor who often cares for his mom, is strangely interested in him. They have only a matter-of-fact connection, not sensual or romantic in any way. She represents a meaningful existentiality, living as the lover to Michel's friend Jacques (who she does not really love), and helping her elderly neighbor. Michel's as existential as Jeanne, but without the redeeming selflessness that makes Jeanne more human.

Michel dearly wants redemption, and knows his futile lifestyle can only end in despair. He wants more, and when confronted with the likelihood of being arrested, he leaves Paris for several years. When he returns, he learns Jeanne has a child of a long-gone lover.

The opportunity for redemption is clear to audience, but is it to Michel? And what would it look like for a man as obsessed with his own desires as he is, since redemption requires us to look outside of ourselves to live a better life?

I fully recommend "Pickpocket."

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

Pickpocket is probably the most accessible of director Robert Bresson's films. Depicted with an almost clinical attention to detail, the pickpocketing sequences are amazing and beautiful. It's easy to sense the fascination and perhaps even the admiration of the director as he choreographs the movements of two and later three pickpockets working together on Paris trains and at a racetrack.

Bresson's subtle camerawork is also showcased. In one sequence, a montage of the thief Michel learning the tricks of his trade, we are shown how he stretches his fingers and rolls a coin between them to increase their suppleness. Then, in the same shot, the hand picks up a cup of coffee and brings it to Michel's lips. The shot begins as a continuation of the montage and then suddenly changes. This one shot goes from the representative to the specific, creating a subtle jarring effect. Bresson doesn't use standard movie devices to grab our attention. A simple tilt of the camera from hands to face succeeds in accomplishing what other filmmakers might use more flamboyant techniques to achieve. Bresson was truly a genius.

An added bonus is Paul Schrader's fifteen-minute introduction to the film in which he explains the subtlety of Bresson's technique. I've read Schrader's book, Transcendental Style in Film, three times and always find more in it. Yet in his fifteen-minute introduction Schrader explains the premise of his book as well as Bresson's unique approach with amazing clarity. Along with several other short pieces about Bresson and the actors (whom Bresson calls "Models") and a commentary by James Quandt, this is one of the best DVDs I've seen years.

All of Bressons films deal with some character who does not fit into society for some reason. His heros are all rebels like Dostoyevsky's hero's(Pickpocket is based on a Dostoyevsky story) and Camus'. They are stories about people who do not fit in and while studying just how and why they don't fit in Bresson also studies society itself. Some of his movies are just plain bleak but this one has an ending that makes this film unique among this directors work. I think it is rightly singled out as the best though that doesn't mean it's the only one worth seeing. His films are complex and the more of them you see the more his films makes sense. Bresson is a director who does demand his viewers think and he frames his scenes in a way that rebels against cinematic norms in the same way his characters rebel against societal norms but in that style is much substance. If you are only going to see one Bresson film this is the one to see but if you want to see more I would suggest L'Argent after this one. Diary of a Country Priest is excellent but I think best appreciated by those who have already grown familiar with Bresson's style. Each of his films are quite unique and one of my favorites is Lancelot of the Lake which is a most interesting re-telling of that famous legend.