Robert Bresson's PickPocket

Bresson's Pickpocket is the kind of film that sinks into your subconscious and gives you a strange love for the characters. Bresson never lets us know the characters on anything but the most intimate level. We only see characters as they see themselves, there are no false fronts or outward persona's everyone is acting as if they are alone all the time. This technique at first seems to repulse you from the characters but as it progresses you become thoroughly endeared.

Pickpocket tells the story of Michel(Martin La Salle) a young Raskolnikov like character and his forays into the world of pick pocketing. Right away Michel steals money from an Rich woman at the horse races and is caught by the police. Michel ignores the help of his mother, his friend Jacques and the beautiful Jeanne in favor of continuing to pickpocket.

Pickpockets plot is not what stands it apart from other films. You could expect this sort of story to be handled in a typical crime film style but all genre conventions are completely subverted in this film. No action is ever exaggerated for dramatic effect, when Michel is arrested in the beginning he is simply grabbed by two men and we fade into the police station where he is promptly released. There is no struggle all of which would regularly be thrilling is just skipped. Now despite this I still think the film is very entertaining. Watching Michel lift the pocket of a man on a subway as he narrates "My heart is pounding" you will be likely to find yourself in a similar situation. The minimalistic approach to shooting the films makes the pickpocket scenes that much more thrilling and real.

The acting functions on an almost disturbing level in this film. I'm not positive but I think a single person never cracks the beginnings of a smile. All the actors were untrained, unknowns that Bresson hand picked. Each character seems always to be staring off into space deep in thought and then they come back to reality to deliver some short line of dialogue. Even the common narration is used so sparingly that it has the feeling of actually character thoughts as opposed to exposition for the viewer.

Bresson uses every usual cinema go-to like a trump card in this film. If it is known to evoke feelings in the viewer he deliberately leaves it out. Bresson does this not to torture the viewer in any way, but so that when he does use them they highlight the screen in a most piercing way.

5/5 "A Minimalistic Masterpiece"