Pickpocket (Robert Besson, 1959): France

Reviwed by Alan Gueler Viewed at the AFI Fest 2013

PIckpocket

I usually don’t like movies made before the 1970, “Psycho is an exeption” have been my epigraph to this question. But not anymore.

Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959) is a very good movie. That is all I have to say if I’m gonna keep it short. This movie have everything that I miss in movies from this era, more angles on every scene, character development and not so many long conversations. There’s even moments when they communicating through nods and hand motions.

The narrative is very good, it’s not following the typical Hollywood three act structure, but it still works very well. The best thing about the narrative is that this movie has a lot character development of the protagonist Michel (Martin LaSalle) who also has a voice over narration in the film. As he’s training his pick-pocketing skills to be able to survive, I developed feelings for him and even though he is a thief and does horrible things, you never want him to get caught because you see his life from another perspective that he is  poor. And when he then gets caught, you feel sorry for him. The the best part of the film is when Michel’s training his pick-pocketing skills. The scenes are beautifully shot with extreme close-ups on the hands following every movement as he explains how and why he has so many different techniques.

When the french director of the movie presented the film for us, She said that the movie was beautifully edited. I couldn’t see anything special about the editing in the movie accept for the fade-in and fade-out cut, witch isn’t anything special at all.

The sound score for this movie was good. The sound together with the production design, specially in Michel’s apartment, set the mood for the whole movie. Very powerful scene to see how he lives and go from not liking him to pity him. That is the genre right there in that very scene, both crime and drama.