Pickpocket ( Robert Bresson,1959): France

Reviewed by Saloua Kehal. Viewed at Afi Fest 2013.

Robert Bresson stands out with his movie Pickpocket.  He last movie was “The money,” in 1983, and it won a special prize at Cannes. The movie Pickpocket was  picked by the french artistic director Agnes Varda for screenings at the AFI festival 2013. The movie his in black and white but closer to grey. The story was inspired by Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” which is a movie about a lonely intellectual, who thinks he has the right to commit crimes. Raskolnikov the main character needs money like Bresson’s Michel in order to realize his dreams and sees no reasons against stealing it from richer people. Such like Michel his reasoning is immoral, but the characters think that special privileges above and beyond morality. Also, like Michel who has Jeanne, Raskolnikov has a woman who believes he would change.

Pickpocket is the story of a man Michel who deliberatly steal from people, and he does not see much against it. The movie starts with a close up showing Michel expression, he seems excited and scared. He is about to commit a crime. He steals from a woman purse. Michel is a simple man. He lives in a small room, with a door that does not clothes. The beggining of the movie is very special because there is a voice off who plays the roleof a narrator or I would say who tells Michel’s story like he was reading his Diary.

The only think that would characterize Michel is his love for Jeanne. Jeanne is his mother’s neighbor,and the lover of his friend Jacques. She comes see Michel to give him news about his mother who is sick and who he does not want to visit maybe by shame. Bresson do not give us a reason.

The camera uses close ups of hands and wallets or pockets. When Michel steals the camera is focused on his hand. These close ups shows the action in a very precise way, and the images are like  a documentary about pickpockets.

Pickpocket is an interesting movie. I think it was a little bit too slow for me, but for people who do not like movies with a lot of action this movie is perfect. However, I enjoyed the fact that the main character and actor is somehow very different from the characters we see in other movies. Michel is a idiosyncratic character, and because it is different than what we see in movies usually, I would recommand this movie.