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Pickpocket (film)

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Pickpocket
French theatrical poster
Directed byRobert Bresson
Written byRobert Bresson
Produced byAgnès Delahaie
StarringMartin LaSalle
CinematographyLéonce-Henri Burel
Edited byRaymond Lamy
Music byJean-Baptiste Lully
Release date
  • 16 December 1959 (1959-12-16)
Running time
75 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench

Pickpocket is a 1959 French film written and directed by Robert Bresson. It stars Martin LaSalle, in his feature film debut, in the title role, and features Marika Green, Pierre Leymarie, and Jean Pélégri in supporting roles. It features a pickpocket who is drawn to crime, despite the intercession of his family, his friends, and even an empathetic policeman.

The film is generally considered to be one of Bresson's greatest films. Along with A Gentle Woman and Four Nights of a Dreamer, it is one of three Bresson movies heavily influenced by the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Bresson's favorite author.[1] It combines elements of Crime and Punishment's Rodion Raskolnikov (who questions whether moral rules should apply to superior men) with a street-crime plot inspired by Samuel Fuller's film Pickup on South Street (1953).

Plot

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Michel is an unemployed young man living in Paris. His friends Jacques and Jeanne try to help him, but while Jacques finds him several jobs, Michel considers them beneath him. Michel also has a distant relationship with his sickly mother. Despite his friends' entreaties, he frequently makes up excuses to avoid her.

Michel steals money from a spectator at Longchamp Racecourse. To his surprise, the police arrest him. However, the chief inspector is forced to release him for lack of proof.

At a bar, Michel asks Jacques for help finding a job. Jacques is skeptical, but agrees to help. Coincidentally, the chief inspector is also at the bar. Michel comes to life and subtly gloats to the inspector about his escape. Like Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov, he asserts that superior men should not be bound by the same laws as everyone else.

One day, Michel finds himself drawn to the graceful movements of a subway pickpocket. Michel tries to copy the pickpocket's technique. After some early successes, he proudly tells Jacques he no longer needs a job. However, he is caught after a week, and is forced to lie low for a few days. He sees a mysterious man lurking outside his flat. Although Jacques and Jeanne ask him to visit his mother, who is very ill, Michel pursues the man, a pickpocket proposing a profitable partnership.

Michel's focus on crime damages his relationship with his family and friends. He goes to a carnival with Jacques and Jeanne, but leaves to steal a man's watch. Later, he resentfully questions Jacques about whether he is in love with Jeanne. In addition, he neglects to visit his mother until she is on her deathbed; she kindly tells him that he has enough talent to succeed in life "whenever you want." After she dies, Michel and Jeanne argue about whether she will go to heaven. Michel asserts that moral rules do not exist. Jeanne asks Michel whether he believes in anything. Michel responds, "I believed in God—for three minutes."

Michel's two accomplices are arrested. Although Michel escapes, the chief inspector visits his flat as a warning. The inspector explains that while he hoped Michel would go straight after the close call at Longchamp, he no longer believes Michel will change. He adds that a month before Michel was arrested at the racetrack, Jeanne filed a police report saying that someone had stolen money from Michel's mother. However, the report was withdrawn the next day. He does not say who withdrew the complaint, but implies he knows Michel was the thief. After a conversation with Jeanne, Michel realizes that his mother withdrew the complaint, meaning that his mother knew her son stole from her. Jeanne is appalled, but tearfully hugs him.

To avoid the police, Michel flees to London, where he resumes pickpocketing. Two years later, he returns to Paris, having wasted all of his ill-gotten gains on gambling and women. He visits Jeanne and learns that while she had a child with Jacques, she decided to be a single mother because she did not love Jacques. Michel agrees to get an honest job to support the child, but his temptations remain.

One day, Michel finds himself following a racing enthusiast to Longchamp. Although Michel suspects a setup, he cannot resist stealing from him. As it turns out, the man is a plainclothes officer conducting a sting operation. This time, the police actually send Michel to jail.

Jeanne dutifully visits Michel in jail every week, but when she skips three straight weeks, Michel finds himself pained by her absence. She visits the following week, and Michel kisses her. Michel remarks to himself, "Oh, Jeanne, what a strange path I had to take to reach you at last."

Cast

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Production

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Bresson was supposedly inspired by Samuel Fuller's film Pickup on South Street (1953), which is also about pickpockets.[2][3] (Pickup on South Street was not released in French theaters until 1961, but it was well-received at the 1954 Venice Film Festival.[4]) Pickpocket shares many plot elements with Fuller's film, including the dying mother, the notion of the pickpocket as outsider, and "the interlinking of pocketpicking and sexuality."[4]

In addition, at one point in the film, Jacques reads and asks to borrow Michel's copy of Richard S. Lambert's The Prince of Pickpockets: A Study of George Barrington.

Bresson wrote the film "in three months and shot [it] in the midst of crowds in a minimal amount of time."[5] The resulting disorder proved to be a challenge during shooting, but was sometimes used to the crew's advantage, as in the Gare de Lyon pickpocketing sequence.[6]

The French-Tunisian pickpocket Henri Kassagi acted as technical advisor on the film, as well as appearing as instructor and accomplice to the main character.[7] After Pickpocket, Kassagi's face and techniques were too well known for him to continue with his old trade, and he changed career to become a successful stage magician.[8]

Reception

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Critical reception

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On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 46 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.0/10. The website's consensus reads: "Narratively spare and told with clockwork precision, Pickpocket is a carefully observed character study that packs an emotional wallop."[9]

Awards

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Pickpocket was entered into competition for the Golden Bear at the 10th Berlin International Film Festival, where it lost to El Lazarillo de Tormes. Cahiers du Cinema named it the fourth-best film of 1959.[10]

Influence

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Pickpocket is often considered one of Bresson's greatest films.[11] Various filmmakers have voted for Pickpocket in the Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films of all time, including Paul Schrader, Theo Angelopoulos, Bertrand Bonello, and László Nemes.[12][13] In the 2012 Sight and Sound poll, Pickpocket was ranked at #63, but it fell to #136 in the 2022 critics' poll (it was #93 in the directors' poll).[14][12]

Werner Herzog praised the film by calling it "phenomenal" and "So intense and so beautiful… It makes you ache".[15] Yorgos Lanthimos picked Pickpocket as "the most moving film I've ever seen".[16] Christa Lang and Richard Linklater listed the film in their ten top picks from The Criterion Collection.[17][18][19] In addition, the French streaming website La Cinetek lists Martin Scorsese, Chantal Akerman, Agnès Varda, Todd Haynes, and Agnieszka Holland as fans of the film, among others.[20]

The film exerted a formative influence over the work of Schrader, who has described it as "an unmitigated masterpiece" and "as close to perfect as there can be", and whose films American Gigolo (1980), Patty Hearst (1988), Light Sleeper (1992), First Reformed (2017), and The Card Counter (2021) all feature endings similar to that of Pickpocket.[21] In addition, Schrader's screenplay for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) bears many similarities, including confessional narration and a voyeuristic look at society. Schrader was inspired by Bresson's use of "an occupational metaphor" to highlight "a personal problem which is also reflective of a social malaise," noting that in Taxi Driver, the motif of a taxicab allowed him to show Travis Bickle as "a kid locked in a yellow coffin, floating through the open sewers of the city, who seems in the middle of a crowd to be absolutely alone."[22] Schrader's admiration for Pickpocket led to his providing a filmed introduction for The Criterion Collection's 2005 DVD release of the film.[23]

Pickpocket has been paraphrased by other films, such as Leos Carax's Les Amants du Pont-Neuf (1991).[24] The Dardenne brothers' 2005 film L'Enfant has also been said to have been influenced by the film.[25] Christopher Nolan said he studied Pickpocket, along with Bresson's earlier film A Man Escaped, when making his 2017 film Dunkirk, to study how Bresson created suspense through details.[26]

Analysis

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Comparison to Dostoyevsky

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Critics have frequently noted how Pickpocket echoes Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Roger Ebert wrote: "Bresson's Michel, like Dostoyevsky's hero Raskolnikov, needs money in order to realize his dreams, and sees no reason why some lackluster ordinary person should not be forced to supply it. The reasoning is immoral, but the characters claim special privileges above and beyond common morality."[27] Gary Indiana added that like Crime and Punishment, "A man commits forbidden acts, gets caught, and goes to prison, where his suffering is ameliorated by the steadfast love of a good woman."[28] Additionally, the police inspector's game of cat-and-mouse with Michel has a parallel subplot in Crime and Punishment.

However, Indiana cautioned that Pickpocket is different from an adaptation, noting that Michel offers merely a "watery, feebly asserted version of Raskolnikov's Nietzscheanism" to defend his crimes, and that "his crimes never rise above the level of common, small-time transgression. They are enlarged to epic scale only by his neurasthenic imagination."[28] Likewise, Cosmo Bjorkenheim writes that Michel's "half-baked Nietzschean-Raskolnikovian theory about an elite of geniuses sounds like something loosely quoted from Rope rather than something deeply felt."[29] Ebert argues that Michel does not actually believe he is above the law, and that he is distinguished by his subconscious desire to be caught.[27]

Subtext

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As Paul Schrader summarized, "Pickpocket isn't really about being a pickpocket."[22] Peter Labuza writes that "when watching Pickpocket, it is easy to ascribe many things onto the film — the possible Freudian and homosexual tendencies, the heavy Catholic guilt, and Bresson’s critiques of French society."[30]

Bresson's direction has been recognized for its material sensuality. Pickpocket has been called an example of "parametric narration",[31] in which the style "dominates the syuzhet [plot] or is seemingly equal in importance to it".[32] The Harvard Film Archive notes that a "diffuse eroticism ... permeates the film, pointing towards the more overt sensuality of the later Bresson."[33] Ebert likened Michel's encounter with the mentor pickpocket to cruising, saying that their confrontation in a men's bathroom is "no coincidence." He left it to the reader to decide why "Michel does not want to see his mother, but gives Jeanne money for her."[27]

Gary Indiana notes that "stealing has a specific psychosexual meaning for [Michel], beyond fulfilling the simple need to eat. ... Michel steals because it is the only act that makes him feel alive in a world becoming dead." He opines that while Michel ends up with Jeanne at the end, the survival of their relationship is not a foregone conclusion, and "far more romantic than his dealings with Jeanne are Michel’s encounters with the thief played by the real-life pickpocket Kassagi."[28]

However, Armond White cautions that an over-focus on gay subtext may distract from the primary thread of the film, which is a deeply Catholic moral parable. According to White, "Bresson never denies the sensuous, stealthy, erotic exchange of Michel's pickpocketing routines," but White insists that "these montages fragment intimacy" instead of delivering it.[34] Slant's Ed Gonzalez concluded that Pickpocket's religious and sexual themes are in dialogue with each other, explaining that "Bresson so completely understood the full spectrum of our human condition that to ignore the sexual and spiritual elements that run concurrently through his films is to not get Bresson at all."[35]

References

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  1. ^ Cunneen, Joseph (4 June 2004). "The Films of Robert Bresson: The Mozart of French Cinema". Commonweal Magazine. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  2. ^ Casey, Michael J. (26 September 2021). "PICKPOCKET". Michael J. Cinema. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  3. ^ Hickok, Rufus (24 November 2019). "Sunday Morning! Robert Bresson's "Pickpocket"". Ordinary Times. Retrieved 10 October 2024.
  4. ^ a b Thompson, Rick (3 May 2021). "Pickpocket". Senses of Cinema. Retrieved 10 October 2024.
  5. ^ Cardullo, Bert, ed. (2009). The Films of Robert Bresson. Anthem Press. p. 203. ISBN 978-1843318255.
  6. ^ Bresson on Bresson: Interviews, 1943-1983. New York Review of Books. 2016. ISBN 978-1681370446.
  7. ^ Gabaston, Pierre (1 February 1990). Pickpocket de Robert Bresson (in French). Yellow now. p. 31. ISBN 978-2873400729.
  8. ^ Price, Brian (3 March 2011). Neither God nor Master: Robert Bresson and Radical Politics. University of Minnesota Press. p. 39. ISBN 978-0816654611.
  9. ^ "Pickpocket". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 10 August 2022. Edit this at Wikidata
  10. ^ Pickpocket (1959) - Awards - IMDb, retrieved 26 July 2023
  11. ^ Semley, John (9 February 2012). "Robert Bresson". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2 March 2017.
  12. ^ a b "Pickpocket (1959)". BFI. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  13. ^ "Theo Angelopoulos". BFI. British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 26 June 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  14. ^ Hellerman, Jason (2 December 2022). "What Films Used to Be on the Sight & Sound List But Missed Out This Decade?". No Film School. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  15. ^ Literary Hub (10 August 2016). "Werner Herzog on the Books Every Filmmaker Should Read". Literary Hub. Retrieved 23 September 2021. Herzog: "...Robert Bresson's Pickpocket. This is phenomenal; it just make me ache. So intense and so beautiful… It makes you ache, it's so beautiful. And we also watched his Au hasard Balthazar about the donkey Balthazar. It's an incredible film."
  16. ^ "Yorgos Lanthimos & Ariane Labed's Closet Picks". The Criterion Channel. Retrieved 1 January 2024.
  17. ^ "Christa Lang-Fuller's Top 10". The Criterion Collection. 20 November 2008. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  18. ^ "Richard Linklater Presents Robert Bresson". A-BitterSweet-Life. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  19. ^ "Richard Linklater's Top 10". The Criterion Collection. 21 November 2008. Retrieved 21 August 2021.
  20. ^ "Pickpocket". La Cinetek. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  21. ^ Sheila Johnston (25 January 2003). "Film-makers on film: Paul Schrader". Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 4 August 2003. Retrieved 18 August 2007.
  22. ^ a b Balsom, Erika (21 July 2023). "The Gospel of Paul Schrader". BFI. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  23. ^ Zilko, Christian (3 December 2022). "Paul Schrader Slams 'Jeanne Dielman' Topping Sight & Sound Poll as 'Distorted Woke Reappraisal'". IndieWire. Retrieved 12 February 2023.
  24. ^ Guy Austin, Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press (1996): 134.
  25. ^ Manohla Dargis; A. O. Scott (22 May 2005). "Two Belgians Win Top Prize at Cannes for Second Time". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 August 2021. The Child, a Belgian film directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, won the Palme d'Or as best film at the 58th Cannes Film Festival on Saturday night. The film, which follows a young petty thief as he struggles with the moral dilemmas of fatherhood, was inspired by Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and influenced by the classic French film "Pickpocket," by Robert Bresson.
  26. ^ Leonard Pearce (28 February 2017). "Christopher Nolan Inspired by Robert Bresson and Silent Films for 'Dunkirk,' Which Has "Little Dialogue"". The Film Stage. The Film Stage, L.L.C. Retrieved 23 September 2021. "I spent a lot of time reviewing the silent films for crowd scenes –the way extras move, evolve, how the space is staged and how the cameras capture it, the views used," Nolan tells Premiere Magazine. The director revealed that he brushed up on silent films such as Intolerance, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, and Greed, as well as the films of Robert Bresson (notably Pickpocket and A Man Escaped, to dissect the process of creating suspense through details), Wages of Fear, and, of course, Saving Private Ryan.
  27. ^ a b c Roger Ebert (6 July 1997). "Pickpocket (1959)". Chicago Sun-Times.
  28. ^ a b c Indiana, Gary (15 July 2014). "Pickpocket: Robert Bresson: Hidden in Plain Sight". The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  29. ^ "Pickpocket | Screen Slate". www.screenslate.com. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  30. ^ Labuza, Peter (21 July 2014). "Robert Bresson's 'Pickpocket' Hits Criterion: An Early Example of the Art House Crime Film". The Film Stage. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  31. ^ Robert Stam, Robert Burgoyne, & Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics: structuralism, post-structuralism, and beyond. New York: Routledge (1992): 74.
  32. ^ Lennard Højbjerg & Peter Schepelern, Film Style and Story: A Tribute to Torben Grodal. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Forlag (2003): 92.
  33. ^ "Pickpocket". Harvard Film Archive. 20 January 2012. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  34. ^ White, Armond (17 February 2015). "Indiana's Horny Adolescent Fantasy". New York Press. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
  35. ^ Gonzalez, Ed (10 November 2005). "Review: Pickpocket". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
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