In the great “Mouchette” (1966), a young girl-an outcast in her village and a victim of rape-finds a way to shame her enemies.In addition to “Pickpocket's” parallels to Crime and Punishment, Bresson has made two films directly based on Dostoyevsky: “Une Femme Douce” (1969) and “Four Nights of a Dreamer” (1973). In “A Man Escaped” (1956), based on a true story of the resistance, an imprisoned patriot acts as if his soul is free. In “ Diary of a Country Priest” (1950), a dying young priest confronts his death by focusing on the lives of others. Most of his films deal, in one way or another, with redemption. He has been called the most Christian of filmmakers. He made his last film, “L'Argent,” in 1983, and it won a special prize at Cannes. But he tries to pick his pocket anyway, and when the cop slaps on handcuffs, it's as if that's what Michel hoped for.īresson was born in 1907 and is still alive. And later, when a police decoy at the racetrack shows Michel a pocketful of cash, Michel suspects the man is a cop (“He didn't even bet on the winning horse!”). It's no coincidence that when another pickpocket spots Michel at work and confronts him, it is in a men's room their liaison involves money as a substitute for sex. Their thefts are intimate violations of the property of others to succeed, they must either remain invisible or inspire trust. Shoplifters and pickpockets operate in different emotional weather than more brazen thieves. The inspector is on Michel's case, and Michel, we sense, wants to be caught. Together they examine an ingenious tool designed by a master pickpocket to slit open coat pockets. They play a delicate cat-and-mouse scene together in which the inspector implies that he knows Michel is a thief, and Michel more or less admits it.
PICKPOCKET FILMS MOVIE
Does he avoid her because of arrogance, or fear?Īnother character in the movie is a police inspector ( Jean Pelegri) who has his eye on Michel. Perhaps she makes it impossible for him to think of himself as an extraordinary man,alone in the world.
Perhaps she shames him with her simplicity. Why does he avoid her? Bresson never supplies motives. Michel does not want to see his mother, but gives Jeanne money for her. She comes to Michel with the news that his mother is dying. She is a neighbor of Michel's mother, and the lover of Michel's friend Jacques ( Pierre Leymarie). The woman in “Pickpocket” is named Jeanne ( Marika Green). Michel, like the hero of Crime and Punishment, has a good woman in his life, who trusts he will be able to redeem himself. The reasoning is immoral, but the characters claim special privileges above and beyond common morality. 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.
In this story you may sense echoes of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, another story about a lonely intellectual who lived in a garret and thought he had a license, denied to common men, to commit crimes. That is his moment of release, of triumph over a lesser person-although of course his face never reflects joy. He waits for a moment of distraction,and then opens their purses or slips their wallets from their coats. On the Metro or at the racetrack, he stands as close as possible to his victims, sensing their breathing, their awareness of him. Also, of course, he gets an erotic charge out of stealing. He sits in his garret and reads his books, and treasures an image of himself as a man so special that he is privileged to steal from others. He gathers his narcissism around himself like a blanket. He could probably get a job in a day if he wanted one. To one of them, in a cafe, he wonders aloud if it is all right for an “extraordinary man” to commit a crime-just to get himself started? He usually wears a suit and tie, disappears in a crowd and has few friends. Martin Lassalle, the star of “Pickpocket,” plays Michel as an unexceptional man with a commonplace face. Instead of asking his actors to “show fear,” Bresson asks them to show nothing, and depends on his story and images to supply the fear. What we see in the pickpocket's face is what we bring to it.
No emotion, no style, no striving for effect. All Bresson wanted was physical movement. He famously forced the star of “ A Man Escaped” (1956) to repeat the same scene some 50 times,until it was stripped of all emotion and inflection. Or do we? Bresson, one of the most thoughtful and philosophical of directors, was fearful of “performances” by his actors.
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