Pickpocket Reviews

An emotional roller-coaster

When a film is by common consent listed as one of the greatest 100 films of all time, it must have something going for it. For those of you even looking to rent the film, I'm certain you already know where to look for far more eloquent critique of the film than I can ever hope to deliver. This synopsis therefore is my attempt at the purely emotional gut wrenching grip that the film excercised upon yours truly. I first saw this film back in 1959 when I was no more than a lad of 17 attending school. It was showing (for those of you old enough to remember) at one of the old chain of Classic cinemas. To this day, I can't even begin to rationalize what drove this soul night after night to catch a six mile bus ride to Hendon to see the film six nights in a row and feel just as much emotionally drained after the 6th screening as I was after the first. It's that sort of film and time hasn't dulled the edge. Ask anyone who's seen it.

Bonus disc for serious cinephiles only

This is bonus disc that accompanies Bresson’s Pickpocket. It is a nice addition when you purchase the DVD, but is probably not worth renting on its own. The main item here is Babette Mangolte’s hour-long Les Modeles de Pickpocket in which Mangolte interviews, forty years later, three key non-professional actors (or ‘models’) used in the film: Pierre Leymarie, Marika Green and Martin Lasalle. A promising subject, but the film is just okay. The interviews are only mildly interesting, and Mangolte’s attempt to give the piece a Bressonian feel is betrayed by the cheap look of the video image. (The allure of the Bressonian image is met here with its antithesis: an uninviting surface that keeps us at a remove.)

Other bonus features includes a Q&A after a screening of the film with two French filmmakers, Jean-Pierre Ameris and Paul Vecciali, and Green; and an interview on French television with Bresson circa 1959. They are enjoyable but brief (13 minutes and 6 minutes, respectively).

[Highly rated reviewer]

Overrated, not a patch on Balthasar

Really struggled to get into this from an emotional point of view. Although the film was well shot and the tension during the pickpocketing scenes I couldn't connect with it at all which might have had something to do with it being really late at night. In the end I think it was Bresson's choice of actors that purposely took out that empathy and consequently it didn't really work for me.

A Disturbing Masterpiece

If you look for an action movie, this film is not for you. It brings the feeling of cinema brought to a bare essential, where you get the feeling that no gesture, no word, no frame were shot before carefully thinking.

Words are said, not acted, and images ilustrate the comments from the character.

It carries, however, a violent tension, not from the story, but from the dilemmas and emotions (or its absence) of its main character.

The last scene should be present in every cinema anthology for its stunning and disturbing beauty.

Worth Picking Up

This film conjured up vividly a scene from a school trip to Paris in my youth.As a 13 year old I spent an evening with my teacher and classmates in the delapidated room of a Frenchman and his wife who resided in the hotel where we were staying. Not being able to ascertain his occupation, the teacher later confirmed his suspicions that the man and his wife were pickpockets.The hero's room in the film could have been a carbon copy of that bedsit shrunk down to accommodate a single man. Bresson's 1959 work is an adaptation of Dostoevsky's 'Crime and Punishment' and has been called his masterpiece. Certainly there are many praiseworthy elements :-the 'pared down' cinematic style, Martin de la Salle's jaded intellectual in the Raskolnikov role and Marika Green, who conveys a sense of innocence and purity as Michel's eventual redeemer. Yet, in my view, the best element of the film is its fascinating depiction of the robberies themselves and the pickpockets' tricks of the trade. Less positively, whilst acknowledging that Bresson's use of amateur actors works better here than in his other films (for example,'L'Argent' a moralistic work adapted from Tolstoy, another Russian novelist), they do still come across as quite wooden on occasions. However my biggest qualm about the film is Bresson's use of petty theft as subject matter. Would this really be the 'rebellion of choice' of a self-declared 'superman' who believes himself exempt from society's rules?

[Highly rated reviewer]

Better things to pick than this one

This film is very stark in black and white and visually I was very much impressed. The plot was also interesting, but I found that Bresson’s use of amateur actors was very distracting, especially the police inspector who seemed to be reading most of his lines from a script close to his right arm. The main character, Michel, looks convincing enough, but speaks his words with such lack of emotion that I found it very hard to connect with him at all.

A master at work.

Robert Bresson is an acquired taste. His cinema is informed by his Catholicism, and by his need to strip his narratives down to their barest essences. Pickpocket is one of his defining films, telling the story of a young man who is emotionally withdrawn from life, but who tries to find a justification for his existence by becoming a master pickpocket. As his skill increases, so too does his satisfaction and his arrogance, as he openly challenges the police to apprehend him. However, his interaction with those closest to him remains as awkward and alien for him as it ever was. The film, using deftly edited and undeniably exciting scenes of thieves at work, along with close-ups of the faces of its unknown cast (Bresson felt that famous faces would be a distraction for the audience) leads us into this character's insular world, which may or may not lead to a moral and spiritual redemption before the credits roll.

Unreqited love from male and female stars

As Primo Levi is famous for saying; 'Everyone leads a life of quiet desperation' and this is captured in this wonderful short French film.

An intense, although predictable tale, well acted by actors ideally suited to their parts. He, an unsucessfull pick pocket, she needs love, but she is commited to this man, who seems unaware of her loyalty, until it's too late.

classic french cinema

Pickpocket is without doubt one of the most precise,moving and deftly artistic films to come out of the glorious french cinematic tradition. An extremeley austere and unsentimental approach to filmaking characterises the production. Like, Camus' Outsider, it elevates a criminal to a formidable antiheroic status. As you watch you begin to appreciate the artistry of the thief, the fear which he lives with and the dreadful compulsion which takes him into the street each day.

To watch this is to know you are participating the history of cinema in that every director of any note in the modern era will have absorbed this picture and sought to emulate or evoke the imperious style of a master director

Light-fingererd fun?

Bresson's expressionless actors work exceptionally well in Pickpocket to create an uncomfortable yet subtle tension. The thefts are filmed perfectly; none of their intricacy is lost and the deft tactile manouvres are expressed in flowing montage.

Overall the film is moral in tone with similar themes to Crime and Punishment.