Pickpocket (Film)

PICKPOCKET
Dir: Robert Bresson
France, 1959
14/05/09

Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, with it’s story based on Dostoyevsky’s Crime And Punishment follows young Michel (Martin Lasalle)as he embarks on a life of petty crime whilst playing cat and mouse with a police inspector (Jean Pelegri), all the while hiding affections for a young woman named Jeanne (Marika Green).

Made in the same year as A Bout De Souffle (Godard, France, 1960) but released earlier, Pickpocket has many of the hallmarks of the French new wave before it officially broke. Similar in style to Bresson’s earlier masterpiece A Man Escaped (France, 1956), he takes his minimalism to new lengths when considering that this film takes place in wider society and not in a prison. The interior sets are stripped down and bare, Michel’s small room reminiscent of Devigny’s cell with it‘s lack of defining features except the odd book and a bed. The same can be said of Jeanne‘s flat, with only the place were Michel’s mother resides having anything approaching a homely feel, and the scene lasts barely a few seconds. The exterior shots are on location on the streets of Paris and were filmed before Godard’s famous scenes on the Champs-Elysees. But whilst Bresson obviously admires Paris, it is nothing more then a over-elaborate, if not beautifully constructed cage for Michel.

There are three main places where the action happens: Michel’s room in an apartment block, a local bar where Michel engages in philosophical conversations with the police inspector, and the train station where Michel finds most of his success as a pickpocket. The lack of locations adds to the sense of the small world that could so easily close in on Michel, with nowhere to hide. It’s similar in essence to his vocation, so easy to get caught or seen. He only plies his trade in two places, trains and the train station or the local racetrack. It shows Michel’s lack of aspirations that he refuses to leave the confines of his comfort zone and it is only when he leaves Paris that he manages to grow as a man and widen his horizon even if he hasn’t entirely banished his old self.

Bresson, unlike Godard, is interested in his characters and Lasalle may play Michel with realistic coldness but this isn‘t a chic rebel without a heart who aspires to Bogart cool in the mould Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard‘s early films. He’s not adverse to stealing money from his dying mother or his friend who sticks by him (yet commits a far more devastating theft himself later on), but it is an emotional indifference shared by Raskolnikov in Crime And Punishment and it allows Bresson to comment through the character rather then being a mere target for showing off the director’s flair.

Michel’s feelings of exposure are expressed brilliantly by having the lock on his door broken so it is always open, also showing his lack of care for anything he possesses. The only things he keeps hidden are whatever he’s stolen. The only emotional connections to the world he has is his mother and he refuses to see her out of guilt, often getting Jeanne or his friend to go instead. All the while the camera watches Michel with careful scrutiny, catching every movement of his criminal deeds. We often get close ups of his face but it is always as expressionless as the last time we saw it. In typical Bresson style it‘s all simple yet effective.

Michel’s coldness is further identified by his philosophy that if a man is a master at a certain task he should be left by society to engage in it, even if it is crime. It’s more a philosophy in progress aimed at getting himself off the hook and justifying his actions by putting himself on a pedestal, mirroring the arrogance and indifference of his youth, especially since he states it to a police inspector, a sure case of showing off, and he‘s desperate for people to see that he‘s read books so as not to be categorized as something he feels he isn‘t as he feels trapped emotionally, as well as physically, by people’s opinions of him. There is a great scene where Michel shows the Police Inspector a book to show he is well read and intelligent only fro the Police Inspector to point out it is about a Pickpocket, something Michel then has to disregard.

Michel’s only real emotion comes from his voiceover, narrating a letter he is writing to Jeanne where he retrospectively analyses his actions after having gone through a maturing chain of events. Despite Michel’s emptiness Bresson has empathy for the character, and it is tragic when Michel, after attempting to go straight for Jeanne finds himself enticed into one more act of crime that lands him in trouble, and even though he may not be physically free by the end he still finds spiritual redemption. Indeed the overall message of the film is how long the journey can sometimes be for someone to get where their soul wants (or unknowingly needs) to be.

The scenes of theft, especially in the train station, are utterly captivating and tense, especially when Michel acquires two accomplices (One of whom is French cabaret star Kassagi). If this was made now you would be almost certain that much of it was done with special effects to make the items disappear, but this being the fifties is done with clever editing and actual skill, showing us the acts in almost voyeuristic detail, and it is Bresson’s talent as a film-maker that takes Pickpocket to another level. It may leave one unengaged at times emotionally, at least until we become more accustomed to the characters’ apathy, but stylistically is immensely fulfilling, Bresson preferring functional yet understatedly poetic direction to suit the mood of the story and it‘s inhabitants. It speaks volume’s that he can express so much in the short space of seventy-three minutes, zipping things along with no desire to bog his work down with pointless digressions.

The music is also perfectly chosen, an extract from a piece by Jean-Baptiste Lully that Bresson only uses fleetingly yet is extremely expressive and effective, especially over the ending shot. It sounds like the build up to a crescendo, multiple instruments conveying a multitude of emotions and reveals Michel’s state of mind, when used, better then any shot in the film. Alas the film had no credits so I don’t know which piece it was and have now purchased some Lully but am yet to find it.

It’s not without it’s imperfections. Some scenes, especially early on, are difficult to grasp hold of, especially involving the police inspector (we aren’t immediately told who he is) and I wonder if this is unintentional as maybe Bresson expected his audience to know it was based on Crime and Punishment and have prior knowledge of that book (which I have read, but didn‘t become aware of the comparison til later on). Also, some scenes are perhaps on the short side and it requires after-thought to fully comprehend it’s meaning, but maybe this is true of all great works. I wouldn’t declare it a masterpiece (unlike A Man Escaped), yet I could see why some people might argue otherwise. It is nonetheless a fantastic poetical work and it’s restraint and immediacy and to reiterate is all more magnificent for just how much Bresson expresses using so little.