Pickpocket

(The Criterion Collection, 11.8.2005)

I'd never seen Pickpocket until recently but I was already familiar with director Robert Bresson and the film's famous last line before viewing Criterion's excellent single disc release. I point out that it is a single disc because it packs more punch than most studio released two-disc sets which are usually nothing more than a marketing ploy. There is a lot to like other than this interesting and remarkable movie.

This disc is loaded. For starters, there is a neat and surprisingly lengthy video introduction by writer-director Paul Schrader who calls Pickpocket the most influential film on his career. As with many Criterion sets, there is an informative and essay-like commentary from a film scholar (this time it's James Quandt). A 2003 documentary called "The Models of Pickpocket" catches up on the film's three leads and goes into great depth about Bresson's relationship with his actors.

There is also a Q&A session with Pickpocket's Marika Green -- who, even over forty years after the film's 1959 release, looks amazing -- and filmmakers Jean-Pierre Ameris and Paul Vecchiali who appear to be as enamored with the film as Schrader. Something sure to bring a smile to your face is footage of the film's pick-pocketing consultant, Kassagi (who also appears in the film as a pickpocket), showing off his skills before a live audience on the French television show La piste aux etoiles. Finally, and most rewarding, is a Cinepanorama interview with Robert Bresson where he discusses his style and his critics with surprising candidness.

I would write of the individual performances in the film but that would be foolish. In a Bresson film, the actors are stripped of the theatrical devices that actors normally use. He wished his films to be alive. He wanted every moment of his films to feel new with every viewing and a key to his undeniable success was keeping much of his characters' emotions, motives, and thoughts hidden from the audience. If need be, he took 40 or 50 takes of a scene until his actors' were so numb to the dialogue or action that he eventually achieved something not theatrical, not realistic, but something more perplexing and vacant.

Bresson felt the expressionless visages his actors wore were not unlike the blank expressions people wear in their increasingly automated lives. A critic may wonder if he does not push his actors too far in that direction. Does Bresson create something false in his search for truth? At times, I believe he does but the results are fascinating nonetheless and his ultimate goal of keeping his films alive viewing after viewing (I have watched Pickpocket three times now) is well reached.

Having said all that, the film isn't a home run for me. There is more than a little comparison that can be made to "Crime and Punishment." Bresson obviously drew inspiration from Dostoevsky. Michel is an arrogant but presumably tortured thief who believes he is entitled to break the law because he is so good at his craft. He plays cat-and-mouse with a police inspector, while he pushes away everyone who loves or cares for him. Michel spends his time on trains and racetracks picking pockets because the sight of his bare apartment, which acts more like a cave full of books and one bed, is so unnerving. The guy doesn't even bother to close the door behind him when he leaves.

This is all well and good. But some of the events play out a little silly. The inspector, for example, is no slouch. He isn't some foot soldier walking the beat. Yet he seems mightily interested and invests a lot of his time after-hours in trying to toy and smoke out Michel. This makes the inspector's confrontations with Michel seem all the more unlikely and, while waxing philosophical on what class of man is above morality works beautifully in Dostoevsky's book, it plays a bit absurd in this film (especially since we are talking about lifting a wallet as opposed to murder).

Still, there is no denying that Pickpocket is a masterful work by Robert Bresson. Love or hate how he directs his actors, you cannot deny the impact that is felt in the film's final moments where emotion is curiously set free and explodes on screen with that famous declaration (I won't spoil it here).

Bresson's odd transitions from one scene to the next and his economical cutting are brilliant and completely original. And silly as some of the cat-and-mouse game is, it is all a means to a satisfying finish where Michel's final lift at the end shows the extent of his suffering and fills in so much of the mysterious expression I may have wondered about earlier. It doesn't answer everything, but it answers enough. -- Andre Rivas