Summary
A solitary young man yields to an uncontrollable urge to steal from a woman’s handbag
in the crowds at a horse race. He is caught, but released through lack of evidence.
Afterwards, he reflects on the morality of crime and arrives at the conclusion that a
certain privileged class in society has a right to steal. He turns his back on his
dying mother and his few friends, and resumes his pickpocketing, unable to control his
addiction...
Review
For this film, Bresson takes as his cue Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, in which
the central character Raskolnikov argues that crime is a justifiable activity for certain
privileged individuals. Coupled with an intense fascination for pickpocketing and
his own profound belief in the redemption of the soul, Bresson develops this theme
into one of his most compelling and thought-provoking films.
As in his earlier film, Journal d’un curé de campagne (which shares many
similarities with this film), Bresson uses the inner voice of the compulsive pickpocket
Michel to articulate why he feels driven to behave as he does. This is in fact the
only clue we have to Michel’s psychology. Nothing is betrayed in his manner of speech,
body language and facial expression –another uniquely Bressonesque device (Bresson went
to extraordinary lengths to get his non-professional actors to avoid showing any form
of emotion in their performances.)
These devices serve to divorce the pickpocket from his environment, indeed from society
and reinforce his narcissistic belief that he is superior to other men. This is
the story of a man who, by deliberately isolating himself from the world, allows an inexplicable
urge to motivate his actions. He is left entirely at the mercy of this impulse and
it ultimately consumes him, giving him an almost sexual thrill of excitement when he yields
to his desire and picks a pocket.
Although a willing disciple of his own hedonism, Michel is ever conscious of his own guilt
and increasingly wishes to be caught. This is typical Bresson self-awareness, the
realisation of the sinner that he has sinned, and, from a Christian viewpoint, the first
stage on the path to redemption.
The film ends with a memorable and intensely poignant scene in which Michel achieves his
redemption in a blistering moment of realisation, leading, one presumes, to the start
of a new life. Only Bresson with his firm belief in this aspect of human existence
could possibly tackle this theme with such insight and integrity, creating an intensely
moving story of one man’s fall from grace and his subsequent salvation.
© James Travers 2001
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