Pickpocket (1959) - film review

As he stands in the crowds at a horse race, a solitary young man named Michel yields to an uncontrollable impulse to steal from a woman’s handbag.  He is arrested, but then released through lack of evidence.  Afterwards, Michel reflects on the morality of crime and arrives at the conclusion that he belongs to a privileged class in society which is not bound by the usual laws.  Unable to find work, he turns his back on his dying mother and his few friends, and embarks on a career of pickpocketing.  What began as a momentary lapse of moral judgement soon turns into a dangerous addiction...

One of Robert Bresson’s most compelling and intense films, Pickpocket is a powerfully moving study in sin and redemption which deserves to rated one of the high points of 1950s French cinema.  The film takes its cue from Dostoevsky’s celebrated novel Crime and Punishment, in which the central character Raskolnikov argues that crime is a justifiable activity for a certain superior class of individual.  As in Bresson’s earlier Journal d’un curé de campagne, the narrative is guided by the inner voice of the central protagonist, Michel - a technique which not only underscores the social alienation of the character but also provides the only clue to his strangely elusive psychology.    

Nothing about Michel is revealed to us through his facial expressions, body language or manner of speech.  The actor who played him, Martin LaSalle, was a non-professional who was trained by Bresson not to show any outward sign of emotion in his performance.  LaSalle proved to be one of Bresson’s better acteurs-modèles and exposes his inner conflict and motivation with a subtle yet potent eloquence.  Michel is not the kind of character an audience can easily sympathise with (he could go head-to-head with Norman Bates in the weirdness stakes and probably win), and yet LaSalle somehow compels us to identify with him, to tease out the shard of goodness that lies buried deep within his troubled persona.

The visual style of Pickpocket is striking and quite different from that employed by Bresson on his other films of this period, lacking the cold austerity that has become the director’s trademark.  Léonce-Henri Burel’s cinematography has a definite Nouvelle Vague feel to it, and at times it closely resembles Raoul Coutard’s work on À bout de souffle (1960) and Lola (1961).  The film’s use of real locations in Paris (including the Metro) and harsh natural lighting to achieve an unpolished realism is extremely redolent of the early films of the French New Wave.  Yet, at the same time, Pickpocket is also very different from the films of Godard, Truffaut, Demy, et al.  A far more sombre and contemplative work, its emotional core lies further beneath the surface and there is a spiritual dimension that is so characteristic of Bresson, an impression that is reinforced by his choice of music.  There is also an echo of classic film noir, in that the main protagonist, a solitary anti-hero type, appears to be perpetually excluded from the world he inhabits, his destiny governed by forces that are beyond his control and by a woman to whom he becomes ineluctably drawn.

Pickpocket is not, as it must first appear, a study in the psychology of a criminal but rather a variant on the classical morality play, in which a man must lose his soul in order to save it.  When we first meet him, the central character Michel exists in a moral vacuum.  He behaves as though pickpocketing was not only a legitimate career option but actually one that provides a great benefit to society.  It is only towards the end of the film that the truth begins to emerge and we finally understand why Michel acts as he does.  Far from being without conscience, he is actually someone who is tortured by guilt, perhaps the guilt of a son who stole money from his bedridden mother?  It soon becomes evident that Michel’s moral decline into a life of crime was not driven by evil intent but by a subconscious desire to be caught and made to atone for his first and most unpardonable transgression.
 
Michel may not himself even be aware of why he does what he does.  Perhaps he really does believe his Dostoevskian self-justification, that he is a member of that superior race which is not bound by the usual social and moral codes.  Yet, in the film’s powerful conclusion, which is surely one of the most exquisitely poignant moments in Bresson’s entire oeuvre, the dark curtain is lifted and the truth is revealed.   Michel learns who he is and finds his redemption, through the forgiving face of the woman who has grown to love him.  With his sublime mastery of film technique and his startling comprehension of the human psyche, Robert Bresson delivers what is possibly the most deeply moving screen portrayal of a man’s fall from grace and his subsequent salvation.  Pickpocket is not only one of Bresson’s most accessible films, it is also one of his most compassionate explorations of human frailty and a masterpiece of narrative economy.

© James Travers 2000-2011


Before the opening credits of Pickpocket (1959), Robert Bresson warns us that the film is not a thriller.  It is a story of sin and redemption, of a man who begins his carrier as thief, stealing from his own mother and ends by getting back on track, thanks to the love of a young  woman.   Perhaps the subject might be considered a conventional one, but in the hands of Bresson it acquires a renowned attraction.  The hero, a kind of homo faber peccator, profits from his manual dexterity to infringe the law.  The act of stealing is treated by Bresson as a combination of compulsion, rebellion and eroticism.  The theft of money from a woman’s handbag in the hippodrome is presented as a private act in which the victim obviously does not participate consciously. 

With the development of the plot, the exercise of pickpocketing becomes more compulsive, but at the end, the hero steals so that he may attend to the needs of the woman he loves.  The camera patiently follows him or waits for his arrival.  He is coming and going, in and out, up and down, through a world of multiple doors that open and close or remain ajar, to frighten or to protect him.  The hero seems alienated from his surroundings.  Generally he is placed at the center of the frame and in the scenes of crowds in streets, subway, train stations, bar, etc., the camera takes a position that creates a sense of separation between him and the people around him. The bodies at the edges of the frame are cut, as if the frame is unable to contain them, as if the world could not be represented completely but must be fragmented. 

A fascinating sequence of the film, no more than four minutes in duration, shows the gang of pickpockets operating successively in the hall of a railway station, on a platform and in a compartment.  In the quick series of pilfering, the camera seems to imitate the rogues, playing tricks with the spectator by swiftly changing angles, distances and directions, tricks that are complemented by the skilful editing.  These pickpocketing scenes were advised by the famous illusionist Henri Kassagi, who also takes part in some of them.

It is known that Bresson required his actors not to show emotions in their movements, gestures and words.  The spectators have to reconstruct their feelings and intentions.  The hero always adopts an inexpressive regard, and his enigmatic look suggests a range of interpretations.   The secondary characters have generally the role of admonishing the hero - the police inspector, the friend and the girl.  The hero’s Bible is the book A Prince of Pickpockets by Richard Lambert , which tells the story of Barrington, a real pickpocket of the eighteen century.  By contrast, in Bresson’s film the protagonist must sin, be punished and finally be saved by a touch of grace.

© Adam Gai  (Jerusalem, Israel) 2011

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