![]() I have not seen the film ‘Pickpocket’ however, after reading this review I am heavily interested in this film. It will, however, hold your attention, and it deserves it. Overall, Pickpocket is not a happy film, and it’s not a particularly optimistic one. Finally, the performance of Jean Pélégri as the police chief and Kassagi’s techniques and explanations (the performer was a real pickpocket at the time) bring some lightness to the proceedings. Burel’s cinematography, replete with shadows, capturing a worn, hopeless Paris that surely influences and reflects Michel’s perspective. This is certainly an interesting thesis, supported, I think, by the kinetic quality of the pickpocketing scenes contrasted with his arguable love scene with Jeanne at the film’s end, which seems to express something more like desperation than actual affection.Īs sad as it sometimes seems, it goes without saying that it’s worth a watch, if only for the simple pleasure of L. Author Gary Indiana recently posted an essay for the Criterion Collection stating that the film is really about Michel’s love for pickpocketing and subsequent escape from wage, slavery, the only thing that makes him feel alive, rather than his nominal love interest (his mother’s neighbor) Jeanne (Marika Green). His theory of a race of “supermen” who, he says, ought to be allowed to break the law on occasion, seems a mere excuse for his behavior. Despite the modest stack of cash in a hole in the wall, he still lives in a room with a bare lightbulb, lacking even a doorknob. His life is, indeed, very small and petty he refuses to see his sick mother, though he will leave her money. The film’s ending is almost inevitable, but watching the journey can be exhilarating, as during a sequence when Michel and other practiced pickpockets form a syndicate of sorts and steal from numerous patrons of a train. These first few scenes are exciting and engaging while I certainly don’t like Michel, I very much want to see what happens to him next. Nearly caught, his crime is impossible to prove, and so he begins a new life, eeking out a meager existence as the titular pickpocket. ![]() The fleet film begins with Michel (Martin LaSalle), a clever young man with job opportunities but no job of his own, stealing money from a woman’s purse. In an age when likeability is often seen as one of the most important traits in a movie protagonist, this film is an excellent demonstration in how that is not always the case. Sometimes, indeed, the antagonist is a more appealing character. My sympathies are not always with the protagonist. Robert Bresson’s 1959 masterpiece Pickpocket is not about likeable people. Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959): France
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