Pickpocket

« This film is not in the detective style.
The author strives to express, through images and sounds, the nightmare of a young man driven by his weakness into a pickpocketing adventure for which he was not suited.
Only this adventure, by strange paths, will bring together two souls who, without it, would perhaps never have known each other. »

When Bresson wrote his first original screenplay for Pickpocket, he did not immediately realize the relationship that was being forged between him and Dostoyevsky. It was only after realizing the links between Raskolnikov's and Michel's careers that he decided to accentuate them and make his film a kind of echo of Crime and Punishment. We see in this anecdote that Bresson does not see himself as an omniscient creator, but rather that he searches, that he gropes, that he seems to discover his work as it is created. Certainly, the shadow of Dostoyevsky hangs over Bresson and their meeting seemed obvious. Like the filmmaker, the writer digs into the very material of his art in search of the soul of his characters. With A Gentle Woman in 1969 and Four Nights of a Dreamer in 1971, Bresson adapted Dostoyevsky directly.

Louis Malle: "Pickpocket is Bresson's first film. The ones he did before were just drafts. If it was eight years earlier, for Le Journal d'un curé de campagne, that Bresson began to see clearly what cinema should be for him and the means that led to it, it was really with Pickpocket that Bresson gave himself completely over to his cinematograph, marking the culmination of the research for the Journal and Un condamné à mort s'échappé. If Léonce-Henri Burel signs the photography of these three films (succeeding Philippe Agostini), his work on Pickpocket is totally in line with Bresson's wishes. As magnificent as it is, the cinematography is flattened, completely abandoning the few formal research sketched out on previous feature films. For The Condemned One, Bresson had completely abandoned the original music (Jean-Jacques Grünewald had until then signed the scores of his films) in favor of Mozart. Lulli follows his Mass in C minor, and the musical passages become more parsimonious, no longer really supporting the strong scenes of the film. This search for counterpoint is still in its infancy, but Pickpocket once again marks a definitive break. Having become the complete author of his film, after having adapted Diderot and Bernanos, worked with Giraudoux and Cocteau, or having been inspired by a true and morally striking story for The Condemned Man, Bresson freed himself from the "good subject", from a "literary" cinema. He doesn't choose a strong story and builds his film on sensations, emptiness, repetition, silence. It is by purely cinematographic means that he will make the viewer feel the subject, the characters, the moral.

We don't know the reasons that led the hero to steal and we never see him use the fruit of his thefts. He still wears the same worn suit, still lives in a dilapidated attic. "We must not film the causes, but the effects." This succession of thefts leaves us speechless. There is something unspeakable in these acts, obscure. And it is through his mise-en-scène, without the help of speeches, that Bresson will make us feel the heart of the film. Feeling before understanding. The flight scenes are relentlessly powerful. A suspense, an incredible tension runs through them. Anguish grips us throughout the film. Pickpocket is a film of looks and gestures. Wallets are passed from hand to hand in a veritable ballet. Thus the scene at the station is completely euphoric. We feel the tension, but at the same time the enjoyment of the successful flight. We are filled with chills, fear and pleasure mixed. It is a rare sensory experience to which the filmmaker invites us. Pickpocket is perhaps the film that best captures the pleasure of theft, of transgression. "What he got from a rookie is a miracle. For, not only has he trained long hands to hide portfolios that could be those of a pianist, but he has also communicated to his hero the kind of terror of being an animal that watches for its catch and fears to be watched by it. (Jean Cocteau about Pickpocket, in Du cinématographe). It is also, like the majority of Bresson's films, a magnificent portrait of youth. Through Michel's itinerary, Bresson describes the world in which we live when we leave adolescence and enter adulthood. These thefts to which he indulges are an act of revolt, a rejection of society. And yet one senses that beneath these acts of rebellion, there is a constant desire to find one's place in the world. The purpose of Michel's crimes is to be caught. "Robert Bresson shows us, without the slightest artifice of intrigue, the vertigo that pushes the thief into the lion's mouth and the forces of love that pull him out despite the bars of his cell." (Jean Cocteau on Pickpocket, Du cinématographe). Michel locks himself up in this activity, consciously withdraws from others and from the world. When he asks his friend if he loves Jeanne, and if she loves him back, instead of reacting to this revelation, he clutches the watch he has just stolen. "The watch was very beautiful." He built himself a real rampart.

The emotion of flying is then much stronger than the emotion of love. "I wanted to make it palpable that the paths we take in life don't always lead to our destination. I mean to the intended destination. While Michel does everything he can to isolate himself, as his life shrinks, reduced to his small apartment and repeated gestures, the path he takes will, if he realizes it, bring him into the world. The character of Jeanne is this path, from annoyance to jealousy, from rejection to responsibility, until the revelation of her love enlightens and saves him. If man is indeed at the heart of the filmmaker's work, his main concern, the question of God, is constantly evoked. Pickpocket is the perfect illustration of this, as Louis Malle mentions in a magnificent article on the film. Michel is the man who revolts, proud. In a speech to the Chief Inspector, he set out his theory of superior beings, who would be above the law. It's like hearing Brandon Shaw in Hitchcock's The Rope. Michel wants to transgress the prohibitions, to confront God. This God is the Inspector, omnipresent, indulgent and terrible. Jacques is the guardian angel. And Michel's journey leads him to the divine grace that takes on the face of Jeanne. This one is very pale at first, self-effacing, quite insignificant. But slowly, without explanation, it takes on an inner beauty, it shines and becomes sublime.

Human, spiritual or moral, Pickpocket is a journey, a journey. Michel's last flight responds to the first. Same place, just a reversal of Michel's position as he goes from behind his victim to the front, a position in the image that locks the hero in the time of the film. A position that also makes his journey in the film inevitable but which at the same time gives him a special status, a parenthesis in Michel's life. It will really resume at the end of the film at the moment when his story with Jeanne begins. Pickpocket is a simple foreplay, a dream, a dream.

Olivier Bitoun - DVD Classic, May 4, 2005