Pickpocket (no 8)

 

by Allan Fish

(France 1959 75m) DVD1/2

It was more down to luck than skill

p  Agnes Delahaie  d/w  Robert Bresson  ph  Léonce-Henry Burel  ed  Raymond Lamy  m  Jean-Baptiste Lully  art  Pierre Charbonnier

Martin Lassalle (Michel), Marika Green (Jeanne), Pierre Leymarie (Jacques), Jean Pelegri (Inspector), Pierre Etaix (Accomplice), Kassagi (Master Pickpocket), Dolly Scal (Michel’s mother), César Gattegno (Detective),

Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket is a film that represents his visual and emotional apogee, a film that demonstrates his feelings about humanity in a nutshell.  He made other masterpieces for sure, two of which I have already discussed, but none were as dear to his heart as this loosely based adaptation and update of Dostoyevsky.  To quote the opening caption, “using image and sound, the filmmaker strives to express the nightmare of a young man whose weakness leads him to commit acts of theft for which nothing destined him.”  But though nothing destined him for it, he takes to it like the proverbial mallard to H2O. 

            A young man, Michel, who has been forced to give up his studies for financial reasons, steals a purse from a crocodile skin handbag at Longchamp racecourse and, though caught and questioned by police, he is released for lack of evidence.  The death of his mother from an unnamed illness briefly turns him back to the light, before a meeting with a master pickpocket gets him embroiled in a thieving syndicate.  However, when his two accomplices are arrested at the Gare de Lyon and he realises his friend Jeanne loves him, he bolts abroad and doesn’t return for a few years.  He returns to find Jeanne with a young baby by his other friend Jacques, whom she refused to marry.  Returning to thieving to sustain them, he is caught and arrested, only then realising his love for Jeanne.

            The opening caption went on to read “the strange meanders of this experience bring together two souls that may never have met otherwise.”  By the end, when he kisses Jeanne tenderly through the bars, he whispers “what a strange path I have had to tread to reach you at last.”  Indeed he did, and it’s the path of a strict loner.  He may have had partners in crime, but they really knew nothing about each other, only meeting to divide their takings over a game of cards.  His friend tries to talk him out of his criminal activities, even the police inspector is at first fascinated by his arrogance.  Michel feels himself above the law; “can we not admit that certain men, gifted with intelligence, talent or even genius, and so indispensable to society, rather than stagnate should be free to disobey laws in certain cases?”  The inspector speaks for us all when replying “what will set these supermen apart?”  It’s a theory that’s only one step from the complete lawlessness from which stems anarchy. 

            Though the pickpocket scenes on the Metro recall Fuller’s Pickup on South Street, they owe nothing really to American sensibilities.  Shot entirely in Paris at the same time as Godard was revolutionising cinema with A Bout de Souffle, Pickpocket is a work of genius, finding poetry even in the slum décor of Michel’s rooftop garret.  As one might expect from Bresson the performances are all naturalistic, with Lasalle coming across as a blank cipher and a typical Bressonian protagonist.  Marika Green meanwhile (who fifteen years later was sadly reduced to the soft-porno world of Emmanuelle) has an unforgettable painterly beauty that is quite something, her downcast expressions and mournful demeanour expressing so much of her soul, waiting to find its release with the man she loves but ignores her.  Once Michel is captured she goes to see him and he asks her “why did you come?”  “You’re all I have” she replies, and she means it.  Everything else is worthless without him.  It’s as clear a representation of doomed unfulfilled (in that they never sleep with each other) romanticism as could be offered.  As with the escape from the camp in A Man Escaped, Bresson shows that tension can be understated and, helped immeasurably by the baroque style music of Lully and the gorgeous photography of the great Burel, he affords us a glimpse into a minimalist hell, punctuated by the slightest glimmer of romantic longing.  Who said that Bresson was a total pessimist, they should perhaps watch Pickpocket again.  Breathtaking!