Robert Bresson's Pickpocket

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Robert Bresson is a legendary French filmmaker whose films I've never wanted to see. His most famous work is about the miserable life of a donkey, and I've always expected his stuff to be dour and depressing and, well, pretty much this.

Recently, the Criterion Collection, or as I call them, The Real Heroes, recently struck a deal with Netflix to show some of their films on the Watch Instantly program. So, I decided that I was going to tackle this most difficult of directors, who Wikipedia describes thusly:

Bresson's early artistic focus was to separate the language of cinema from the theatre, which often heavily involves the actor's performance to drive the work. With his 'actor-model' technique, Bresson's actors were required to repeat multiple takes of each scene until all semblances of 'performance' were stripped away, leaving a stark effect that registers as both subtle and raw, and one that can only be found in the cinema. Some feel that Bresson's Catholicupbringing and Jansenist belief-system lie behind the thematic structure of most of his films. Recurring themes under this interpretation include salvation, redemption, defining and revealing the human soul, and metaphysical transcendence of a limiting and materialistic world.

LET'S GET READY TO PARRRRR-TTTAAYYYYYY!!!!!!

Pickpocket (1958) is about a pickpocket. No shit. I chose to watch Pickpocket first because it was 76 minutes. I'm not proud to admit that. Pickpocket starts with an artistic statement . . . in French. Oh God No, thought my brain, My Art Film Nightmare is coming true!

However, once the film started, that stuff went away. One thing that parodies of old French art films neglect to mention is that these films tell stories. Sure, the her...

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...with no artifice to distract, which ends up being distracting at times. (IRONY, YOU'RE A THING!). The dialogue is occasionaly stilted (although that may just be bad subtitle translation), but the themes aren't hidden: Salvation, redemption, and some guy named Jansen are all there. Bresson is definitely striving to make something universal.

I liked Pickpocket a lot, although I didn't have the full-on artgasm that I got from something like 8 1/2 or Bicycle Thieves. The profundity didn't really hit me in the gut like it did with those films. I'm guessing the power of his films will grow the more that I see and get used to what my man Bobby is trying to say. Or maybe I just like Italy better than France. Regardless, I shall press on with Bresson!

Next up on my Bresson-a-thon: Au Hasard Balthazar, the donkey movie I described above.

Works Cited
Wikipedia.org

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