Pickpocket, 1959
Michel
is an inscrutable young man - neatly dressed, mild mannered, intelligent
- hardly the type whom one would suspect to be a pickpocket. And perhaps,
that is reason that he does it. Robert Bresson's Pickpocket
is a well crafted, austere, and taut film of a man driven by his self-destructive
compulsion. We first encounter Michel (Martin LaSalle) at a Paris
racetrack, stealthily fingering through the clasp of a woman's handbag,
reaching in, pocketing her money. A wild, almost euphoric gaze comes
over his impassive face, heightened by the cheering crowd as the horses
approach the finish line. Soon, his compulsion consumes him. His friend,
Jacques (Pierre Leymarie) furnishes him with contacts for employment
opportunities, but he does not follow through. He abandons his studies,
preferring to devote his time perfecting sleight of hand techniques:
using a newspaper to disguise his actions, grabbing a victim's wrist,
bumping into taxi riders. But he is not as invisible as he thinks,
catching the attention, not only of the police inspector (Jean Pelegri),
but also a professional thief (Kassagi), who recruits him into his
crime syndicate. In a mesmerizing, precisely choreographed train station
scene, the band of thieves weave though the ticket counter line and
a boarding train: distracting passengers, stealing, passing between
accomplices, returning empty wallets to their owners. When his mother's
neighbor, Jeanne (Marika Green), is brought into the police station
for questioning, Michel, warned by an already suspicious Jacques,
flees to London to avoid arrest. Two years later, Michel returns to
Paris, to an abandoned Jeanne, and inevitably, to his life of crime.
Similar to A
Man Escaped, Bresson uses the recurring imagery of hands in Pickpocket:
exercising his fingers for dexterity, practicing scenarios for deception,
executing the theft. However, in contrast to Fontaine's hands which
serve as an instrument of his intellect, Michel's hands represent
a moral fracture within his soul. In essence, his compulsion is a
subconscious disconnection of his mind from his body, a separation
between his ambitious, theoretical ideas, and his common, unremarkable
existence. His attraction to a life of crime is a reflection of his
psychological fear of failure - his inability to achieve his perceived
potential - a suppressed realization that he is not the "extraordinary
man" that he believes himself to be. In the end, we see a humbled
Michel, enheartened by a long-awaited visit from Jeanne. As Jeanne
kisses his hands, Michel is redeemed from his past transgressions,
with a renewed faith and the love of a devoted woman.
© Acquarello
2000. All rights reserved.
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A
young, weary priest (Claude Laydu) arrives at the rectory of his new
parish in Ambricourt on the French countryside, and catches the averted,
suspecting gaze of the Count (Jean Riveyre) and his mistress. Frail
and weak from a debilitating, undiagnosed stomach ailment, he is resigned
to a spartan subsistence of bread, sugar, and wine: an ascetic diet
that, he believes, sharpens his resolve and dedication to his spiritual
vocation. The young priest is received with polite indifference by
the townspeople. A brusque, wealthy man named Fabragars (Leon Arnel),
exploits the young priest's naiveté to strike a bargain on
the funeral arrangements for his wife. His friend and mentor, the
Priest of Torcy (Andre Guibert), cautions that the role of a priest
is to maintain discipline and spiritual order, and not to seek to
be loved by his parishioners. His idealistic hope for reaching the
souls of young people through catechism classes for First Communion
is deflated when his favored student, Seraphita Dumouchel (Martine
Lemaire), seemingly mocks his attentive interest by remarking that
he has beautiful eyes. He performs his daily order of mass to a lone
congregation: the tutor, Miss Louise (Nicole Maurey), who asks him
to intercede in a conflict involving her pupil, the Count's daughter,
Chantal (Nicole Ladmiral). One day, when the troubled and manipulative
Chantal tests the priest's compassion by threatening to commit suicide,
he is drawn into ministering the Countess (Marie-Monique Arkell),
a resigned and tormented woman who continues to grieve for the loss
of her young son, and succeeds in helping her find inner peace. Unable
to comprehend her mother's spiritual transformation, Chantal misinterprets
his actions as cruel and interfering, and instigates a denunciation
of the idealistic priest.
A
Man Escaped
Trial
of Joan of Arc
Balthazar
is a farm animal - a donkey - born into a life of servitude: a beast
of burden destined to work the land, carry bales of hay, provide
occasional transportation. His harsh, often exploited existence
is paralleled through the life of Marie (Anne Wiazemsky), a reticent
young woman whose father (Philippe Asselin) has been asked to maintain
a friend's farm after tragedy compels the owners to leave. Years
later, the owner's son, Jacques (Walter Green), returns to the farm
to profess his support for Marie's father, whose reputation has
been ruined by persistent debt and rumors surrounding the unresolved
ownership and usage of the farm. Jacques is devoted to Marie, but
his declaration of love is received with complacent resignation.
Instead, Marie is drawn to Gerard (Francois Lafarge), a cruel young
man whose participation in the church choir is a facade for his
activities as a thief and smuggler. Balthazar's ownership passes
to a baker (Francois Sullerot) and his wife (M.C. Fremont), and
into Gerard's hands, who delivers their baked goods and collects
payment. Inevitably, an ailing Balthazar is turned over to Gerard's
accomplice, Arnold (Jean-Claude Guilbert), a career criminal suspected
of murder, and begins a new life as a guide animal, then a circus
attraction, before being sold at auction to a miserly, abusive merchant
(Pierre Klossowski). When Gerard spurs Marie, she turns to the merchant
for companionship, but is led further down a path of hopelessness
and despair.
Robert
Bresson distills the superficial portrait of the archetypal gamin
in order to derive the indelibly bleak and caustic cinematic image
of 
A
young woman steps off a bedroom balcony and falls to her death, her
white shawl hovering above, deflected by the breeze. Her pawnbroker
husband (Guy Frangin), speaking with methodical detachment, recounts
their relationship in a series of flashbacks. But inevitably, the
answers remain as elusive as his lost, despondent (and appropriately
nameless) wife (Dominique Sanda). Robert Bresson's 
A
young man, Norbert (Marc-Ernest Fourneau), unsuccessfully asks his
father for an advance in his allowance. He visits his friend, Martial
(Bruno Lapeyre), and is goaded into passing a forged 500 franc note
at a photography shop. The photographer (Didier Baussy) censures
his business partner (Beatrice Tabourin) for accepting the forged
banknote - the third counterfeit bill for the week - and decides
to pass off the forged notes to an unsuspecting victim. When the
serviceman from the oil company, Yvon Targe (Christian Patey), arrives
to resupply their fuel tank, he is paid with the counterfeit bills.
Yvon attempts to use the money to pay for a meal, and is detained
by the police for forgery. In order to clear his name, Yvon hires
an attorney to sue the photographer for fraud. But the photographer,
unwilling to recant his false testimony despite the dire consequences
it bears on the innocent Yvon, enlists his assistant, Lucien (Vincent
Risterucci), to validate his claim and deny recognition of the serviceman
as well. As a result of their perjured testimony, Yvon loses his
job. Unable to find another job because of his tainted employment
history, he descends into a life of crime, despair, and eventually,
murder.