Pickpocket (1959)
Average Rating: 9.1/10
Reviews Counted: 31
Fresh: 30 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 9.2/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 7 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 4.1/5
User Ratings: 6,289
Movie Info
Director Robert Bresson chose Uruguayan nonactor Martin LaSalle for his leading man in Pickpocket. LaSalle's inexperience works against the film for some viewers, though Bresson himself was satisfied because his star proved himself a quick study in the art of lifting wallets (a genuine pickpocket was engaged as "technical adviser"). Essentially, the story is a character study of a cocky young criminal who becomes so entranced by the act of picking pockets that he literally can't stop himself.
Dec 1, 1959 Wide
Nov 8, 2005
Pathfinder Pictures
Cast
-
Martin LaSalle
Michel -
Marika Green
Jeanne -
Pierre Leymarie
Jacques -
Pierre Étaix
Accomplice -
Jean Pelegri
Police Inspector -
Cesar Gattegno
Detective -
Kassagi
Master Pickpocket -
Dolly Scal
Michel's Mother
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All Critics (31) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (30) | Rotten (1) | DVD (13)
A picture so original in style that it sometimes seems downright peculiar.
Top CriticRobert Bresson made this short electrifying study in 1959; it's one of his greatest and purest films, full of hushed transgression and sudden grace.
Bresson choreographs the complex techniques of lifting wallets and watches with such precision that one seems to be watching a kind of surreptitious ballet.
French director Robert Bresson used his nonactors only once and orchestrated every gesture and glance; the performances that resulted are both mesmerizing and suffused with mystery.
Bresson's goals were deep; to sweep away the dross of expectation and viewing conventions by means of a purified cinema. At times in this thief's journal his visual discourse touches the sublime.
Top CriticUltimately inexplicable, this concentrated, elliptical, economical movie is an experience that never loses its strangeness.
Pragmatic to the point of being almost mechanical, Pickpocket it is paradoxically saturated with soulfulness.
A marvel of poise and circumspect emotion from French auteur Robert Bresson.
It is, at base, about self-fulfilment and redemption through love -- a common enough idea in films. But this 1959 epic has seldom been equalled as a philosophical treatise on the subject.
Even more than the deadpan anti-thesping, it's the virtuoso thievery sequences (movement, disguise, distraction) that really mesmerise.
...the act of lifting a wallet from a man's jacket is a means to consider what the act of thievery swipes from the thief's soul.
An often interminable piece of work...
Poetic seems too weak a word to sum up Pickpocket's extraordinary arc: that it achieves so much in so short a time (75 minutes) is almost other-worldly.
... sempre fascinante constatar como Bresson, com seu estilo emocionalmente seco e direto e sua insistência em performances rígidas, consegue criar personagens tão complexos e interessantes.
Inspired by Dostoevsky's seminal novel, Bresson's rigorous meditation on crime and redemption is a masterpiece, paying attention to the criminal and the society that created him without ever explaining either; it's only 75 minutes but every frame counts
A wonderful study of a criminal on the road to redemption.
Hypnotic drama about a Parisian pickpocket.
Bresson examines actions but offers little attention to motives, an approach that here seems to suggest that Michel's choices may be a mystery even to himself.
Bresson's films are the most sublime expression of the powerful, illicit sexuality of the movement of moving pictures against a subjective audience.
I believe Bresson would approve of Criterion's efforts, as all possible interpretations of "Pickpocket" are spread throughout the very special features of this disc.
The hero wrestles with a Dostoyevskian conflict.
Audience Reviews for Pickpocket
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Foreign Titles
- Pickpocket (CA)
- Pickpocket (AU)
