MUBI

Due to the popularity and accessibility of Godard’s ‘A Bout de Souffle’ (being filmed on the streets of Paris at the same time as ‘Pickpocket’) Bresson’s film’s importance to the nouvelle vague is often overlooked. Similarly to Godard’s breakthrough feature the story follows a petty criminal by the name of Michel through the streets of Paris. Michel falls in with a crew of pickpockets from whom he gains an insight into the artistry of their crime and by applying what he has learned he consequently becomes an astute criminal. As Michel becomes increasingly adept at pickpocketing his scams become more elaborate and the robbery of a man as he leaves a bank is the pinnacle of his career. It is in these robbery sequences that Bresson’s skill as a director comes to the fore.

It is often said that less is more and it would be hard to find a film that more embodies this notion. The manouvers of thievery and the exchanges between the characters as they remove wallets and watches from unsuspecting Parisian are performed, by the actors, very simply but with the precision of high-wire trapeeze artists. Bresson’s use of stationary close ups and the most basic editing techniques allows the images to speak for themselves and serves to accentuate the poetic quality that permeates both the mise-en-scene and script. Like Michel’s life the mise-en-scene is uncluttered and reflexive of Bresson’s efficient and unshowy style. However, how Bresson manages to create such bold imagery with so little is exceptional. The small but sparse apatment Michel inhabits comes to foreshadow the cell he will eventually be incarcerated in and is interpretable as a symbol of the isolation and exclusion felt by those who wish to dissent from the accepted moral values of mainstream society. The stealing of watches features prominently. Watches come to carry much symbolism and connote the theme of loss and how it can be such an inescapable facet of life reminding us of the death of Michel’s mother and that Michel himself is fast running out of time and his capture is imminent.

Michel’s constant struggle to understand the world around him and the conflicts between his differing intrests of love and crime and the judgement of God are indicative of the nouvelle vague’s preoccupation with presenting characters who’s spirit embodies the existentialist philosophies of literature contemporary to the films making. However, it is more Camus than Saartre and this notion again brings us back to Pickpocket’s co-existence with ‘A Bout de Souffle’. For if Godard can be seen as the combative commando on the frontline of revolutionary practice (much like Saartre’s, who’s ideas would later come to inform the doctrine of real life political revolution, mirroring the way in which Godard’s radical formal practices would be emulated on numerous occasions) then Bresson, in contrast, appears a more methodical and contemplative film maker who’s ‘camera-stylo’ paints far more elegant strokes than Godard’s ( and is thus more akin to the Camus brand of eloquent and poetic prose).

Pickpocket is one of a very few number of films that we can rightfully pronounce a masterpiece. It serves as the stylistic antithesis to ‘A Bout de Souffle’ but by no means is less prominent as a film that forces the auditor to understand that the drama and beauty of cinema lies not in complex narratives, tricks of the camera and overtly theatrical acting but in the construction of it’s mise-en-scene. Much like his protagonist Michel, Bresson is seemingly a director who is constantly searching to unearth the truth that lies beneath the facade of the location that his film inhabits, both industrially and ideologically speaking, and it is perhaps this idea that is the strongest indication of it’s allignment with and importance to the nouvelle vague and the cinema that has followed it.