Pickpocket

Bresson’s Pickpocket is on you tube and I want to know if I should watch it. I tend not to like watching films on a computer because I don’t feel like I have gotten everything out of it I could have. That being said I really want to see this film and I won’t have the money to buy the Criterion DVD for a long time. So I ask how much will be lost if I watch it online?

This is very high on my ‘need to watch’ list, too. Will watch thread with eager eyes!

Oddly enough I had just written about “Pickpocket” earlier today from this thread:

The first time I saw Bresson’s “Pickpocket” I was completely underwhelmed! I’d read about it and it had been recommended, and I even saw it being screened in a theater – but it didn’t move me. However, I re-watched it at home about 6 months later and for some unexplainable reason I found I enjoyed it so much more! Sometimes a movie takes that second view, or repeat viewings to sink in. I guess if it percolates in your subconscious for a while, the pieces start to fit together a bit – at least it works that way for me!

As far as watching it online goes, if I really want to watch it I’ll watch it, especially if I’ve never seen it – if I enjoy it even slightly then I’ll watch it properly!

Thanks for your input. And of course I will eventually watch it properly no matter what, like it or not.

A must for Bresson fans!

This is one of my favorite criterion DVDs. There are certain criterions that I consider a “must own,” and this is one of them.

dont watch it for the first time on youtube. the resolution will be horrible. you tube isn’t for feature length movies. at least rent the dvd and watch it. or download the movie somehow in a good version. you dont have to try that much harder to do better than youtube.

Yes the Criterion print is very good!

By coincidence I stumbled upon a Gary Indiana commentary (“Hidden in Plain Sight”) on the film earlier this morning. It ends:

“In PICKPOCKET, the society whose laws Michel breaks is far more criminal than he is — not technically, not legally, but spiritually: this is Bresson’s archly comic irony, heavily veiled in nocturnal chiaroscuro. His film’s tragedy, which is finally more important, is that Michel would like to feel guilty for his crimes, and would even like to love his mother, or Jeanne. But like the humans of the future that Bresson so clearly envisioned, who are already living among us, Michel can’t feel a thing, and couldn’t love anyone if his life depended on it. The sad truth is, it doesn’t.”

one overlooked aspect of pickpocket is the intensely homoerotic depiction of the act-itself .the sensuous and delicate hand movement into the pocket of the predominantly male victims. an encounter on a tube with one of michel’s victims even involves sustained eye contact.

Another thing about Pickpocket…Anyone notice the main cherectors partner for a while looked just like the guy (not Will Ferrel, the other one) from Night at the Roxbury? Sorry, it’s just that I’ve always wanted to ask someone that.

I was making an serious point hidden behind the screen@

the homosocial aspects of bresson’s cinema have only ever been mentioned by a few professional film critics, the ordinary cinephile chooses to overlook it.

You’re certainly right about the homoerotic devices in Bresson’s “Pickpocket”. It would be too far off concluding that Bresson was thus gay as some critics tend to do, but it’s of importance that Michel would be a social outcast in a double sense, afterall many of Bresson’s protagonists clash with the norms and regulations of society (most strikingly Charles in “The Devil Probably”), and it’s quite ironical that Michel chooses an immoral trade like pickpocketing in order to find intimacy and overcome (sexual) restrictions, even though just as a supplementary satisfaction in a Freudian sense not unlike the final “penetration” between the two brothers in Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers” who equally repress their homosexuality and deflect their desire. In that sense Jia Zhangke’s “Pickpocket” is more straight forward, but what connects Michel and Xiao Wu is that both protagonists are outsiders who are ultimately doomed to failure.

Homosexual subtext is nothing new in critical receptions of Bresson. You’ll find it discussed at length here on multiple threads.

@Liamallen. I know you were making a serious point and I wasn’t meaning to interfear with what you said in any way. I was simply making my own, seperate, not so serious point. Sorry.

Seriously people, attaching homosexuality to the Saint of cinema is the most ridiculous thing you can ever do. The problem with public opinion today, is that they see everything sexual, and lately more specifically homosexual. I don’t care if some people are homosexual here or not, it doesn’t concern me. Again I don’t care if so many films are being made in the homoerotic genre, but saying that about Bresson just shows your lack of information on this film-maker. You can’t just watch a film of Bresson and claim you’ve understood anything.

Hands are not just present in Pickpocket, they’re present in all of Bresson’s films. Why?

The body loves the hand; and the hand, if it had a will, should love itself in the same way as it is loved by the soul. Blaise Pascal, Pensées #483

Bresson believed in the same philosophy of Pascal (Jansenism) and he’s way too much influenced by Pascal. Pickpocket is like a conversation between soul and hands… If you have the vision, you’ll find it a wonderful philosophical film. If you don’t, you end up thinking about if the protagonist was touching his victims for pleasure.

You’ve got to be kidding. Pickpocket couldn’t be more gay if Bresson dropped his pants and jizzed into the camera lens.

Bresson was certainly no saint, and it also doesn’t detract from his extraordinary Œuvre that there can be found a homosexual subtext in various of his films, but it rather enriches these since it gives way for an additional reading. In his films men often find moments of satisfaction in the company of other men, just come to think of the motorcycle ride in “Diary of a Country Priest”, and on the other hand male-female relationships are often depicted as dysfunctional and disenchanting, most strikingly in “A Gentle Woman”. But “Pickpocket” is certainly the most “gay themed” of his films, and draws a lot of parallels between homosexuality and theft. It can be regarded as an "attempt to put the “world of gay men” on film, in an allegorical way that could get by both the censors and anti-gay prejudices of the era." The critic Michael Grost pointed out that:

- Homosexuality in the 1950’s was a forbidden underworld, one in which men gradually entered in secret, and which was hidden from organized society – just like the pickpockets in the film.
- Gay men lived in fear of the police catching them – just like the pickpockets in the movie.
- The hero first learns about picking pockets from a book, and only gradually attempts to take part in picking pockets in real life – a common way many men learned about homosexuality.
- The hero is a refined, apparently educated man, who is entering into an underground life – just like many gay men, (but probably unlike most real world street criminals).
- The hero’s involvement is due to an emotional obsession with the thrill of picking pockets – a metaphor for the irresistible pull of forbidden sexual acts.
- The pickpockets are an all-male world – just like gay men.

I’m convinced that Bresson secretly wanted to portray the homosexual underground which wouldn’t have been possible in the 1950’s, and he thus chose pickpocketing as a metaphor to overcome censorship. Once again, this doesn’t mean that Bresson was homosexual, in fact the autobiography of Anne Wiazemsky rather leads to the conclusion that he was heterosexual and had a thing for young girls, but his private life doesn’t really concern us. Bresson was interested in portraying social outcasts and attacking the wrongs of society, and during that period in France homosexuals were still treated as criminals.

Here’s he man himself on “Pickpocket”

“I’m convinced that Bresson secretly wanted to portray the homosexual underground which wouldn’t have been possible in the 1950’s, and he thus chose pickpocketing as a metaphor to overcome censorship.”

Possibly. In the interview I posted above, when Bresson is asked if he’s ever met a thief he reacts as if he’d been asked if he ever met a gay person.

Well DUH! Jean Cocteau collaborated with him on the script of “Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne.”

“Once again, this doesn’t mean that Bresson was homosexual, in fact the autobiography of Anne Wiazemsky rather leads to the conclusion that he was heterosexual and had a thing for young girls,”

He was agigolo in his youth. As an adulkt he was polymorphous-pervse, as Wiazemsky’s memoir makes clear. (I wrote about this in “Film Commnet” a few issues back.)

" but his private life doesn’t really concern us. "

Speak for yourself!

“Bresson was interested in portraying social outcasts and attacking the wrongs of society, and during that period in France homosexuals were still treated as criminals.”

Partly true. Genet was a criminal — and a highly reagarded writer.

I like Pickpocket but it borrows too much from Crime and Punishment.

I like the subtleties of the emotional story between the main character and that girl, and I like the focus on the obsession and entitlement of crime rather than the actual material gain.

The problem with those themes is that they are the exact same motivations for the murder in Crime and Punishment, down to an identical relationship between the criminal and the policeman.

Well, the ending of “L’Argent” equally borrows from “Crime and Punishment”, afterall Dostoevsky was his mayor source of inspiration, but I don’t think that it diminishes the film if its an indirect adaptation rather than a direct one (Four Nights of a Dreamer, A Gentle Woman).

I agree with your statements and your corrections of the conclusions which I made, David. I admit that while in a strict sense his private life and sexuality doesn’t concern us, it can lead to additional insights regarding his work, and is thus of value. Bresson has always been secretive about his private life which obviously lead to ambivalent conclusions in regard to his persona, but accounts like that by Wiazemsky certainly provide us with a more thorough insight that reflects the way women appear in his films. I agree that Bresson seems like not wanting to tell the truth about the background of “Pickpocket” in that interview, especially when he’s asked about the starting point of the film he hesitates, and then answers: “I can’t really say what a film’s starting point is, but this solitude which I didn’t want to show directly, was certainly a driving force.” I think this statement goes along quite well with the assummption regarding a secret homoerotic subtext in his film, which is up to each viewer to either discover or ignore.

I don’t think it’s a “secret” homoerotic subtext at all. It’s quite blatant in the main pickpockting sequence of “Pickpocket.” It’s also fairly obvious in the motorcycle ride in “Diary of a Country Priest” and the loving care with which he films the evil Gerard in “Au Hasard althazar” — not to mention Antoine Monnier (Matisse’s nephew) in “Le Diable Probablement” and Guillaume de Forets (son of Louis-Rene de Forets) in “Four Nights of a Dreamer.”

Bresson’s career as a painter is also rather obscure. I’ve seen a reproduction of one of his canvasses. But I’d have to see more to know if it’s in any way typical of his work in that form as a whole.

It has a lot to do with being accustomed to reading those devices, and I’m quite sure that the majority of viewers since the initial releases of these films overlooked the denotations. As Bresson stated in the interview above, he wanted audiences to feel a film, it therefore doesn’t surprise that homosexuals celebrated his films as being self-evidently gay themed as being more conscious in regards to these scenes, while on the other hand most heterosexual viewers and even critics didn’t go for it. Since Bresson also made no real attempt to lead audiences into the direction to read his films with a homoerotic subtext one could still regard it as a secret one. I’m not yet familiar with his paintings and will look out for them.

Well the whole thing about Bresson once his style was fully developed as it is in “Pickpocket” is that he doesn’tsupply the usual cues for character-spectator cognition. He’s not interested in his performers (or “models” as he calls them) for ther faces alone. Standard film is “theatrical” to Bresson becuase it depends so much on the actor’s faces. He wants whole bodies to be considered.

In standard terms what’s going through Martin LaSalle’s mind in the pickpocketing sequence “can’t be known” becuase we don’t see his face in the usual way. Bresson tells us everything we need to know about LaSalle because his entire body is used. And that in itself his highly homoerotic.

Pay close attention to how Bresson uses bodies in his films. Hand are more important that faces. Even feet sometimes (eg. “The Trial of Jaon of Arc”) There’s one brief shot of Dominque Sanda (the one that got away from him) running nude across her apartment in “Une Feme Douce” that explains more than any shot of her face (incredibly lovely though it is.)

Indeed, he certainly rejected the limitations of the commercial cinema of his time that relied mostly on facial expressions, and wanted to demonstrate that hands and feet also express willpower and feelings, most strikingly in his final film “L’Argent” which depicts the empty hand right after the protagonist got accused by a waiter and attacked him. I agree that there can be found few concessions in his later films, and it therefore doesn’t surprise that he wouldn’t compare pickpocketing and homosexuality in a more blatant way, but decided to let the scenes speak for themselves. The scene from “The Devil Probably” which you just posted is one of my personal favorites, I wrote about it on another thread a couple of days ago: “Bresson sums up the malady of modern society in a precise and subtle way, especially the eagerness to rationalize and simplify metaphysical concerns that have no virtue in an overly materialist and shallow profit-oriented world. Bresson suggests that those who won’t attune need to get adjusted, and if even this attempt fails, the only remaining option is suicide. His use of rythm and sound in this scene stands out for me, a great example of his craft.”

Mr. Pierce calls the “Three Great Premises of Idiot America.” The first of these states that a theory need only sell books or elevate ratings in order to be deemed valid. The second maintains that “anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough.” And finally, a fact is defined as “that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it.”