Pickpocket

The consistent brilliance of Robert Bresson’s output plays an integral part in the merited reverence of the director; however, Pickpocket arguably stands out as one of his greatest works.

The film follows the exploits of Michel, a young man who gives up his studies due to financial difficulty and turns to stealing instead. After a close brush with the law he encounters a group of professional thieves, who teach him the art of pick pocketing. Despite warnings from his close friends he continues to follow this newfound career, flirting with disaster until he is forced to take stock of his ways.
Pickpocket abounds with all the great qualities of a Bresson film: attention to detail, naturalistic performances and moral depth. No director manages to garner such interest and rapture from the nuance and meaning of hand movements and facial glances. Bresson’s camera would appear to be in perfect unison with its surroundings and the actors before it, whose authenticity does not fail to astound. Pickpocket asserts Bresson’s position as the Dostoyevsky of cinema, as once again he depicts the moral bind and entrapment facing his characters against the pressures of a social order that incessantly challenges the faith of its subjects.
Beneath its deceptive simplicity, Bresson’s film exerts a power which strikes hidden chords within the spectator and has shown its influence on directors such as Godard, Tarkovsky and Haneke, while Paul Schrader has cited its inspiration for both Taxi Driver (1976) and American Gigolo (1980). The film’s greatness did not go unnoticed at the time of its release either and was awarded best film by the French Film Academy.