Pickpocket
With Martin Lassalle, Marika Green, Pierre Leymarie.
France, 1959, 35mm, black & white, 75 min.
French with English subtitles.
The first film for which director Robert Bresson composed an entirely original script, this tale of a lonely young man who embarks on a career as a petty thief was to some extent inspired by Crime and Punishment. In Pickpocket, however, Bresson deals more directly with themes of submission and salvation: “With theft I entered by the back door into the kingdom of morality,” the director stated. After being arrested, Bresson’s novice thief reflects on the morality of a life of crime but, although temporarily deterred, returns to his “vocation” after lessons from a master pickpocket. Voted by Cahiers du cinéma as the greatest French film of the postwar era, Bresson’s masterpiece has been praised by generations of fellow directors, including Louis Malle, who described it as “one of the four or five major events in the history of cinema.”
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Children of Paradise
Fanny and Alexander
Milestones
Serge Daney: Journey of a Ciné-Son
Fanny and Alexander
Hiroshima mon amour
Children of Paradise
