Pickpocket, the first film that Robert Bresson directed from an original script not based on a previous literary work, is a radically internalized film. Not unlike Bresson's previous film, A Man Escaped (but more audaciously), Pickpocket has a general plot outline and even a few scenes that suggest an action-thriller: an aimless young man in Paris decides to become a pickpocket, evades the police, and collaborates with two other thieves to wreak havoc on unsuspecting Parisians' pocketbooks. (Rumor has it that Bresson was even inspired by Samuel Fuller's pulpy 1953 film Pickup on South Street.) But Bresson uses this concept as a springboard to confront existential despair, to philosophize about the (perhaps fruitless) search for meaning, to expose a character's soul onscreen. This was the first true elaboration of Bresson's austere, "transcendental" style (to use Paul Schrader's description), and it still feels jarringly uncompromising.
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9/30/2019 04:56:28 am
People always assume that being a pickpocket is fueled by greed, but that is not always true. Bad people, I mean, those who steal from others, they are not always bad in nature. There are people who were forced to become pickpockets because of their inability to provide for their family. In my opinion, not everyone is bad in nature. There are people who are just really having a hard time with life, and that is probably the reason why they did all of those bad things.
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