The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, November 2-8
Pickpocket (1959)
Directed by Robert Bresson
Bresson’s work is often regarded as cold. The way he directs his actors is perceived as mechanical—even emotionless. This is perhaps why Bresson’s films did not excite the art-house crowds, the way those of his fellow New Wave peers did. But in Susan Sontag’s essay, Spiritual Style in the Films of Robert Bresson, she understands Bresson’s cinema as “reflective or contemplative” rather than cold. She claims that, “one has to understand the aesthetics—that is, find the beauty—of such coldness,” in order to fully appreciate his work.
Pickpocket centers on Michel, a solitary small-time thief who commits petty crimes by skillfully stealing from people’s pockets in crowded spaces. He joins a group of well-versed pickpockets who pull off elaborate small thefts in public areas. Michel is a quiet man, who seldom visits his ill mother. Echoing Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the film depicts Michel as somehow unconcerned with consequence, relieving himself from any moral regard even flirting with the idea of getting arrested as he is followed and subtly provoked by a watchful inspector.
The same way Michel’s pickpocketing skills rely on slick deception by diverting one’s attention from one’s own pocket, Bresson focuses the audience on form, diverting your attention from the film’s own narrative scheme. This forces the spectator to contrast and compare these two elements (narrative and form) simultaneously. We now associate this with what we call “Bressonian,” and it is as compelling today as it was in 1959. Alejandro Veciana (November 4, 5:30pm, 7:30pm, 9:30pm; November 6, 4:30pm at BAM’s “Bresson on Cinema”)
