Thursday - Movies
The Age
Thursday July 10, 2008
Pickpocket (1959)
World Movies, 10.20pmMichel (Martin La Salle) is a pickpocket, working the subways and racetracks of Paris. He lives in a dingy one-room apartment, the quintessential loner who sidesteps the love offered by friends Jacques (Pierre Leymarie) and Jeanne (Marika Green). The person who seems to get closest to him is L'Inspecteur Principal (Jean Pelegri), a gentle and calm man who believes that through reasoning he can alter the course of Michel's life. Their conversations deliberately mirror those of Raskolnikov and Inspector Petrovich in Crime and Punishment. And, just as the prostitute Sonia finds a way to help spiritual light enter Raskolnikov's dark and damaged soul, so too will Jeanne aid Michel. French director Robert Bresson was fascinated with Fyodor Dostoevsky's work and, though this is not a literal adaptation, unlike his Une Femme Douce and Four Nights of a Dreamer, Pickpocket is unquestionably a profound meeting of two of the greatest minds and sensitivities of the past century and a half. The ending of Pickpocket is arguably the most beautiful and haunting in cinema. Bresson is the greatest director who ever lived and Pickpocket perhaps his most transcendent masterpiece. -- SCOTT MURRAY
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