The police inspector is suspicious of Michel and is questioning and suspecting him of being a thief. When out together they meet up with a police inspector. He later meets up with his friend Jacques who will offer him names and addresses of future job prospects. He gives her cash to give to his mother and coldly tells her goodbye. Jeanne opens the door for him but he decides not to go in. He hasn't seen his mother in over a month. Visiting his mother, Michel meets Jeanne a neighbor and caretaker of his mothers who begs him to visit his mother more often. ![]() The inspector eventually releases Michel because the evidence is not strong enough while Michel says "it's not a crime to have cash." Of course right after Michel pickpockets the lady while walking out he is being followed by authorities which when arrested is interestingly shown off-screen. You then see him slowly undo the latch on a woman's purse standing closely behind her and quickly and swiftly taking out the cash. Michel usually wears a suit and a tie and his expression is very blank showing no emotion like most of Bresson's characters. The first scene starts off at a dog track as you see Michel squeezed in a tight crowd of people. The opening shot of the film shows a man writing a letter: "I know those who've done these things usually keep quiet, and those who talk haven't done them. However, this adventure and the strange paths it takes, brings together two souls that may otherwise never have met." Using image and sound, the filmmaker strives to express the nightmare of a young man whose weaknesses lead him to commit acts of theft for which nothing destined him. "The style of this film is not that of a thriller. Their work has the timing, grace and precision of a ballet, and is one of the most extraordinary and poignant moments in the cinema. ![]() The three men work the train back and forth, at one point even smoothly returning a victim's empty wallet to his pocket. How one distracts the person, then the second quickly takes the wallet or purse and passes it to the third, who suddenly moves away. The camera shots use close-ups of hands, wallets, pockets and faces in a beautifully timed montage of images that explain how pickpockets work. In one of the most memorable scenes of the film you watch Michel and two other thieves work together on a crowded train. Pickpocketing becomes a form of addiction for Michel, similar to a drug addict or alcoholic, he surrenders his temptations and compulsions to steal, as it slowly consumes and takes over him. Pickpocket became a huge influence to the writer and director Paul Schrader who has described Pickpocket as "close to perfect as there can be", and whose screenplay for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver bears many similarities, including a confessional narration and a voyeuristic look at society, obsession and isolation. When the moment is just right, he goes in using his quickness and stealth, and takes what he can from them. It's no coincidence that when another pickpocket catches Michel in the act, it is in a men's room where their liaison involves money as a substitute for sex. ![]() Michel's character in Pickpocket seems to gets a sort of erotic gratification and psycho-sexual release when stealing from others: To stand extremely close to his victims to feel their light breathing and subtle body movements and reactions. The reasoning is immoral, but the characters claim special privileges above and beyond common morality." Robert Bresson is considered one of the great masters in the art form of the cinema and most of his films center around such spiritual themes which include salvation, sin, redemption, morality and the defining and revealing of the human soul. Pickpocket is considered a contemporary version of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment as film critic Roger Ebert states, "Bresson's Michel, like Dostoyevsky's hero Raskolnikov, needs money in order to realize his dreams, and sees no reason why some lackluster ordinary person should not be forced to supply it. Michel is a professional pickpocket and thief, a character who leaves a completely isolated life emotionally detached from others and of the outside world. The main protagonist is named Michel a man whose looks are very ordinary and plain is neither handsome nor ugly and has the perfect demeanour to blend into the background, and disappear within a crowd unnoticed. I find these opening credits a curious irony because Robert Bresson's Pickpocket 'is' a thriller just not the standard thriller most people are used to experiencing. Using image and sound, the filmmaker strives to express the nightmare of a young man whose weaknesses lead him to commit acts of theft for which nothing destined him."
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