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Bresson’s 1959 film about a misfit who dreams of rising above conventional morals is a brilliant example of the cinema of ideas

Robert Bresson’s hypnotically intense and lucid movie-novella from 1959 is now revived as part of a director’s retrospective at London’s BFI Southbank, and whatever creakiness I thought I saw in this masterly film for its last UK re-release has vanished. The andante pace of Pickpocket is part of its brilliance, part of its seriousness and its status as a cinema of ideas: a movie with something of Dostoevsky or Camus, or even Victor Hugo.

The then non-professional actor Martin Lasalle was cast by Bresson as Michel, a gloomy young man who spends his days writing his journal in a seedy bedsit: a precursor for the prison cell for which he is destined. Michel is plagued with nameless guilt about his elderly, unwell mother whom he cannot bring himself to visit,...

Pickpocket

Written and directed by Robert Bresson

France, 1959

Robert Bresson’s is one of the great singular visions of the cinema. Like Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky, Bresson’s output was relatively minimal — 13 features over the course of 40 years — but it is likewise instantly recognizable. Though it’s something of an auteurist cliché to say that one can identify a given director’s work by just a single scene or even a single frame, in this case, the declaration holds true. Bresson’s work is so distinct, so deceptively simple, so regimented in its formal construction, that to see one of his films is to witness an exceptional directorial style, one consistently employed throughout an artist’s body of work. With this consistency comes the subsequent creation of one extraordinary film after another, each similar to the previous, with reoccurring imagery, themes, and performances, but each, at the same time,...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: July 15, 2014

Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95, DVD $24.99

Studio: Criterion

Martin Lasalle and Marika Green in Pickpocket.

The 1959 crime drama Pickpocket is an incomparable story of crime and redemption from French master Robert Bresson (The Devil, Probably).

The film follows Michel (Martin Lasalle), a young pickpocket who spends his days working the streets, subway cars, and train stations of Paris. As his compulsive pursuit of the thrill of stealing grows, however, so does his fear that his luck is about to run out.

A cornerstone in the career of Bresson, one of the most economical and profoundly spiritual of filmmakers, Pickpocket is an elegantly crafted, tautly choreographed study of humanity in all its mischief and grace. It is indeed the work of a director at the height of his powers.

Presented in French with English subtitles, Criterion’s Blu-ray/DVD combo and single-disc editions of Pickpocket contains the following features:

• New,...

Criterion has announced their July 2014 titles and among them is one fans have been waiting a long time to see introduced, David Cronenberg's head-exploding sci-fi Scanners, set for a July 15 release. The set will include a newly restored 2K digital film transfer, supervised by Cronenberg, "The Scanners Way" visual effects documentary, a new interview with Michael Ironside, a 2012 interview with actor and artist Stephen Lack, an excerpt from a 1981 interview with Cronenberg on the CBC's "The Bob McLean Show" and Cronenberg's first feature film, Stereo (1969). Also on July 15 comes Robert Bresson's 1959 classic Pickpocket, telling the story of Michel (Martin Lasalle), a young pickpocket who spends his days working the streets, subway cars, and train stations of Paris. Features include: New, 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray Audio commentary by film scholar James Quandt Introduction by writer-director Paul Schrader The Models of "Pickpocket," a...

Eva Green first burst onto the cinema scene as an oft-nude revolutionary in Bertolucci's The Dreamers, then cemented her pin-status as a Bond girl in Casino Royale. The Hollywood-sceptic tells Xan Brooks about the indignities of working in the theatre and why she needs to fall in love

Some years ago I called up a young actor in search of some supporting quotes for an article I was writing on Bernardo Bertolucci. At the time, the actor was still living with her parents in Paris and had just appeared (sometimes clothed, sometimes not) in the director's swooning 60s-set drama The Dreamers. The actor was understandably concerned with how this debut role would be received. She didn't want to wind up like Maria Schneider, who famously ran off the rails after working with Bertolucci on Last Tango in Paris. The actor's mother was scandalised; her agent disapproving. I remember hanging up...