Michel begins to work again to support her, but gives in to temptation and goes back to steal at the horse track, where he is caught by a plainclothes policeman. Returning to France, Michel returns to Jeanne, who has had a child by Jacques but did not want to marry him and is now left with nothing. He travels from Milan to Rome and ends up in England where he "spent two years in London pulling off good jobs", but throws his earnings away on alcohol and women. The inspector leaves without arresting Michel, who decides to leave the country. Later, the inspector visits Michel in his apartment, and tells him that his mother had some money stolen, but later dropped the charges, probably knowing the thief was her son. Michel's mother dies, and he goes to the funeral with Jeanne. However, the cops failed to find his stash of money. Michel returns to his apartment realizing that it was all just a ruse to search his apartment. At the station, the inspector barely glances at the book. Michel goes down to the station on that day, with the book. While they are at a bar, the inspector asks Michel to show him a book by George Barrington about pickpocketing, bringing the book to the police station on an appointed date. But after stealing a watch, Michel leaves Jacques and Jeanne at the carnival. His friend Jacques goes on a date with Jeanne and invites Michel along. Visiting his mother, Michel meets Jeanne who begs him to visit his mother more often.
#Pickpocket films professional#
Michel soon falls in with a small group of professional pickpockets who teach him their trade and invite him to join them on highly coordinated pickpocketing sprees in crowded public areas. The inspector releases Michel because the evidence is not strong enough. He leaves the racetrack confident that he was not caught when he is suddenly arrested. But can Michel sustain such self-sacrifice? That’s the question Bresson forces us to consider, not only of his movie, but of ourselves.Michel goes to a horse race and steals some money from a spectator. This emphasis on sacrifice over self ironically brings Michel – the champion of the individual – a personal peace. In truth, it’s his own qualms that bedevil him, evidenced by the fact that he can’t bring himself to visit his mother, even when she’s on her deathbed.įor a brief time near the end of the film, Michel describes himself as being “at ease.” He’s stopped stealing and has offered to get a regular job to help care for Jeanne and her fatherless child. “Are you all trying to drive me mad?” he yells in response to the disapproval he feels from Jacques, another friend named Jeanne (Marika Green) and eventually the police. Don’t think of him as Robin Hood, however it’s the hiding place behind his bed that receives the spoils, not the poor.Īnd yet, despite this philosophy and the elation he feels after picking someone’s pocket, Michel is also at the mercy of his conscience. He considers himself a “useful thief,” one whose skill and intelligence puts him above the law. Although his friend Jacques (Pierre Leymarie) presents him with job opportunities, Michel rejects them, proclaiming himself to be better than such everyday occupations. Perhaps Michel is so devoted to his craft because he sees it as a declaration of independence. (Bresson records this diligence with the same artful devotion he brought to the prison routines of A Man Escaped.)
When not actively thieving, he spends hours honing his craft: slipping watches off table legs with a single gesture sliding a wallet in and out of a jacket pocket playing pinball to increase the dexterity of his fingers. Michel (Martin LaSalle) trolls the racetracks and train stations of Paris looking for unwitting victims. Why do we steal? Is theft always wrong? Can those who break society’s moral codes ever be at ease? These are the sorts of questions prompted by Bresson’s intricately detailed film. In the case of Pickpocket, the act of lifting a wallet from a man’s jacket is a means to consider what the act of thievery swipes from the thief’s soul.
Robert Bresson once again uses the intensely physical to explore the deeply philosophical.
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