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Loosely based on Fyodor Dostoyevsky's classic novel Crime and Punishment, Robert Bresson's Pickpocket 1959 examines the director's signature concerns with faith and redemption through the experience of a compulsive thief. Bresson's stylistic purity of head-on shots, expressively restrained mise-en-scène, gracefully precise editing, spare dialogue, and impassive non-actors captures the near-erotic charge that Michel gets out of his thievery and obliquely outlines the emotional core of his amoral morality. Bresson's taut, elliptical narrative never offers an easy explanation for Michel's fatalistic narcissism, yet Michel's carefully detailed pickpocketing techniques, and a bravura sequence in which Michel and two accomplices lift wallets on a train, reveal the thrill in getting away with a skillful crime. Although Martin LaSalle's face seems to reveal nothing, in keeping with Bresson's trademark insistence that his actors' faces express as little as possible, Michel's climactic salvation, as he accepts the human connection that he had assiduously denied, becomes all the more moving in its simplicity. Shown in competition at the 1960 Berlin Film Festival, Pickpocket was not released in the U.S. until 1963.
Condition:NEW. Brand New Factory Sealed
Product Details
Actors: Martin LaSalle, Marika Green, Jean Pelegri
Directors: Robert Bresson
Format: Color, Widescreen
Language: French
Subtitles: English
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number of discs: 2
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Criterion Collection (Direct)
DVD Release Date: July 15, 2014
Run Time: 112 minutes
Special Features
DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
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 2003 documentary by Babette Mangolte that features actors from the film
Interview from 1960 with director Robert Bresson, from the French television program Cinépanorama
Q&A on Pickpocket from 2000 with actor Marika Green and filmmakers Paul Vecchiali and Jean-Pierre Améris
Footage of the sleight-of-hand artist and Pickpocket consultant Kassagi from a 1962 episode of the French television show La piste aux étoiles
Trailer
One Blu-ray and one DVD, with all content available in both formats
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by novelist and critic Gary Indiana
Cast & Crew
Martin Lasalle Michel
Marika Green Jeanne
Pierre Leymarie Jacques
Pierre Etaix Accomplice
Jean Pelegri Police Inspector
Cesar Gattegno Detective
Kassagi Master Pickpocket
Dolly Scal Michel's Mother
Technical Credits
Robert Bresson Director, Screenwriter
Léonce-Henri Burel Cinematographer
Pierre Charbonnier Art Director
Agnes Delahaie Producer
Raymond Lamy Editor
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