faustus: (cinema)
faustus ([personal profile] faustus) wrote2009-01-09 04:10 pm

Film 2009: I

Beginning ridiculously late in the year with one of the Top 100:

I: Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)

Michel (Martin LaSalle) picks a pocket at a horse race, and is arrested on leaving, only to be freed due to lack of evidence. Before you can say, Crime and Punishment, you have a criminal discussing the Ubermensch and a detective knows the criminal knows the detective knows he is a criminal. Michel goes deeper into crime, and almost seems to get away with it.

Very impressive, crisp, black and white night photography, wuth with what I felt to be a superfluous voiceover which gives a sort of inner life to the cypher central figure. Michel seems always to be looking down, hardly meeting a gaze, always pausing before the entry to a room, like a prisoner pausing to be let through a gate. We're not really told much we couldn't deduce, but perhaps the over-egging avoids the thriller aspects of the story getting too prominent.


It can be read as a metaphor for the religious life - God knows that sins have been committed, but doesn't stop us from continuing to commit them until the very end.



Totals: 1 (Cinema: 0; DVD: 1: Television/off air: 0)