Perhaps she shames him with her simplicity. Why does he avoid her? Bresson never supplies motives. Michel does not want to see his mother, but gives Jeanne money for her. She comes to Michel with the news that his mother is dying. She is a neighbor of Michel's mother, and the lover of Michel's friend Jacques ( Pierre Leymarie). The woman in “Pickpocket” is named Jeanne ( Marika Green). Michel, like the hero of Crime and Punishment, has a good woman in his life, who trusts he will be able to redeem himself. The reasoning is immoral, but the characters claim special privileges above and beyond common morality. 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. In this story you may sense echoes of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, another story about a lonely intellectual who lived in a garret and thought he had a license, denied to common men, to commit crimes. That is his moment of release, of triumph over a lesser person-although of course his face never reflects joy. He waits for a moment of distraction,and then opens their purses or slips their wallets from their coats. On the Metro or at the racetrack, he stands as close as possible to his victims, sensing their breathing, their awareness of him. Also, of course, he gets an erotic charge out of stealing. He sits in his garret and reads his books, and treasures an image of himself as a man so special that he is privileged to steal from others. He gathers his narcissism around himself like a blanket. He could probably get a job in a day if he wanted one. ![]() To one of them, in a cafe, he wonders aloud if it is all right for an “extraordinary man” to commit a crime-just to get himself started? He usually wears a suit and tie, disappears in a crowd and has few friends. Martin Lassalle, the star of “Pickpocket,” plays Michel as an unexceptional man with a commonplace face. Instead of asking his actors to “show fear,” Bresson asks them to show nothing, and depends on his story and images to supply the fear. What we see in the pickpocket's face is what we bring to it. No emotion, no style, no striving for effect. All Bresson wanted was physical movement. He famously forced the star of “ A Man Escaped” (1956) to repeat the same scene some 50 times,until it was stripped of all emotion and inflection. ![]() The questions become whether this life is indeed self-fulfilling for him, whether the police will eventually catch up with him, and whether he can find anything else in life that he finds just as exhilarating to replace picking pockets.Or do we? Bresson, one of the most thoughtful and philosophical of directors, was fearful of “performances” by his actors. As he goes about his business, he can spot other pickpockets and although is largely self taught, he does enter into a partnership with two others, one who shows him the tricks of the trade. He also believes the police know about him, but have yet been unable to prove any specific crimes, although he is unaware if they are actively pursuing him, despite frequent encounters with a certain inspector. With no other visible means of income, he believes some people in his life suspects what he does, such as his friend Jacques, while others have no idea, such as his sickly mother, who he loves but does not visit often, perhaps to avoid the obvious questions from her. He justifies his actions using what he is probably aware is a skewed set of morals. ![]() For example, he lives in a one room hovel with only a hook locking the door from inside. He does it through compulsion as he gets a feeling of exhilaration while committing his crimes, rather than for the money in and of itself as he does not spend it on outward material possessions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |