314 Pickpocket

[Drucker]

Pickpocket Blu-ray at the Beev looking good.

[FrauBlucher]

Dr Svet gives a very good review

[ando]

Aside from the Blu-ray the packaging/extra features look identical to the previous release. A bit disappointing save the 50% off Barnes & Noble Criterion sale.

[swo17]

It's just a Blu-ray upgrade, not a reissue. No one was expecting new bonus features.

[ando]

No one minus one.

[diamonds]

I watched this film the other day and while I did enjoy it, it left me feeling a bit colder than I expected it to going in. Although it's my first Bresson, his style and subjects seem right up my alley. I wanted to ask about a recurring idea that a few articles I've read on the film reference about it. From the essay that comes packaged in the Criterion release:

In Pickpocket, the society whose laws Michel breaks is far more criminal than he is—not technically, not legally, but spiritually.

The author makes a reference to, "the impossibility of decency in a universe of greed" as a related theme. My question is, what evidence of a society like this does Bresson present in the film? When I watched it, I saw Michel as a character who was assuredly marginalized, resorting to pickpocketing to connect with a society that leaves him completely numb. I can absolutely identify with this feeling/theme, and perhaps that's all that is necessary, but in reading about the film to enrich my viewing I'm struggling to think of ways that Bresson actively critiques or condemns modern society. Michel's mother loves him and forgives him, the police commissioner feels some semblance of sympathy and reaches out to him, does not arrest him the first time, etc. Jeanne is a beacon of hope who also forgives him every step of the way, (although from what I've read it seems Bresson intended this to be deceptively straightforward). Ideally I would like to watch it again soon, but I wanted to let the ideas I have simmer and hopefully gain some more insight into Bresson's worldview before delving back in.

[Soothsayer]

I watched this film the other day and while I did enjoy it, it left me feeling a bit colder than I expected it to going in. Although it's my first Bresson, his style and subjects seem right up my alley. I wanted to ask about a recurring idea that a few articles I've read on the film reference about it. From the essay that comes packaged in the Criterion release:

In Pickpocket, the society whose laws Michel breaks is far more criminal than he is—not technically, not legally, but spiritually.

The author makes a reference to, "the impossibility of decency in a universe of greed" as a related theme. My question is, what evidence of a society like this does Bresson present in the film? When I watched it, I saw Michel as a character who was assuredly marginalized, resorting to pickpocketing to connect with a society that leaves him completely numb. I can absolutely identify with this feeling/theme, and perhaps that's all that is necessary, but in reading about the film to enrich my viewing I'm struggling to think of ways that Bresson actively critiques or condemns modern society. Michel's mother loves him and forgives him, the police commissioner feels some semblance of sympathy and reaches out to him, does not arrest him the first time, etc. Jeanne is a beacon of hope who also forgives him every step of the way, (although from what I've read it seems Bresson intended this to be deceptively straightforward). Ideally I would like to watch it again soon, but I wanted to let the ideas I have simmer and hopefully gain some more insight into Bresson's worldview before delving back in.

Spoiler

I've always taken the quote you reference as Michel's mindset, not an objective perspective the film takes. It's the same thread of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, which Pickpocket is frequently cited as referencing.

If there was a counter to this that could support the quote as an objective position for the film, I'd perhaps cite the resolution of Jeanne and Jacques' relationship. However, I'm not sure that's a strong argument. As well, to your mention that the Jeanne character may not be straightforward, it could be argued that Michel winds up having to compromise his ideals to help take care of her in a time of need (almost as a reciprocation of earlier in the film). I don't personally take to that idea though. I more align to what I wrote in the first paragraph.

[domino harvey]

One brief bright spot while suffering through the endless portmanteau film La francaise et l'amour (1960): These incredible street shots of Jean-Paul Belmondo and date outside of an actual Paris theatre showing Pickpocket:







It never occurred to me that this was ever given blockbuster treatment like this, but that advertising is amazing. I tried to find the box office take but because it was released at the very end of 1959, it looks like it's been elided from both 1959 and 1960 gross counting.

To give some perspective, here's what North by Northwest's theatrical run merited in the same segment:

[barryconvex]

If I new how to do it I would post screenshots of the heroine of Rafles Sur La Ville standing in front of a poster for A Man Escaped. But since I don't you'll have to imagine it.

[DeprongMori]

Related, I was wondering whether Dreyer’s “Jeanne d’Arc” ever really had a neon marquee advertisement in Paris in 1962, as it appears in Godard’s “Vivre sa vie”.

(Or for that matter, whether Rivette’s “Paris Belongs to Us” had a major theatrical screening years before its actual release, as implied by Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows”.)

[domino harvey]

The Truffaut reference was an in-joke, it definitely didn’t exist yet at the time the Doinels went to see it

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

It never occurred to me that this was ever given blockbuster treatment like this, but that advertising is amazing. I tried to find the box office take but because it was released at the very end of 1959, it looks like it's been elided from both 1959 and 1960 gross counting.

Not quite the complete answer, but Ciné-Ressources gives a Paris attendance of 48,612 during its five-week period of "exclusivité," which I'm guessing is the equivalent of a "first run" in the old Hollywood parlance. That compares to 124,659 for A Man Escaped, which ran for eight weeks.

[domino harvey]

I can’t figure out how to get the info from that site on mobile, but out of curiosity, does it give attendance for North by Northwest and Vadim’s Les liaisons dangereuses (the other theatres/films shown as concurrently running in this segment)?

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Nope, and it doesn't give attendance for La française et l'amour either. I did look up Purple Noon to have a roughly contemporaneous point of comparison and its figure is 154,081 over eight weeks.

[swo17]

Just noticed this Blu-ray is OOP and fetching high prices. DVD's still in-print though. My guess is they just ran out of dual-format stock and will be issuing a BD-only version soon enough