OTB#48: Pickpocket


Pickpocket. Robert Bresson. 1959. ⚅

Oh, I’ve got this both on DVD from Artificial Eye and bluray from Criterion…

I’m watching the Criterion release.

OH MY EMACS! Bresson is straight from the screen into my pretentious mind. Those affectless deliveries! The moral quandaries! Those French hairstyles! It’s just pure fabulousness. I’m there from the first frame to the last.

It’s 230% riveting. This movie is PURE EXCITEMENT! MY HEART IS POUNDING IS IT THE COVID NO IT”S THE MOVIE.

[…]

THIS IS A LIE.

It’s the most thrillerey thriller ever.

Bresson is still hyper-modern; i.e., his style hasn’t arrived yet, but it must some day.

OK, the last fourth is a bit of letdown.

Oh, this one has a lot of leftover liqueurs. It’s all liqueurs! I B Damm’d.

Hm… I had expected something super-flavourful, but the liqueurs weirdly cancel each other out.

This blog post is part of the Officially The Best series.

2 thoughts on “OTB#48: Pickpocket”

  1. Only pickpocket movie I have seen – Harry in your Pocket – has this in Roger Ebert’s review:
    Geller’s TV shows were good at explaining complicated situations, but nowhere in the movie does he really show us the actual techniques of pocket-picking as well as Robert Bresson did in “Pickpocket” (1959). In that one, the camera moved right in, and we saw how the folded newspaper in the crowded subway car can be manipulated so that while the cannon merely seems to be turning the pages, he actually is into the mark’s front vent kick and out with the poke. Geller’s camera never gets that close or sees that much.
    Affectless. That’s a word. New to me.
    Must be quite a booze cabinet you have there, what with all these “leftover” liqueurs.

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