DIRECTOR: Robert Bresson
PRODUCER: Agnès Delahaie
PRODUCTION CO: Compagnie Cinématographique de France
PHOTOGRAPHY: Léonce-Henri Burel
EDITOR: Raymond Lamy
WITH: Martin LaSalle (Michel), Marika Green (Jeanne), Jean Pélégri (Chief Inspector), Dolly Scal (The Mother), Pierre Leymarie (Jacques), Kassagi (1st Accomplice), Pierre Étaix (2nd Accomplice), César Gattegno (Inspector)

​FESTIVALS: Berlin

REVIEWS

“Less is most definitely more in the late Robert Bresson’s brilliantly pared-down and powerfully austere study of a compulsive pickpocket Michel (Martin Lassalle), who achieves an unlikely redemption through the love of a sympathetic woman (Marika Green). Shot in 1959 on the streets of Paris, and the first of the French director’s films not to be an adaptation of a literary text, it features a cast of deliberately inexpressive non-professional actors.

"My feet no longer touched the ground. I dominated the world," explains Michel after his first theft from a lady’s handbag at a racetrack. And it’s the desire to recapture this ecstasy rather than any material gain, which propels the protagonist on his self-destructive path.

The fetishistic way Bresson films the pickpocketing sequences confers an erotic dimension upon Michel’s criminal activities, with the camera lingering on hands and faces, and recording the way fingers dip into jacket pockets to retrieve wallets and money. A breathtakingly choreographed sequence at the Gare de Lyon has Michel and his accomplices working their way through a crowd, passing the stolen valuables to one another with sublime dexterity.

There’s a dream-like quality to the monochrome Pickpocket, which lasts for just 75 minutes: it’s impossible to gauge how much time passes between sequences, whilst Bresson uses sound and music sparingly to heighten the mysterious atmosphere.”

​– Tom Dawson, BBC

Pickpocket – Introduction by Paul Schrader

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Whanganui
Monday, 8 August, 7.00pm

Canterbury
​Monday, 15 August, 7.00pm

Dunedin
Wednesday, 24 August, 7.30pm

​Wellington     
Monday 5 September, 6:15pm

Auckland 
Monday 12 September, 6:15pm 

Queenstown    
Tuesday, 20 September, 8:15pm

Nelson     
Tuesday, 4 October, 6:00pm

​Hamilton   
Monday, 17 October, 7.30pm

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French Connections is presented in
​co-operation with the Institut Français and the Embassy of France