The Films of Robert Bresson

Les anges du péché

Les dames du Bois de Boulogne

Diary of a Country Priest

A Man Escaped

Pickpocket (February 22/12)

An often interminable piece of work, Pickpocket follows Martin La Salle's Michel as he develops a taste for theft after spontaneously stealing cash from a random bystander's purse - with the film subsequently detailing Michel's efforts at both improving his skills and evading the police. It's an almost excessively slight premise that's utilized to consistently underwhelming effect by writer/director Robert Bresson, as the filmmaker has infused the proceedings with a pervasively meandering sensibility that's exacerbated by the decidedly bland nature of La Salle's character (ie Michel, for the most part, comes off as a dull, hopelessly one-dimensional figure). Bresson's inability to grab the viewer's interest, even fleetingly, effectively cancels out the movie's few positive attributes, with the most obvious victim of the pervasively tedious atmosphere Léonce-Henri Burel's admittedly striking cinematography (ie the film is, at times, worth a look purely on the basis of its visuals). And although Bresson has peppered the narrative with a handful of compelling sequences (eg Michel and his two partners fleece a whole slew of passengers on a busy train), Pickpocket only grows more and more soporific as it progresses - which ultimately forces one to wonder just what Bresson set out to accomplish with this seriously overlong, nigh unwatchable bit of avant-garde filmmaking.

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The Trial of Joan of Arc

Au hazard Balthazar

Mouchette

A Gentle Woman

Quatre nuits d'un rêveur

Lancelot du Lac

Le diable probablement

L'argent