September 23, 2014 (Series 29:5) Robert Bresson, PICKPOCKET (1959, 75 Min)
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September 23, 2014 (Series 29:5) Robert Bresson, PICKPOCKET (1959, 75 min) Directed by Robert Bresson Written by Robert Bresson Produced by Agnès Delahaie Cinematography by Léonce-Henri Burel Film Editing by Raymond Lamy Production Design by Pierre Charbonnier Production Management by Michel Choquet Technical Advising by Kassagi Martin LaSalle ... Michel Marika Green ... Jeanne Jean Pélégri ... L'inspecteur principal Dolly Scal ... La mère Pierre Leymarie ... Jacques Kassagi ... 1er complice Pierre Étaix ... 2ème complice César Gattegno ... Un inspecteur Bonaparte, 1934 L'auberge du Petit-Dragon, 1934 A Man and His Woman, 1933 La femme nue, 1932 Danton, 1931 Robert Bresson (director) (b. September 25, 1901 in Bromont- L'étrangère, 1930 Le requin, 1929 Vénus, 1928 Morgane, the Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, France—d. December 18, 1999 (age Enchantress, 1927 The Loves of Casanova, 1927 Napoleon, 1925 98) in Paris, France) wrote and directed 14 films: 1983 L'argent, Salammbô, 1922 L'Arlésienne, 1919 I Accuse, 1917 The Zone of 1977 The Devil, Probably, 1974 Lancelot of the Lake, 1971 Four Death, 1917 Barberousse, 1916 Alsace, and 1914 La Nights of a Dreamer, 1969 A Gentle Woman, 1967 Mouchette, dénonciatrice. 1966 Au Hasard Balthazar, 1962 The Trial of Joan of Arc, 1959 Pickpocket, 1956 A Man Escaped, 1951 Diary of a Country Martin LaSalle ... Michel (b. 1935) appeared in 80 films, Priest, 1945 Les dames du Bois de Boulogne, 1943 Angels of Sin, including 2008 Nora's Will, 2007 My Mexican Shivah, 2007 and 1934 Public Affairs (Short). Ópera, 2000 Pilgrim, 1999 Second Century, 1990 The Assassin, 1988 The Penitent, 1985 Alamo Bay, 1984 The Devil and the Léonce-Henri Burel (cinematographer) (b. Léonce-Henry Lady, 1983 Under Fire, 1982 Missing, 1981 Seduction, 1980 The Burel, November 23, 1892 in Indre, Loire-Atlantique, France—d. Dogs of War, 1978 The Bees, 1974 The Holy Inquisition, 1967 March 21, 1977 (age 84) in Mougins, Alpes-Maritimes, France) Acteón, and 1959 Pickpocket. was the cinematographer for 142 films, among them 1972 Bonaparte et la révolution, 1967 Order of the Daisy, 1963 Marika Green ... Jeanne (b. Marika Nicolette Green, June 21, Heaven Sent, 1962 The Trial of Joan of Arc, 1959 Pickpocket, 1943 in Södermalm, Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden) 1957 A Bomb for a Dictator, 1956 A Man Escaped, 1955 Tant appeared in 43 films and television shows, among them 1995 qu'il y aura des femmes, 1955 La madone des sleepings, 1954 “Bauernschach” (TV Movie), 1988 Off Season, 1984 Until Strange Desire of Mr. Bard, 1953 Napoleon Road, 1953 The September, 1982 “Chambre vide à louer” (TV Movie), 1978 Other Side of Paradise, 1952 The Truth of Our Marriage, 1951 “Jean-Christophe” (TV Series), 1977 Un tueur, un flic, ainsi soit- Diary of a Country Priest, 1949 Suzanne et ses brigands, 1948 il..., 1974 Emmanuelle, 1973 The Crazy Capo Affair, 1972 Les casse-pieds, 1948 Carrefour du crime, 1947 Last Refuge, Galaxie, 1970 Rider on the Rain, 1968 Playmates, 1968 The Girl 1947 Rita, 1946 Strange Fate, 1943 A Woman in the Night, 1941 Across the Way, 1962 Cross of the Living, 1961 “Flore et Le club des soupirants, 1941 Blind Venus, 1940 Forbidden Love, Blancheflore” (TV Movie), 1960 “La servante du passeur” (TV 1938 Carrefour, 1936 La dernière valse, 1935 Napoléon Movie), and 1959 Pickpocket. Bresson—PICKPOCKET—2 this comedy has long been lost and little is known of it....Bresson admits to liking the work of Charles Chaplin—especially The Circus and City Lights—and he was earlier linked with the surrealist movement in Paris. In 1939 Bresson joined the French army and was a prisoner of war between June 1940 and April 1941. His imprisonment profoundly affected him, even though he was not confined like many of his protagonists (notably Fontaine, in A Man Escaped). “I was set to work in a forest, for local peasants who—luckily—fed us. After a year or so I simulated a fever and with other prisoners who were sick I was released. I returned to Paris.” In occupied France, at the height of the war, Bresson began preparing his first feature, Les Anges du péché / The Angels of sin (1943), based on an idea by a friend, the Reverence Raymond Brückberger, and inspired by a novel. Bresson wanted to call the film “Bethanie”—the name of the convent where the action is centered. He wrote the screenplay and then asked the playwright Jean Giraudoux to supply the dialogue. Although Bresson regards his debut film and the two works that followed as incomplete and spoiled by the intrusion of conventional music and actors, rather than the “models” (in the sense of artists’ models) he subsequently used, Les Anges du péché remains one of the most astonishing first features in world cinema. It not only displays complete mastery of the medium, but puts into practice many of the theories Bresson later refined and distilled. He says: “I knew at this stage what I wanted, but had to accept the actresses. I warned them immediately to stop what they were doing in front of the camera, or they—or I—would leave. Luckily they were in nun’s habits so they could not gesticulate.” Les Anges du péché proved a great commercial success Robert Bresson from World Film Directors V. I. Ed John and won the Grand Prix du Cinéma Française. It tells a basically Wildman.. The H. H. Wilson Company. NY 1987 melodramatic story set in a convent devoted to the rehabilitation Entry by Brian Baxter of young women....In Raymond Durgnat’s words, Bresson’s The French director and scenarist, was born in the vision “is almost mature in his first feature.” It already shows his mountainous Auvergne region. [September 25, 1907] He spent preference for a narrative composed of many short scenes, as his formative years in the countryside until his family moved to well as his fascination with human skills and processes, Paris, when he was eight. Between thirteen and seventeen he observing in detail the nuns’ work and rituals. On the other hand, studied classics and philosophy at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, we also see his characteristic user of ellipsis, as when Thérèse, intending later to become a painter. Although Bresson abandoned buying a gun, is simply shown receiving it over the counter. painting around 1930 because it made him “too agitated,” he Bresson resolutely proclaims himself a painter, not a remains a “painter” to this day. writer, the task he finds most difficult of all. For his second film, He rejects the term “director” and uses Les Dames du Bois do Boulogne, he sought more literary “cinematographer.” He believes that cinema is a fusion of music inspiration, a novel by Diderot, Jacques le fataliste. Actually he and painting, not the theatre and photography, and defines used only one chapter and for the second and last time he sought “cinematography” as “a new way of writing, therefore of feeling. help with the dialogue—from his friend Jacques Cocteau, who His theories are precisely given in his book Notes on the nonetheless stuck closely to the original. It was Cocteau who Cinematographer. His films have resolutely followed these later said of Bresson, “He is one apart from this terrible world.” beliefs, and are dominated by his Catholicism. Bresson’s films are unique. Most of them deal with the When Bresson decided to abandon painting he moved religious themes of predestination and redemption, but in terms towards cinema. During the following decade he was on the of tightly constructed dramatic narratives. However, Bresson fringes of cinema and “saw everything.” Of this period nothing scorns the easy pleasures and illusions of the storyteller’s art, and of importance exists. His work was mainly as a “script is quite likely to leave out what others would regard as a consultant,” first on C’était un musicien (1933), directed by dramatic high point. We may simply be told that the event has Frédéric Zelnick and Maurice Gleize, then on Claude Heymann’s taken place, or shown only a part of it, while being treated to all comedy Jumeaux de Brighton (1936) and Pierre Billon’s the associated activities that mere storytellers take for granted— Courrier Sud (1937), and fleetingly with René Clair. His only people coming in and out, opening and closing doors, going up significant work was a short film, financed by the art historian and down stairs. Recognizing the great persuasive power of the Roland Penrose, made in 1934. Called Les Affaires publiques, film image, its ability to make us believe what we see and feel Bresson—PICKPOCKET—3 what the image suggests, Bresson deliberately subverts this inspired by an article in Figaro Littéraire. It was written by a power by directing our attention to a world beyond that of his former prisoner of war, Commandant André Devigny, and narrative. What is left is not the illusion of “realism,” but what he describes his astonishing escape from Montluc Prison in Lyons calls the “crude real” of the cinematic image itself, which for while awaiting execution by the Germans. Bresson wrote the Bresson carries us “far away from the intelligence that screenplay, the sparse dialogue, and the commentary that complicates everything”; that is why he calls the camera counterpoints and illuminates the action. He eschewed a “divine.” conventional score and used—sparingly—excerpts from Bresson prefers to work on location and if possible in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor (K427). With this film Bresson the actual settings prescribed by the script. achieved the complete control he sought by the use of His third film, and the one that established his “models”—nonprofessionals with no dramatic training who are international reputation, came six years later and can be seen taught to speak their lines and move their bodies without now as a transitional work.