The Criterion Collection

[GulDukat]

I just saw Pickpocket by Robert Bresson. Excellent movie. It's been compared to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.

[burnmotherfucker!]

I just saw Pickpocket by Robert Bresson. Excellent movie. It's been compared to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.

I caught that film last year and while I did find it to be good I just didn't connect with it. Perhaps you can tell me what I'm missing, because you're in good company with your opinion.

Paul Schrader gave it all the praise in the world so maybe my expectations were too high going into it.

Come to think of it, I have a really hard time with Bresson's work in general. I'm almost certain it's my own fault, because way too many great writers and filmmakers love his filmography.

Tarkovsky once famously said “I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman.”

I'm with him on Bergman, but Bresson I just don't get for some reason. Balthazar is probably the closest I've come to enjoying a Bresson film. More recently I watched L'Argent thinking a more modern film might do the trick, but I ended up feeling exactly the same way about that one I do about Pickpocket. They all just feel so lifeless to me. Which I would never say about Tarkovsky or Bergman, for example.

I'm almost certain it comes down to the actors Bresson uses. I recently read that he hated acting. He thought acting performances took away from realism in film and he tended to cast non actors. Well, he's fucking wrong imo. I get what he was going for but I do not think it worked as he intended. Instead of realistic performances, his movies seem to be populated with people who are tense about being on camera and who may as well be reading dialogue from a cue card.

Of course his films are still great from a writing and execution standpoint. And they're economical in their story telling. But boy does all that bad acting make the dry to me.