Of all the film directors who can be called "masters", Robert Bresson of France is undoubtedly the most special one.
While other creators try to make their work look rich, full, and blooming, Bresson insists on an "ascetic" style and deletion strategy, and explores a minimalist style of "one or two thousand pounds". That is to say, the image volume of Bresson's film is small, but the energy is huge.
Directed by Robert Bresson
Pickpocket is Bresson's fourth feature film, telling a moral trial story similar to Crime and Punishment. But unlike realism, Bresson did not deliberately capture the clues of the times, but placed the character in a simple situation and then observed his behavior: Michelle was a book-loving thief, or an intellectual-type young criminal, and his motives for committing crimes had little to do with the outside world, and more from the inner confusion and uneasiness about the world — it can be said that this confusion is spontaneous, internal, and draws a line from analysis and preaching. For the uniqueness of the image, the expression is neither analyzed nor interpreted, it is "reconstructed".
<h1>First, the "default" of photography</h1>
So how does the film construct the spontaneity and insincerity of the characters' behavior? You can find out from the close-up shot of the "hand" throughout the film.
Obviously, stealing is a "craft" job. The display of the burglary action throughout the film can be described as flowing, and it forms a solemn and beautiful contrast under the background of Baroque music, which is very enjoyable.
Unlike the brain, the "hand" is a non-intelligent organ of the human being, but has its own way of will. We often hear people say that the hands are no longer at their disposal – they often bring themselves in directions that we have not directed them to. It is not known whether there was a pair of Olak's hands that brought Michelle to the place of crime.
To highlight the spontaneity of the "hand", Bresson used a large number of close-up shots. Focusing on the body parts of the characters, the full posture of the characters is omitted, and the sequence is edited to form a tight action chain like a machine. These "trimmed" slices of motion are precisely arranged on the transmission axis of time, interlocking as if they were interdependent to each other and never want to be separated.
The "partial" close-up of the lens is one of Bresson's minimalist strategies, a unique way of embodying the "spirituality" of objects and living beings—as if both the thief's hand and the stolen person's wallet are flowing with the dynamics of life at this moment. We can even guess that Jan Svenmeyer's stop-motion animations, shot from living objects, were more or less influenced by Bresson's aesthetic.
<h1>Second, the default of time</h1>
The film appears in the form of a "diary" from the first perspective. Images increase or decrease accordingly as the diary content is detailed. Some places need to be described in detail, like stealing scenes; and things like plot cutscenes go by. It has to be said that Bresson's use of images to express "cutscenes", that is, the way of compressing time and reducing space, is also unique.
At night
The next morning
1. The heroine Jenny left a note for Michelle and put it in the crack of the door. The director used two close-ups of the note: the first time outside the door, Michelle did not notice; the second time, the camera turned indoors, Michelle found and picked up the note, but the whole night passed.
At the bar
Gaze at "colleagues"
You are at your "colleague's" home at this point
2. Michelle took the initiative to go to the bar to find a "colleague" and decided to further study "stealing", and the colleague immediately looked ahead and said, "Follow me". Then Michelle looks at her colleague, and the colleague turns around—the shots are coherent, as if they were happening in a space, but at this point Michelle has arrived at the "colleague's" home, unconsciously completing the scene transformation across time and space.
<h1>Third, the default of the space</h1>
In Bresson's films, "doors" and "corridors" are the scenes that appear the most. This is accompanied by the character's movement through the door and up and down the stairs. Bresson not only compresses time, but also truncates and de-subtracts space, connecting different spatial scenes with doors and corridors representing spatial intervals, thus creating a "Sisyphusian" observation experience that is both coherent, reciprocating, and abstract—as if the characters are in constant motion, tireless—movement is the most basic imprint of life, and for the image, it is also a poetic reality.
<h1>4. Default performance</h1>
Familiar audiences know that Bresson is not allowed to perform, they are defined as "models" who perform tasks, using only eye and body movements to convey emotions. Unlike the traditional actor's "inside-out" performance method of exuding emotions, the model is converged "from the outside in", and even the lines are reduced to the minimum, so that the state is at the critical point where it can be touched, less than one point less than one point. And what the audience can see is not on the surface, but in the potential.
According to the director's words: don't make deliberate imitations of the expression of life, don't be "actors". A model whose appearance is mechanized is a model who is free on the inside. On their faces, there was nothing deliberate. Respect human nature, do not deliberately let nature become real.
There are two typical shots in Pickpocket that illustrate the uniqueness of the "performance default" approach.
1. Faced with her seriously ill mother, Michelle, who has always despised religious beliefs, goes to church with her female neighbors to pray. The camera begins with a focus on the backs of the three people. Then the three of them got up, and Michelle turned back—we could clearly see two lines of tears on Michelle's face—what a sudden tear! We don't even see his brewing, only the traces of crying. This is the abstract experience brought to us by the model - because there is no actor's imitation of emotion, we have never been able to substitute, we are separated from the moment, we have always been in a rational position, in the face of this "sudden" shock, we can accurately feel the truth of the character, the most innocent, the most simple and unpretentious truth.
2. Michelle, Jacques and Jenny go out together. In the playground, Michelle and Jenny sat together, both looking ahead at the same time, their eyes blank and without any communication. For Bresson, who cherishes ink and gold, this shot is too long. However, Jenny suddenly turned to Michelle and said: You are so pathetic, your life is like a dream, you have no interest in everything! Why did Jenny suddenly come to such a conclusion? Like what happened before. It seems that without any "face-to-face" communication, the two completed a silent storm, a clash of souls, and a conscious question and answer in advance, what a special "performance" way that does not show traces but has a thousand words!
Bresson put it this way in his Notes on The Writing of Cinema: Your audience is neither a reader of a book nor an audience of a play, nor a spectator of an exhibition nor an audience of concerts. You have no need to satisfy literary interests, nor theater interests, neither painting characteristics, nor musical characteristics. It can be said that Bresson created a completely different way of writing and reading images, allowing film to exist as an independent art form.