Pickpocket

Pickpocket (1959)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053168/]

The Gist:

The first thing you notice about the film is its bizarre performances. At first I wanted to characterize them as dead pan but I slowly felt this raw undercurrent of emotion that really belied that kind of description. This is more apparent with the protagonist than anyone, a man who is compulsively drawn to larceny and to his own inevitable destruction. That juxtaposition of listless performance and the thrill of theft sets up an interesting subtextual read on the film, namely that these small thefts serve as away for the character to elevate a dull, unimportant life into something tangibly exciting and real. The ending moment of closure reinforces this idea through a different medium of transcendence, one of love, as the protagonist and his love interest finally embrace through prison bars. All in all it was an interesting film, very minimalist, very French, excellent moments of tension.