Pickpocket Primer
The screenwriters will go on strike in Hollywood on Monday. This may be a great time for them to study and why not start with Bresson and Schrader? Bresson’s Pickpocket had a direct influence on Paul Schrader’s screenplays for Taxi Driver and American Gigolo.
Robert Bresson: Hidden in Plain Sight An Essay by Gary Indiana
In Pickpocket, the society whose laws Michel breaks is far more criminal than he is—not technically, not legally, but spiritually: this is Bresson’s archly comic irony, heavily veiled in nocturnal chiaroscuro.