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.
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.
