In the early spring of 1960, Godard's famous work "Exhausted" came out, setting off a vigorous new wave of movies in France. And not long ago, in late 1959, one of the most outstanding works of another film master's career was also born in France, namely Robert Bresson's "The Pickpocket".
A movie depicting a thief is easily reminiscent of Jia Zhangke's "Xiao Wu". The difference is that Xiao Wu, as a marginal person at the bottom of the society, is a product of the times, while Michelle, the male protagonist in "Pickpocket", his motive for stealing is more spontaneous, like Dostoyevsky's novels. The characters in Nietzsche, based on Nietzsche's superhuman will, worship nihilism and believe that stealing is a legitimate act of social redistribution.
As an opponent of Hollywood and a hater of film drama, Bresson pursues the greatest simplicity in photography, editing, and sound use. This simple and restrained film language has become his most significant artistic feature. Concise composition, brief dialogue, Bresson omits all redundant information, and only presents a small but important thing to the camera. He is eager to show life as it is, so that everyone can understand the film in their own way. The repetition of rhetoric becomes the inevitable derivative of this simplicity. In the film, repeated close-ups of hands, repeated stealing actions, repeated presentations of shabby rooms and stairwell scenes, repeated similar behaviors are deconstructed into poetic film language, and repeatedly peeping into Michel's mechanically repeated life with subtle changes, His demeanor appears natural, genuine and friendly. As the director himself said, "Poetry and reality are sisters." The poetry on the screen is not born from a set of poetic images or a poetic text, but from a set of real details.
So, in the concise lens, the poetry flows quietly. The ultimate thinking about faith and sin is also hidden in the true feelings of life experience. In the most exciting set of scenes of the train station group committing crimes, the composition, editing, and scene scheduling are brought into full play, and the stealing passages with a strong sense of rhythm and rhythm are like dancing ballet with fingers. Indeed, soft fingers can dance and touch the true meaning of life.
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