Pickpocket and more

Pickpocket

1959. France. Directed by Robert Bresson. With Martin Lasalle, Marika Green, Pierre Leymarie, Jean Pelegri, Pierre Etaix. In perhaps Bresson’s most minimalist, austere film, as Paul Schrader points out in Transcendental Style in Film, the protagonist “displays no human feeling…for his dying mother…. He does, however, have a passion: pickpocketing.” Bresson was the most otherworldly and most Catholic of the great directors, leaving no room for the consideration of life or cinema as fun and games. 75. In French; English subtitles min.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

1962. France. Directed by Robert Enrico. This is a beautiful Oscar-winning evocation of one of Ambrose Bierce’s haunting stories of the American Civil War. No dialogue. 27 min.