Pickpocket

Pickpocket is a French crime drama from 1959, written and directed by Robert Bresson. It follows Michel, a young Parisian man who takes up pickpocketing almost casually at a racecourse and is arrested soon after. He is released for lack of evidence, and not long afterward his mother dies. Rather than accept help from his friend Jacques or from Jeanne, his mother's neighbour, he seeks out experienced thieves to teach him the trade and works with accomplices to sharpen his skill. A police inspector keeps him under watch, and Michel makes attempts at ordinary work, but stealing draws him back. Bresson based the film on Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment, though he reshaped it considerably.

The film sits between A Man Escaped and The Trial of Joan of Arc in Bresson's filmography, the third of the eight features listed here. Martin LaSalle plays Michel, with Marika Green as Jeanne, Jean Pélégri as the inspector, Dolly Scal as the mother, Pierre Leymarie as Jacques and the stage pickpocket Kassagi as one of the accomplices. Agnès Delahaie produced.

On IMDb it holds 7.5 out of 10 from around 27,000 votes, while on TMDB it has 7.3 from roughly 590 votes. A critics' rating of 9.1 from 46 reviews is noticeably higher than those audience scores, suggesting the film is held in higher regard by critics than by general viewers.