This weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the American Film Institute’s Cinema’s Legacy program, which featured Paul Schrader and a screening/discussion of his favorite film, Robert Bresson‘s Pickpocket (1959). Schrader, whose claim to fame probably remains his screenplays for early Martin Scorsese pictures like Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), has directed a few films over the years with mixed results (American Gigolo, Cat People, Auto Focus).
However, many cinephiles remember him best for having written one of the few English studies of Bresson, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. The resurgence of astute Bresson commentary with James Quandt’s 1998 touring Bresson retrospective (in particular, Quandt’s cooresponding tome of essays) has made Schrader’s 1972 book seem somewhat reductionistic, useful for specific art-theological contextualizations, but shaky as film theory or a very wide-ranging summary of Bresson’s style as a whole.
Nevertheless, I’d never miss an opportunity to see a Bresson film on film, and the print used at the event rewarded my hopes with nary a scratch throughout its entire length. I’ve seen Pickpocket five or six times over the years, and never fail to marvel at its economy and complexity: a film about a compulsive thief who needs to be imprisoned in order to discover freedom, told with Bresson’s trademark merging of sparsity (minimal “acting,” abbreviated dialogue, “empty” moments) and compression (major events are elided, confrontations are abrupt, the entire film is just over an hour long).
After the screening, a critic from the Los Angeles Daily News interviewed Schrader, and I was disappointed as the conversation quickly drifted away from Bresson into “whatever happened to the great filmmaking of the Seventies?” and dour pronouncements regarding the State of Cinema Today. (Somehow, it would have been easier to take if I hadn’t known Schrader is currently filming The Exorcist IV.) With my belongings in hand, I quietly left the theatre, although I’ve since heard that a resulting Q&A with the audience offered a substantial improvement to the proceedings.
I appreciate the AFI offering this series, particularly since it involves films that won’t come anywhere near their highly-publicized but mediocre Top 100 Lists. Later in August, Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa) will present Agnes Varda‘s Le bonheur, and the event is already marked on my calendar.