Having seen the unanimous regard for this film as brilliant, in addition to critic Roger Ebert's putting it on his list of the greatest films ever made, I was expecting another masterpiece in the vein of Bresson's "A Man Escaped" and "Au Hasard Balthazar." I watched this film twice, and unfortunately I came away each time entertained but perplexed. Bresson's technique in film is similar to that of Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Carver in writing - a pure minimalism with everyday life stripped away to its essentials but great passion submerged underneath. Characters in a Bresson film are emotionless, perpetually casting their gaze downward as if hiding their true feelings from the camera. Unfortunately, I don't believe this technique was the proper one for a cinematic interpretation of Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment." Dostoyevsky's novel was long, dense, and filled with long meditations on the human soul. By contrast, this film is short (75 minutes), clipped, and has minimal philosophical exploration. There are some short dialogue scenes portraying the title character Michel's Nietzschian belief in the ubermench who can be permitted to live outside conventional morality in order to further society creatively. However, we never get any sense that he is an intellectual, that he reads heavily, or even that he has one original thought. All we have is a sullen young man who refuses to take a job and gives into his compulsions to steal.
There are some very good things about this film: Bresson's choreography of the pickpockets is like pure ballet. His casting of characters is perfect - the faces of each seem to convey things with little work from the actors themselves. However, there are several problems. The technique that the police use to finally capture Michel is way too far-fetched. Also, I couldn't help but get the impression that large, important passages were removed in the editing room. Michel's one final display of emotional catharsis with Jane at the end had the potential to pack a great wallop, but with hardly any backstory or interaction between the two previously, it seems to come out of nowhere. Just as some short stories are meant to be novels, this is a long, probing psychological story reduced to something of a short film. After all, could you imagine "Crime and Punishment" as a short story?
I have been able to understand even the more controversial entries on Ebert's Great Films list, like Errol Morris' 1978 pet cemetery documentary "Gates of Heaven" or "Saturday Night Fever," but this is the one film I think Ebert made a mistake on. Who knows, maybe he saw a longer, more complete version of the movie?
There are some very good things about this film: Bresson's choreography of the pickpockets is like pure ballet. His casting of characters is perfect - the faces of each seem to convey things with little work from the actors themselves. However, there are several problems. The technique that the police use to finally capture Michel is way too far-fetched. Also, I couldn't help but get the impression that large, important passages were removed in the editing room. Michel's one final display of emotional catharsis with Jane at the end had the potential to pack a great wallop, but with hardly any backstory or interaction between the two previously, it seems to come out of nowhere. Just as some short stories are meant to be novels, this is a long, probing psychological story reduced to something of a short film. After all, could you imagine "Crime and Punishment" as a short story?
I have been able to understand even the more controversial entries on Ebert's Great Films list, like Errol Morris' 1978 pet cemetery documentary "Gates of Heaven" or "Saturday Night Fever," but this is the one film I think Ebert made a mistake on. Who knows, maybe he saw a longer, more complete version of the movie?