Pickpocket AND The Trial of Joan of Arc (M)

Dir: Robert Bresson, France, 140mins, 35mm

A cinema diptych that exemplifies the ‘Bressonian’. Pickpocket (1959, 75 mins, (M)) is the director’s Dostoyevskian tale of a habitual petty thief, his pride in his craft and his slim hope of redemption through love. Maybe because of its brevity – but clearly because of its purity of cinematic language – it’s been one of the most influential works on modern cinema since the 1960s. The Trial of Joan of Arc (Procès de Jeanne d’Arc, 1962, 65 mins, 35mm, (G)) inevitably echoes the work on the same subject by another master of the transcendental in cinema: Carl Dreyer. Like Dreyer, it’s a cloistered, tightly photographed and sublimely poised drama of ideals, religious faith and world-weariness on trial. But Bresson’s Jeanne is less tragic figure than wilful holy fool, in the manner of so many of its director’s teenage ingénues. Presented with the support of the Embassy of France and the Institut Français.