Pickpocket

Less is most definitely more in Robert Bresson's brilliantly pared-down and powerfully austere study of compulsive pickpocket Michel (Martin LaSalle), who achieves an unlikely redemption through the love of a sympathetic woman (Marika Green). Shot in 1959 on the streets of Paris, and the first of the director's films not to be an adaptation of a literary text, it features a cast of deliberately inexpressive non-professional actors.

The fetishistic way Bresson films the pickpocketing sequences confers an erotic dimension upon Michel's criminal activities, with the camera lingering on hands and faces, and recording the way fingers dip into jacket pockets to retrieve wallets and money. 'My feet no longer touched the ground. I dominated the world', explains Michel after his first theft from a lady's handbag at a racetrack. And it's the desire to recapture this ecstasy, rather than any material gain, which propels the protagonist on his self-destructive path.