George Barrington robs Prince Orlov.

George Barrington (May 14, 1755 – 1804) was an Irish pickpocket. A book on him was mentioned in the 1959 film Pickpocket by Robert Bresson. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Barrington

At one point in the film, Jeanne asks Michel if he “believes in nothing” and he replies, “I believed in God, Jeanne, for three minutes.” — Culture?Ugh!

The absences and overall minimalism in Bresson are accentuated by repetitions. (In Pickpocket: repeated scenes in Michel’s room, the Metro, the racetrack, of staircases, writing in his journal etc. ) Paradoxically, this combination creates a sort of hollowed-out, emptied-out vessel into which we pour….our own projections, ideas, feelings, and (very important) spiritual yearnings. But we don’t see the spiritual in his films; we see the material. Concrete surfaces are paramount here; and yet they are the portal to the spiritual. We intuit an inner life, a metaphysical life, via our immersion in the material. Quandt has called Bresson’s cinema both minimalist and maximalist for this reason.  —Girish Shambu