The same year Jean-Luc Godard was cutting up cinema in À Bout De Souffle, Robert Bresson was channelling Dostoevsky for this guilty classic about a lonely narcissist (Martin LaSalle) who sidesteps society for the frozen thrill of life as a compulsive pickpocket. Even more than the deadpan anti-thesping, it's the virtuoso thievery sequences (movement, disguise, distraction) that really mesmerise, with Bresson eroticising the sensuous criminality of LaSalle's hands to the point where even the touch of a door handle carries a tingling charge. Finally, it's the prison door that can't be escaped - except through the salvation of a woman's love.
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