Pickpocket

This film by Robert Bresson was created in 1959 along with many other contemporary New Wave films in France. The main character, Michel discovers that he has an interest in pickpocketing while at the race track. Michel's character is somewhat difficult to understand. He seems lonely and empty and finds comfort in the material world of pickpocketing. His emotions are so hidden that his feelings for Jeanne, his mother's caretaker, to not arise until the end of the film. I don't believe Michel's character was intended to be romantic; his supressed feelings seem to come from the guilt that is bottled inside from stealing from his mother as well as strangers.
The most memorable scene of the film is when the three accomplices devise a plan to pickpocket at a train station. The three men steal wallets, pass them to eachother, empty the wallets, and replace them all while keeping the owners oblivious to what is happening. Bresson focused on the hands and facial expressions of the accomplices during this scene; the body movements flowed and it seemed more magical than real.
Pickpocket has a style all its own. Bresson's creation of Michel is someone to be admired for his mastery of pickpocketing as well as pitied for his lack of confidence and hope.

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Hiroshima Mon Amour is the story of two people, a French woman and a Japanese man, who find love in the city of Hiroshima, Japan. The film consists of a dialogue between the two characters about their past and present relationships. The director, Alain Resnais, is constantly aware or the concept of time in this film while focusing on memory and past events. The female character explains to the Japanese man her previous love interest while Resnais shows flashbacks of what her memories of this may have looked like. The concept of memory is what the basis of the conversations between the two characters revolve around. The female actress seems to be re-living her previous love interest with the German soldier through her new love affair with the man from Japan. Her old memories of the German soldier have surfaced because of her new relationship. The direction of the film is interesting because it leaves many gaps for the viewer to fill in. The relationship between the two characters is difficult to figure out because the woman seems to caught up in the past to live a normal life in the present. Hiroshima Mon Amour is structured fragmentarily, which creates this disarray of time between past and present.