There is not at first a character who is qualified and modified by certain actions and situations. There is initially a conception of an act informing a figure who remains absent from the speculative event. (If the Bressonian figure has a function, it is first to reserve a bit of an idea, a viewpoint, a moral: No classic symbol or allegory, it says less than what it deals with.)

What is theft? A problem of gestural techniques, the attack of a body. How does one establish a relationship with someone without being noticed? How does one divert the other person while simultaneously stealing?

In Pickpocket, the cuts assure the act. We see the full gesture; the description is analytic. At the same time, it is necessary to reconstitute the instantaneous character of this decomposition, reconstruct the absence of weight, restitute the invisible nature to the movement used. Morally scandalous, technically admirable, the act is actualized only to be reduced to the register of the imperceptible.

Thus, theft represents the secret, desperate dimension of human gestures. It reveals their structure: strange brushing of one body against another— in reality, this is only separation. It never overcomes the margin separating the shot from the reverse shot and remains senseless so long as one does not submerge it in indifference.

When he extracts a wallet from an inside pocket, it is almost as if the pickpocket were tearing out our hearts: He diverts us from the world as we would like it to be.