LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Robert Bresson: Jean Cocteau
built 278 days ago
Un Condamné à mort s'est échappé (1956) and Procès are the two prison-films, and Bresson often uses prison as a metaphor for spiritual imprisonment or, indeed, release. A classic case of the latter is Pickpocket (1959), where Michel (Martin LaSalle) finds redemption from his criminal career only by intentionally being caught, and in the famous final scene by telling Jeanne (Marika Green) from his prison cell "what a strange road I had to take to find you".
Source:
For his next film, Pickpocket, which reportedly inspired parts of the Hollywood film American Gigolo, Bresson turned to a writer whose spiritual and existential concerns matched his own: Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. Pickpocket, loosely based on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, again touches on a theme of redemption in its story of a criminal tracked down and finally imprisoned. Once again, Bresson turned to classical music, this time that of Baroque composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, for his score. His next film would contain no music at all except for a drum roll at its climactic moment.
Source:
[T]he creation of art out of distilled reality, so essential to Bresson's vision, takes place not in the subject or content of the film, but in the structure of the narrative. Jean-Pierre Oudart discusses Bresson's modernist approach, where true meaning is not found in the subject of the film, but in the way that cinematic elements and formal structures are themselves used: "it is no longer for the character to SAY it, or for a subjective fiction to PRODUCE it, but for the literal image, as a cinematographic construct, to EXPRESS it" (Prédal, 78). Bresson avoids conventional narrative structure, preferring to replace it through a unique use of framing, editing, image, sound, and music. In his films, these formal elements come together as a highly stylized but expressive language through which he can highlight his central concerns.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Jean Cocteau