Pickpocket, 1959

   I just watched Pickpocket (1959) from R0bert Bresson.

 The scenic presence of the actors confused me at first, but it was slowly putting me in an odd comfortable place, paradoxically making me more empathetic with the main actor. Their cold acting made me see more of the very real humanity of the persons that played the different roles, by the focus on their almost relaxed faces and demeanor. It is a very different feeling from movies that tries a bit too much to emote something in particular in the spectator.

 The few sounds and the monotony of the dialogues (in a soothing 50’s french parler) gently allows you to take notice of the clarity of the different shots, in a curious distancing that made me more active as a spectator for some reason (or was it because I knew I wanted to write about it later?). The silent master who taught the main character the art of pickpocketing had a unique kind of charisma. He seems absent and focus at the same time, melancholic almost. The drawing I did represents him. Michel, the apprentice, is like a softer Raskolnikov from Crime & Punishment. The pickpocket train scene was really good.

 I think the narrative and visual structure of the movie plus its focus on the written words was derived from the sensitivity of a grammarian (a very french sensibility). In my opinion, there is a lot of manufactured malaise that makes this movie more moving, like spelling mistakez made by someone who is known to be meticulous...

Mr Abdelmaǧīd al-Qaṣʿaǧī / Henri Kassagi

A River Side Street (1872) by Gustave Doré

   One day when I was doing research I stumbled upon a pfd named London: A Pilgrimage (1872) written by Blanchard Jerrold and illustrated by Gustave Doré.

 While browsing the book I was listening to Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994), which was my very first hearing of the album. And, ow L0rdZ was it a perfect, grimy match straight from infern0... It gave me a synesthetic experience by Aphex Twin's powerful sonico cinematic imagery combined with the highly skilled compositional and almost sonorous (and sometime odorous) clair-obscur drawingZ of Doré. I didn't read much - the lack of context helps to imagine a new one - and was just going through the engravingZ of Doré which depicts (among other thingZ like horse racing, bourgeoisie's parties, parks & gardens, churches, etc.), the hardcore state of the then biggest city in the world, with its huge gap between social classes. And NighTmarish it was.

 Of course, it's like this mythical London version of an artist who took some great liberties by erasing or increasing here and there. And he was probably living a very luxurious parisian lifestyle that made him completely alien to certain Great Britain's realities (but isn't it a strenghth as an artist ?). Well, you know, is it a h0llow statement to say that life can be so much stranger than fiction? Doré probably barely even scratched the rusty surface of this decayed world a lot of people inhabited. Yet the haunting, foggy beauty of his Dantesque Londres emits a powerful evocation that, like dreamc0re, somehow puts a better image on our feelings of humans who lives, dreams, eats and dies in this sometime very disturbing reality we experience on the artificial ground of our industrialized lands. As history "goes forward", our past becomes blurrier. Who better then than a storyteller to remind us that our life will only become an enigmatic tale?

LinkZ :

♳ Selected Ambient Works Volume II
 Youtube link

♴ London: A Pilgrimage
 Gallica link, free version

♵ London: A Pilgrimage
 Internet Archive : the version I read. Much gl00mier because of the website's dark layout, this edition is more raw therefore more direct. Also free but you'll have to create an account (fast & easy) and "borrow the b00k for 1 hour". There's also a Chrome plugin that allows you to download the pdf with your Internet Archive account once you borrowed the b00k.

The Town of Malt and Hops (1872) by Gustave Doré

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (1997) by Lorne Lanning