Martin LaSalle

In Pickpocket (1959), Martin LaSalle gives Michel little of the charm that can make a screen thief comfortable company. We watch him work without being encouraged to mistake skill for decency. It is a performance we recommend for precisely that lack of reassurance. LaSalle takes Michel's compulsion seriously and does not soften it for our benefit. Robert Bresson's patient attention to stealing gives this reserved performance its grip.

Bresson cast LaSalle as a non-professional, drawn to an unmannered presence and expressive eyes and hands. We felt slightly embarrassed by our fascination with the thefts in Pickpocket, because the patient scrutiny made an ugly habit so absorbing. The reserve is effective until it starts to make the people around Michel seem less important than the next theft. There are stretches when we want more feeling from LaSalle, especially once the physical detail has made us watch so closely. That is a substantial reservation about an otherwise compelling performance.

The later career is a useful correction to the idea of LaSalle as simply Bresson's discovery. He worked extensively in Mexican cinema, often in supporting parts, while also appearing in international productions. He played Brother Felipe in Juan López Moctezuma's horror film Alucarda (1977), and the consular official Paris in Costa-Gavras's Missing (1982). Under Fire (1983) cast him as Commandante Cinco, another part involving authority. Officials, commanders and religious figures gave that later work a recurring shape across otherwise different kinds of film.

His reputation nevertheless rests chiefly on Pickpocket, rather than on the long career that followed. The later credits should discourage us from treating him as a non-professional who merely passed through cinema. What Bresson found in him was worth looking at: a man whose behaviour could absorb us without the usual encouragement to like him. Start with Pickpocket, and allow it the close attention LaSalle's reserve requires.