[1] It combines elements of Crime and Punishment's Rodion Raskolnikov (who questions whether moral rules should apply to superior men) with a street-crime plot inspired by Samuel Fuller's film Pickup on South Street (1953).

Although Jacques and Jeanne ask him to visit his mother, who is very ill, Michel pursues the man, a pickpocket proposing a profitable partnership.

"[4] In addition, at one point in the film, Jacques reads and asks to borrow Michel's copy of Richard S. Lambert's The Prince of Pickpockets: A Study of George Barrington.

"[5] The resulting disorder proved to be a challenge during shooting, but was sometimes used to the crew's advantage, as in the Gare de Lyon pickpocketing sequence.

[6] The French-Tunisian pickpocket Henri Kassagi acted as technical advisor on the film, as well as appearing as instructor and accomplice to the main character.

[7] After Pickpocket, Kassagi's face and techniques were too well known for him to continue with his old trade, and he changed career to become a successful stage magician.

The website's consensus reads: "Narratively spare and told with clockwork precision, Pickpocket is a carefully observed character study that packs an emotional wallop.

"[9] Pickpocket was entered into competition for the Golden Bear at the 10th Berlin International Film Festival, where it lost to El Lazarillo de Tormes.

[11] Various filmmakers have voted for Pickpocket in the Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films of all time, including Paul Schrader, Theo Angelopoulos, Bertrand Bonello, and László Nemes.

[16] Christa Lang and Richard Linklater listed the film in their ten top picks from The Criterion Collection.

[17][18][19] In addition, the French streaming website La Cinetek lists Martin Scorsese, Chantal Akerman, Agnès Varda, Todd Haynes, and Agnieszka Holland as fans of the film, among others.

[21] In addition, Schrader's screenplay for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) bears many similarities, including confessional narration and a voyeuristic look at society.

Schrader was inspired by Bresson's use of "an occupational metaphor" to highlight "a personal problem which is also reflective of a social malaise," noting that in Taxi Driver, the motif of a taxicab allowed him to show Travis Bickle as "a kid locked in a yellow coffin, floating through the open sewers of the city, who seems in the middle of a crowd to be absolutely alone.

Roger Ebert wrote: "Bresson's Michel, like Dostoyevsky's hero Raskolnikov, needs money in order to realize his dreams, and sees no reason why some lackluster ordinary person should not be forced to supply it.

"[27] Gary Indiana added that like Crime and Punishment, "A man commits forbidden acts, gets caught, and goes to prison, where his suffering is ameliorated by the steadfast love of a good woman.

"[28] Likewise, Cosmo Bjorkenheim writes that Michel's "half-baked Nietzschean-Raskolnikovian theory about an elite of geniuses sounds like something loosely quoted from Rope rather than something deeply felt.

"[22] Peter Labuza writes that "when watching Pickpocket, it is easy to ascribe many things onto the film — the possible Freudian and homosexual tendencies, the heavy Catholic guilt, and Bresson’s critiques of French society.

Pickpocket has been called an example of "parametric narration",[31] in which the style "dominates the syuzhet [plot] or is seemingly equal in importance to it".

"[33] Ebert likened Michel's encounter with the mentor pickpocket to cruising, saying that their confrontation in a men's bathroom is "no coincidence."

"[28] However, Armond White cautions that an over-focus on gay subtext may distract from the primary thread of the film, which is a deeply Catholic moral parable.