L’Argent des autres (1978) - film review

Henri Rainier has everything a man could want.  A glamorous wife, two beautiful daughters and a well-paid job with a large bank.  Then, one day, his entire world collapses.  In the wake of a high-profile financial scandal, he is summoned into his director’s office and accused of negligence.  Rainier has no choice but to resign, but he soon realises that he has been made a scapegoat.  He begins his own investigation in an attempt to clear his name and discover who is responsible for the enormous hole in the bank’s finances.  It soon becomes apparent that he is up against a very powerful and dangerous opponent...

What goes around, comes around.   At the time L’Argent des autres was made, in the late 1970s, France was reeling from a series of financial and political scandals that would have a lasting impact.  The film itself was based on a novel that was inspired by one of the most infamous fraud cases of the 1960s, the Patrimoine Foncier affair.  Three decades on, the film has a chilling resonance, inviting stark comparisons with the kind of world we now find ourselves in – one where banks and governments are desperately colluding to prop up a capitalist system which, through excessive greed, arrogance and sheer folly, the banks came spectacularly close to destroying.  

L’Argent des autres begins in the manner of a Kafkaesque nightmare in which an ordinary man named Rainier (played superbly by Jean-Louis Trintignant) goes for a job interview and finds himself on trial for undisclosed failures in his previous post.  This sets the tone for the film brilliantly, showing exactly what forces our hero is up against.  Having lost his job, Rainier is deprived of money and status and becomes a non-person.  He has no hope of defeating those who brought him down, the greed merchants who are safely ensconced within the bastions of a corporate monolith.  The film’s bleak portrayal of the power that money confers on those who have it is enough to chill the blood of any spectator.  This is the true face of capitalism – ugly and brutal, the bitterly acidic distillation of all human vice.

The film clearly deserved to be better known that it is, not just because of its relevance to contemporary society but because it is exceptionally well made and highly original.  It was directed by Christian de Chalonge, a man renowned for his distinctive psychological dramas, and features an impressive cast which, in addition to the aforementioned Trintignant, includes such stars as Catherine Deneuve, Michel Serrault and Claude Brasseur.  It won the coveted Prix Louis Delluc in 1978 and Césars in the best film and best director categories in 1979.  Although the film has a blackly comedic edge to it, it is a profoundly disturbing piece – all the more so now that its proximity to our present reality is so apparent.

© James Travers 2009

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