L’Argent (1983) - film review

When he fails to get money from his parents, schoolboy Norbert agrees to use counterfeit notes provided by a classmate.  He passes the forged money onto a photographic shop owner, who, later realising they are forged, palms them off on an unsuspecting fuel delivery man, Yvon.  The latter is arrested when he unwittingly tries to pass the fake money on to a restaurateur.  Yvon tries to clear his name, but the man who gave him the forged note, a shop assistant in a photographer’s shop, denies having met Yvon before.  In prison, Yvon’s world changes for the worse, when he loses first his child, then his wife.  When he leaves prison, he appears to have lost his soul or any reason for living...

L’argent is Robert Bresson’s final film and the summit of a career as a film director spanning 40 years.  If not his best film, it is quite possibly his most intense and thought-provoking.  It addresses themes which frequently recur in Bresson’s earlier works, such as the irresistible corrupting nature of evil, the power of an individual to shape another person’s destiny, and the thorny, hazardous path to redemption.

What sets this film apart from its contemporaries is Bresson’s minimalist style.  Rather than film dramatic events, he presents the aftermath, the echo, or the reflection of such events.  Far from distancing the viewer from the drama, this approach actually serves to engage him or her more fully in what is happening.  As a result, the film is compelling from the first scene and each tragic development has a genuinely shocking impact.

The film’s dramatic ending – when the central character goes on a killer rampage -  is so horrific, so disturbing, because Bresson shows us the absolute minimum: the rest is left to our imagination.  It is a brilliantly effective device and one which, sadly, is rarely emulated by other directors who prefer to rely on depictions of graphic violence to create an impression.

Bresson certainly deserved his Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival that year for this stunningly effective and remarkable piece of cinema.

© James Travers 2001


The disturbing last film by Robert Bresson, L’Argent is a masterpiece.  The circulation of counterfeit money is a metaphor for false relations between human beings that begins with juvenile delinquency and ends with serial butchery.  The inflexibility of Yvon, the hero, before the injustice that falls on him, transforms his life and that of his family into a tragedy. The sound of vehicles passing by, the noise of people walking, doors closing, water running, bank notes rustling, alarms sounding, glasses breaking, seem to impose their obscure language over the minimal dialogue. They precede and close scenes. The use of synecdoche (the part for the whole), usual in Bresson?s films is predominant here.  For instance, we first know Yvon by the gloves and uniform of his job, we see his face afterwards.  The use of metonymy (the sign for the thing) is also abundant and crucial: we know the crime by the blood in the wash basin, or the attempt of suicide by the pills on a paper.  We must discover meaning or truth in objects that are presented as incognito sphinxes, which indirectly distil messages. Bresson said more than once that to really see we must not see things or treat them like mere decoration but as the principal actors, to look at them as if never seen before. The photography by Pasqualino De Santis  and  Emmanuel Machuel neatly marks the limits between the objects and often the clearness of the images makes a stark contrast with the gloominess of the action.  Near the end, the hero uselessly asks where the money is, as if he could finally receive the just payment for his work. For him, there is no answer, no compensation and no redemption, and for us, the spectators, no catharsis.

© Adam Gai (Israel) 2012

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