L'Argent (1983)
Directed by Robert Bresson

Film Review

It makes the world go around

'Greed is good.  Greed is right.  Greed works.'  Gordon Gekko's hyper-materialistic, morbidly avaricious philosophy may appear sickeningly infantile today but in the mid-to-late-1980s it was all too evidently the principle on which the world economy was being run.  Four years before Oliver Stone offered up his own virulent assault on the dash-for-cash culture of the age with Wall Street (1987) another prominent film director, Robert Bresson, had had his say on the corrupting influence of filthy lucre - although his message, delivered in the more economically challenging years of the early 1980s, seemed to have gone unheeded.  Bresson's final feature (a masterpiece for which he received the Best Director award at Cannes in 1983), L'Argent was conceived in the late 1970s but it proved to be highly prophetic of where the free world was heading under the stewardship of such enlightened souls as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the patron saints of free market liberalisation.  It is a film that remains devastatingly pertinent to this day, making an effective case for how money can warp and corrupt not only individuals but the whole of society, skewing morality and human values to the point where the only thing that matters is the mindless acquisition of personal wealth.

In Bresson's film, money acquires a satanic power that is revealed though the malignant influence it exerts over anyone who comes into contact with it - an unstoppable cancer that is slowly but surely eating away at the fabric of society as it passes from hand to hand, nourishing the greed instinct and atrophying the social conscience in everyone it touches.  The director's profound disillusionment with modern times was immediately apparent in the film he made directly before L'Argent - Le Diable probablement (1977).  In this earlier work (Bresson's most deeply pessimistic film), the well-thought-out suicide of one highly educated individual is set alongside the seeming collective death wish of humanity as a lethal combination of greed and stupidity send it hurtling towards extinction on a dying planet, the inevitable result of capitalist-led progress.  This film and L'Argent are so closely linked that they deserve to be considered together as an existentially themed diptych which has, at its core, a single question: do human beings really have free will and moral agency, or are we just dumb meat-bots governed entirely by outside forces over which we have no control?

It is effectively a restatement of the predestination question that split the Catholic church in the 16th century and has rippled down the ages ever since.  Bresson's Jansenist position (apparent in just about every film he made) is that individuals are not damned a prori, but that salvation is possible for those who choose to offer genuine contrition.  This seems to tally with a compatibilist view of free will, which argues that, whilst we may not have absolute freedom, we do have the capacity to make moral choices.  In both of these philosophies, redemption for individuals would appear to be possible, even in a clockwork universe in which our entire lives are rigidly predetermined.  This begs the question as to what exactly is ultimately pulling the levers in this grand cosmic machine.  In Le Diable probablement, the scale of humanity's woes leads one character to wryly comment that it's all the fault of the Devil.  In L'Argent, the prime mover in our planetary realm is evidently money, a human invention but one that has acquired such power over human behaviour that it has become a controlling entity in its own right, the rudder directing the ship of all human affairs (no doubt towards a whacking great iceberg).  Like love, gravity and the poetry of Leonard Cohen, money is a force of nature that cannot be resisted.

L'Argent - Bresson's thirteenth and arguably greatest feature - is based on the first-part of Leo Tolstoy's two-part novella The Forged Coupon.  It was the fifth of the director's films to have been inspired by classic Russian literature, the other four (Pickpocket (1959), Au hasard Balthazar (1966), Une femme douce (1969) and Quatre nuits d'un rêveur (1971)) deriving from works by Fyodor Dostoevsky.  This fact no doubt reflects Bresson's keen preoccupation with existentialism, redemption and transcendence - the defining aspects of his oeuvre - which were prominent in Russian novels of the mid-to-late 19th century (laying the groundwork for the French existentialist philosophers of the mid-20th century).  It is a curious thing that in L'Argent Bresson completely omits the second part of Tolstoy's novella, in which the protagonist seeks redemption for his crimes through religion.  Instead, his film ends with an abrupt, muted coda in which, after a brief moment of reflection, the central character Yvon Targe confesses his crimes to a police officer, without any trace of emotion.  Compared with what we find in the director's earlier films, this impulsive blink-and-you'll-miss-it act of redemption appears almost cursory.  And yet, coming after the most shocking passage of any Bresson film, it is extraordinarily effective.  It is the one moment of light in a film that is steeped in pitch darkness.

Less is more

By this late stage in his career, the 81-year-old Bresson had arrived at the absolute pinnacle of his art.  His near-pathological contempt for conventional cinema (which he always considered to be nothing more than 'filmed theatre', the most futile form of artistic expression) had compelled him to develop a unique cinematic style from which all trace of artifice and false sentiment was to be rigorously expunged.  It was not the job of a film to show emotion, Bresson would argue, but to arouse emotion within the spectator.  By remaining so closely wedded to the theatrical tradition, by placing so much emphasis on the performances of the actors, conventional cinema had, to his way of thinking, taken the wrong path and was not a veridical art form.  The maverick filmmaker who had by far the greatest impact on the Nouvelle Vague generation, Robert Bresson was arguably the first director of the sound era to successfully develop the kind of 'pure cinema' which the Avant Garde impressionists of the 1920s (Epstein, L'Herbier, Gance, etc) had striven to create in the silent era (but then failed to extend when synchronised sound came along).  Sound was as integral to Bresson's work as the photographed image, and his true genius lay not in writing the script or in shooting the film, but in piecing the film together in the editing suite to create a temporal mosaic of sound and image imbued with an extraordinary expressive power.

L'Argent is an austere minimalist masterwork, Robert Bresson's most perfectly crafted film - and the one that is most resonant with our times.  It may not be as accessible to the average cinemagoer as some of his earlier features (Les Dames du bois de Boulogne, Pickpocket, Un condamné à mort s'est échappé), which are closer to the conventional form that the director was increasingly motivated to dissociate himself with in his pursuit of authenticity, but it is nonetheless a compelling and totally rewarding example of the director's art.  Through its simplicity and directness it manages to exert an almost hypnotic power over the spectator, and this allows its author to achieve his objective, expressing his concerns over a present day malaise with an almost blinding lucidity.  Every shot is meticulously composed with the strictest economy to convey only what is required of it - and nothing more.  There are no redundant shots, and wherever possible chunks of the narrative are removed altogether, through Bresson's deft use of ellipsis.  Yvon's attempted suicide and his subsequent mass killing spree are alluded to but not shown explicitly and this adds to the impression that he is a victim of Fate, not a man who is responsible for his actions.  The best example of this is the sequence in which Yvon commits his first murders.  After he is seen entering a small hotel there is a jump cut to a shot showing him washing blood out of his hands.  Only later in the film are we given the gory details of what transpired in the interim, when Yvon relates his crime to another of his victims.        

Bresson's use of sound is particularly effective in this film and plays a crucial role in both telling the story and influencing the emotional response of the viewer.  Notice how incredibly carefully every sound is integrated with the images so that the two together form a coherent inter-meshing whole, each complementing the other rather than just repeating the same message.  (Unlike most filmmakers, Bresson never used sound merely to underscore the images for dramatic or emotional impact.)  The complete absence of non-diegetic music is in stark contrast to Bresson's earlier work, where it was employed for a specific reason (for example to mark a moment of transcendence which the image alone could not convey, most famously in Un condamné à mort s'est échappé).  The only sounds used in Bresson's later films are those that would be audible to the characters on screen.  A static shot of a closed cell door and the sound of a siren blaring over hurried footsteps is enough to suggest a prison break-out attempt.  The shrill cry of a policeman's whistle and a few bursts of gunfire adequately convey the drama of a bank raid.  The film's most dramatic use of sound comes near the end, when Yvon embarks on his mass homicide.  The incessant barking of a dog in the stillness of the night brings an unbearable tension and heightened sense of horror to the fairly innocuous images depicting the killer going from room to room in the house he has desecrated with his abominable crime.  This culminates in the most shocking moment in any Bresson film, with an axe suddenly knocking over a bedside lamp just as a thin line of blood splatters onto the wall behind.

As we watch the central character's seemingly inevitable descent into Hell, it is not revulsion we feel for him but a very real sense of pity.  A man who butchers eight people in cold blood (including a disabled child and an old woman who offered him charity) is not someone who is likely to arouse sympathy - particularly as Bresson forces us to see him from a distance through his directorial choices, avoiding facial close-ups and compelling his actors (or 'models' as he preferred to call them) never to show any exterior sign of emotions.  (It was typical for the director to get his actors to repeat their scenes dozens of times until every last trace of emotionality was driven out of the performance.)  When the camera moves in close, it is most often to draw attention to visual details such as hand movements or - specifically for this film - the progression of a forged bank note that brings chaos into the lives of everyone who touches it.  For much of the film, the actors' faces are kept out of view - their bodies are usually filmed from the back or shown from the shoulders or waist down, and when faces do make it onto the screen there is no sign of outward emotion.  Dialogue is sparse, matter-of-fact and spoken as flatly as possible.  Bresson does everything he can to prevent us from seeing into Yvon's soul and yet, just by watching his remorseless dissolution from ordinary family man to mass murderer, we feel sympathetically drawn to him.  It is through the thoughtless (and criminal) actions of others that Yvon loses his job, his family and his humanity, and the thing guiding all of these actions to their tragic confluence is that inescapable bane of our lives - money.
 
In the same vein as Marcel L'Herbier's identically titled silent film (based on a novel by Émile Zola), Bresson's L'Argent manages to drive home a powerful anti-capitalist message that reflects its author's own anxieties over the intrinsic power that money has to corrupt individuals and poison society.  Bresson's aversion for conventional cinema probably owed as much to his natural Christian antipathy for capitalism as it did to his peculiar aesthetic sense.  For most of his career, Bresson had struggled to obtain the financial wherewithal to make his films, especially in his later years (from the late 1960s) when his kind of cinema was thought to be of a particularly niche and eccentric variety.  And who in his right mind would invest in an artist who was so obviously unconcerned about making money?   For many years, Bresson had dreamed of making a film based on the Book of Genesis from the Bible, but the commercial realities of such an ambitious venture prevented this from ever seeing the light of day.  After L'Argent, the director's attempts to make another film all came to nothing.  It is hard to gauge how much of Bresson's distinctive minimalist style was the result of having to work with the modest budgets available to him, but there is no doubt that money - or rather the lack of it - played a significant part in the shaping of his art and his increasingly hardening attitude towards modern society.

Light in darkness

Unlike his contemporary Julien Duvivier, Robert Bresson was never overtly misanthropic or despairing in his assessment of human nature, but the apparent lack of conscience shown by most of the characters in L'Argent is an indication of just how disapproving he was of declining moral standards in his later years.  The character Lucien is a prime example of this.  He is the most repellent member of L'Argent's mostly repugnant dramatis personae, primarily because he is such an appalling hypocrite (and a perfect example of the unrepentant penitent).  It is Lucien's flair for effortless mendacity that sends an innocent man on his infernal course to ruin and monstrous transformation, and when he is caught defrauding his employer (by marking up prices to con customers) he takes his revenge by raiding his boss's safe.  'When I am rich I will be good,' he says glibly to his pals, and so having found a lucrative income stream by skimming ATMs, he plays the part of a modern Robin Hood, giving his ill-gotten gains away to deserving causes (which include his expensive tailor).

Unlike Yvon, the man he effectively destroys, Lucien appears to have no capacity for genuine contrition.  He kids himself that by doing random acts of kindness (such as returning the money he stole from his employer) he can make up for his nefarious lifestyle.  It is a sign of Yvon's potential for personal salvation that he can see through such a vile specimen of humanity, turning down an invitation to join him in a prison break-out which, inevitably, fails through Lucien's narcissistic over-confidence in his abilities.  Even though Yvon's crimes turn out to be of a far more morally repugnant nature than Lucien's, it is Yvon we have most sympathy for.  By establishing a close connection between these two almost physically identical characters (Lucien is admitted to prison in the very same shot that sees Yvon return after his suicide attempt), Bresson is able to set up a moral counterpoint that puts us firmly on the side of a mass murderer rather than a self-loving con artist.
 
Most of the other characters in L'Argent appear to have been cut from the same morally deficient cloth as Lucien.  The greedy schoolboy who agrees to palm a forged banknote off on an unsuspecting shop assistant, the despicably immoral shop owner who tries to pass the forged note onto Yvon in payment for fuel (and later coerces an employee into lying to the police to cover up this fact), the boy's prim, bourgeois parents who resort to bribery to avoid a scandal - grubby self-interest governs the behaviour of each of these characters to such a degree that they are totally blind to the effect their actions will have on others.  It takes just four people (two schoolboys, the shop owner and Lucien) to completely destroy Yvon's life and transform a law-abiding citizen into a homicidal maniac.  The only truly moral character in the film is the prematurely aged widow who, in spite of her own personal hardships, has enough generosity in her soul to offer food and shelter to a complete stranger when he shows up on her doorstep.  She continues supporting him even when he confesses to a double homicide, a crime he committed, he says, 'pour le plaisir' ('just for the fun of it').  The warmest moments in L'Argent are to be found in the brief pastoral interlude towards the film's end, in which a close emotional attachment is seen to develop between Yvon and the old woman as they hang up washing on a line in the garden whilst eating fruit tigether.  Here there is a faint echo of Georges Simenon's La Veuve Couderc, subliminally preparing us perhaps for the atrocity that aborts the faux idyll in the ghastliest way imaginable.

What could possibly induce Yvon to pick up an axe and hack to death not only the woman who showed him so much kindness, but also her entire family, including her elderly father and a disabled child?  The answer is in the film's title: money!  'Où est l'argent?' Yvon demands mechanically, just before he brings the blade down on the widow's head.  By this stage, the lust for lucre has corrupted his soul to the degree that even kindness cannot curb his acquisitive instincts.  (A few minutes earlier in the film, we saw him frantically scouring every inch of the house for his victim's hidden housekeeping money.)  Horrific as this act is, however, it is the means by which Yvon finally breaks the spell and is able to open up his soul to the possibility of redemption.  If he hadn't killed the widow, if he hadn't steeped himself in the blood of the innocent, it is doubtful that this sorry wretch would have had enough weight on his conscience to force him into waking up and taking responsibility for all that he has done.  Perhaps the most chilling idea that Bresson puts forward in L'Argent is that money has such inherent malevolence that it requires the protagonist to commit a sin of apocalyptic magnitude before he can free himself from its power.

The imprint of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is powerfully felt in the film's final scenes.  Yvon Targe may be an adept axe killer but he is no Raskolnikov, there is no misplaced moral superiority in his actions.  Like other Bresson protagonists - the cancer-stricken country priest in Journal d'un curé de campagne (1951), the long-suffering donkey in Au hasard Balthazar (1966), the condemned Joan of Arc in Proces de Jeanne d'Arc (1962) and the abused teen rebel in Mouchette (1966) - Yvon is the sacrificial victim of a cruel and unjust society.  But whereas Bresson's other heroic victims are all driven to submit to the brutality that is heaped on them, Yvon is hardened by it.  After his suicide attempt, he becomes desensitised to cruelty and ends up being just as monstrously brutal, although he does not lose his humanity entirely.  By committing the most abominable of crimes he is able to do what no other sinful character in the film is capable of doing (least of all Lucien) - which is to 'fess up' and take responsibility for his actions - even if this means incarceration for the rest of his life.

Yvon's moment of transcendence (a terse admission of guilt after a moment's reflection and a stiff drink) is of a very different kind to that of the hero of Un condamné à mort s'est échappé (whose incredibly hard-won freedom is both physical and spiritual), but it just as keenly felt.  L'Argent is often characterised as Bresson's most pessimistic and cynical film, but whilst it contains the most shocking images in his oeuvre and is unwaveringly condemnatory in its assessment of mankind's relationship with money, it does end on a hopeful note.  Even in a world as disgustingly heartless and selfish as that portrayed in this film there is still a sliver of comfort to be had from the fact that goodness hasn't yet been totally eradicated.  The ill-fated widow assures us that kindness is still possible, and, with Yvon's acceptance of guilt, redemption is shown to be something that anyone can achieve, if only he can find a way to resist the most baleful influence of our time - money.

Film Synopsis

Owing money to a school friend, Norbert appeals to his parents to give him a top-up on his monthly allowance.  When they refuse, he accepts a 500 franc counterfeit banknote from one of his classmates, using this to buy a picture frame in a photographer's shop.  Realising the deception, the shop's owner palms the fake money off on an unsuspecting fuel delivery man, Yvon Targe, along with two other forged notes.  Unaware that he has been duped, Yvon tries to pay for his meal in a restaurant with the counterfeit money, which is recognised as such by an alert waiter.  The young man is duly arrested and his account of where he acquired the forged notes is dismissed as lies on evidence given by Lucien, an assistant in the photographer's shop.  Yvon avoids going to prison but he loses his job.  With a wife and toddler to support, he has no choice but to act as a getaway car driver for some bank robbers.  The robbery is thwarted by the timely arrival of the police and Yvon is soon back in court.  This time, he receives a three-year prison sentence.

During his period of incarceration, Yvon makes an unsuccessful attempt at suicide after he hears that his young daughter has died during an emergency operation and his wife has chosen to start a new life without him.  Meanwhile, Lucien, the man responsible for Yvon's present predicament, has also embarked on a life of crime after his employer dismissed him for defrauding his customers by secretly marking up the products on sale.  ATM skimming provides him with a lucrative income, a portion of which he gives away as a charitable gesture.  It isn't long before the law catches up with Lucien and he ends up being sent to the same prison where Yvon is serving his term.  Apparently regretting the harm he has done to Yvon, Lucien offers him a chance to join him in an attempted break-out.  Yvon refuses and Lucien's bid for freedom ends in failure.  Released from prison, Yvon stays in a small hotel, whose owners he murders in cold blood so that he can steal their money.

Not long afterwards, Yvon notices an old woman go into a bank to withdraw some cash.  He follows her to her home in the leafy suburbs, his intention clearly being to rob her.  The woman, a widow, spends her days toiling as an unpaid skivvy for her two sisters and brother-in-law, whilst looking after her abusive alcoholic father and a severely disabled infant.  Taking pity on Yvon, the widow offers him food and a place to stay in an outhouse.  The young man repays her kindness by searching every inch of the house for money when she goes back into town.  Finding nothing, Yvon stays on and helps the old woman with her daily chores.  Late one night, he takes an axe and breaks into his benefactor's house, before murdering everyone inside.  Back in town, Yvon enters a café and, after a moment's reflection, he goes over to a policeman and confesses to killing the hotel owners and an entire family.  He is taken away in handcuffs as onlookers watch in stupefaction.