L'Argent with english subtitles

Robert Bresson's 1983 film L'Argent was his final feature film, and it represents one of the most sobering and uncompromising takes on 'modern society' ever to have reached the cinema screen. The film won the Best Director prize for Bresson at the 1983 Cannes film festival. The film's narrative is actually based on a Tolstoy novel, The Forged Coupon, written in 1911. The story follows innocent delivery man Yvon (Christian Patey) who becomes ensnared in a tragic and downward spiral of events, whose origins are triggered by a chance event, the passing on (unbeknown to him) by Yvon of a forged banknote, and its subsequent discovery by the police.In L'Argent, Bresson uses his by now trademark style of minimalist cinema (static camera shots, long takes held on the camera's subject, sparse dialogue, no music, camera close-ups on legs, midriffs, closed doors, feet on accelerators, etc) to tell a devastating tale of guilt, deception, hypocrisy, denial and, at least partial, redemption. As became Bresson's trademark, he again employs a cast of first-time actors to great effect, and particular praise should go to Christian Patey (playing Yvon) and Vincent Risterucci playing Lucien, the photoshop worker whose deception is the cause of the problems that eventually beset Yvon. My other observation on the male cast Bresson has assembled is the remarkable physical similarity between them - it is almost as if Bresson is depicting a modern human race of androids, all motivated by common ambition (of which the key one here is money).The first two-thirds of the film use the typical Bressonian approach (rather like his earlier masterpiece Pickpocket) of devising an intricate plot, whereby the principal object of the narrative (here, the forged banknote) is passed between numerous characters, some crucial to the storyline, others not. It is from this sequence of events that Bresson then homes in on the key characters, Yvon and Lucien, around which the core of the film is based. The final third of the film, charting the period after Yvon has been released from prison, began, for me, to rather meander, until Bresson brings all the narrative strands and themes together for the film's devastating finale.I think this film can be regarded as something of a retelling of Pickpocket, updated for an even more cynical modern world, and, whilst it is not, for me, on a par with the earlier film, it still provides a fitting finale to the career of one of the most original auteurs to have ever worked in cinema.The DVD also contains two very interesting interviews with Bresson (albeit with some overlap between the two). He talks mainly about his love of spontaneity in filmmaking, after having had a brief go at Jean Renoir(!), and before praising a James Bond film!

It is indeed rare that such wooden acting can be excusable. In the case of L'Argent it is, because somehow, and don't ask me how, the film gets by without emotional performances. Indeed, it would be an entirely different film if the actors were any good. As it is they go through the motions in such an expressionless way, that I am convinced Bresson wanted it that way. Bad actors usually over act not under act. These are simply pawns in a game, moved from scene to scene by the director's invisible hand. It is a touch of genius if you ask me, because as the audience I found myself having to emote for the actors, to take their place so to speak. In Bresson's inimitable style, where each shot seems to take on a moral weight which is passed on to the next shot and the next and the next, and where it is clear he is not aiming for realism but more for a kind of sparse imitation of what is going on (see the scene in the cafe where Yvon pushes the waiter), the wooden acting works.I don't discount the possibility that Bresson simply couldn't get good acting performances out of his cast this time around. But even if that is the case, the film works. And how! It created in me a sensation I compare to that of being in the presence of a frigid and ungiving lover who is so beautiful, her presence alone is enough to sustain the relationship.

Some consider this to a classic by the famous Robert Bresson, who specialised in minimalist films, but I found it to be too slow-moving and a bit boring. A delivery driver (Christian Patey) gets possession (unwittingly) of a forged banknote. Arrested for this, he is cleared by the court but loses his job.He then (unconvincingly for me) descends into a spiral of theft, imprisonment and finally murder. But his motivations are never fully explained and indeed he says very little throughout the film.

Bresson is the pinnacle of French Cinema, a great master who devised a new cinematic language, a world away from the 19th century filmed theatre that, despite modern bells and whistles, still dominates film.He is essentially a Catholic tragedien, strongly influenced by Dostoevsky.L'Argent, adapted from a Tolstoy short story, is a fable, with the logical purity of a theorem, about the root of evil.For those who believe the acting to be wooden, Bresson dealt with this in a brief trailer seen in a cinema in Une Femme Douce, that humerosly reveals the hysterical melodrama of most films.For those who believe that Bresson never moves the camera, in fact his camera is almost constantly in motion, but so subtly allied to the characters movements that it appears invisible. Scorsese, for example and in comparison, draws attention to movement and is crude in comparison.