Director: Robert Bresson
Writers: Leo Tolstoy, Robert Bresson
Photography: Pasqualino De Santis, Emmanuel Machuel
Music: J.S. Bach
Editor: Jean-Francois Naudon
Cast: Christian Patey, Sylvia Van den Elsen, Michel Briguet, Caroline Lang
Director and screenwriter Robert Bresson adapted a long tale by Leo Tolstoy as the basis for his last picture (translated as “The Counterfeit Bills” or “The Forged Coupon”). The result, L’Argent, is perhaps less about the evils of money (“l’argent” in French) and more a kind of practical thought experiment in the chaos theory butterfly effect, which holds that a butterfly flapping its wings can lead by circumstances to events as devastating as tornados, or as wonderful as an unexpected windfall. Anything might happen when it comes to cause and effect. It’s hard to say why the title was not translated for English-speaking countries. In Spain and Mexico, for example, it was released as El dinero. Perhaps calling it “Money” would imply too much about the intended evils thereof? But then what are people supposed to think anywhere else?
This story starts with adolescents in need of spending money who forge counterfeit bills and pass them to a camera shop. The camera shop manager, realizing later that he has been bilked, decides to pass the bills himself and does so the next day, paying a delivery driver, Yvon (Christian Patey), who accepts them without question. It’s the beginning of the end for Yvon. His superiors catch the counterfeits, but Yvon’s story does not hold up when the camera shop staff denies even knowing him. This seems a little unlikely given the way these things are tracked, with invoices and receipts and such, but maybe it was different in 1983 in France. Yvon goes to trial for the crime. He’s convicted and given three years, and then things only get worse. His child dies while he’s in prison and his wife leaves him for a new life. He keeps getting in trouble and fights with other inmates. His imprisonment is extended. He’s all the way into a terrible downward spiral.
Director and screenwriter Robert Bresson adapted a long tale by Leo Tolstoy as the basis for his last picture (translated as “The Counterfeit Bills” or “The Forged Coupon”). The result, L’Argent, is perhaps less about the evils of money (“l’argent” in French) and more a kind of practical thought experiment in the chaos theory butterfly effect, which holds that a butterfly flapping its wings can lead by circumstances to events as devastating as tornados, or as wonderful as an unexpected windfall. Anything might happen when it comes to cause and effect. It’s hard to say why the title was not translated for English-speaking countries. In Spain and Mexico, for example, it was released as El dinero. Perhaps calling it “Money” would imply too much about the intended evils thereof? But then what are people supposed to think anywhere else?
This story starts with adolescents in need of spending money who forge counterfeit bills and pass them to a camera shop. The camera shop manager, realizing later that he has been bilked, decides to pass the bills himself and does so the next day, paying a delivery driver, Yvon (Christian Patey), who accepts them without question. It’s the beginning of the end for Yvon. His superiors catch the counterfeits, but Yvon’s story does not hold up when the camera shop staff denies even knowing him. This seems a little unlikely given the way these things are tracked, with invoices and receipts and such, but maybe it was different in 1983 in France. Yvon goes to trial for the crime. He’s convicted and given three years, and then things only get worse. His child dies while he’s in prison and his wife leaves him for a new life. He keeps getting in trouble and fights with other inmates. His imprisonment is extended. He’s all the way into a terrible downward spiral.
While it’s true that money and/or the love of it is responsible in many ways for the course of Yvon’s life, it’s also a little simplistic. It’s well known that money tends to bring the worst out in people. Yvon has no particular character flaws before his troubles. He’s married with a kid and holding down a job. It’s others around him who have the problems—the kids passing the bills for a lark (the father of one won’t raise his allowance, also a factor), the camera shop staff who pass the bills and later deny it. One of them, Lucien (Vincent Risterucci), is also stealing from the shop. Later he’s found out and fired, returns to vandalize and rob the shop, and ends up in prison with Yvon. Lucien feels he owes Yvon a debt and offers to let him join on a breakout attempt. Yvon refuses, with contempt.
Nevertheless, it is Yvon who continues to have the worst luck. He skids deep down the worsening spiral, growing into a hardened criminal after he is finally released from prison. Plot developments especially in the last third are hard to follow, partly because they are hard to believe. L’Argent goes way afield of its starting point with Tolstoy and kids passing counterfeit bills as it follows Yvon’s return to civilian life and his strange involvement with an older woman in a relationship that is unclear, perhaps even intended as inscrutable. Then he starts robbing and killing people.
But it’s Bresson’s world, as usual in his pictures, we’re just there to watch events unfold. Prison scenes and imprisonment generally are often part of his pictures, representing, I guess, the imprisonment of the soul in this life. Most of the players are amateurs—Bresson thought they brought more authenticity. I must admit it’s a little hard to get used to seeing him work in color, but the strange rhythms of his editing remain evident. He often holds longer on the ends of scenes than we expect before cutting away, or his camera arrives at a scene long before the actors. Just when we start wondering what we’re looking at, the players walk through. He leaves us continually just a little off balance.
I know people love Bresson’s stuff, but beyond Balthazar, his donkey movie, and certain parts of Pickpocket (namely, the parts about pickpocketing), I’ve never been entirely sold on him. More often he seems to me like a good idea, the cinema of spiritual agony let’s say, that doesn’t translate all the way into the movies. It’s not so much the slow pace and contemplative air, austere or even arid, that put me off—I’m used to that and often like it in these art film classics. But too often Bresson’s stuff just doesn’t seem as profound to me as it seems to think it is. You have to give his pictures a lot of rope, a lot of credibility, and they can still feel like make-believe pretend. But filmmakers and critics I respect, such as Paul Schrader, idolize him, so there you go. I’d say approach L’Argent with caution. If you haven’t seen anything by Bresson start with Pickpocket or Balthazar.
Nevertheless, it is Yvon who continues to have the worst luck. He skids deep down the worsening spiral, growing into a hardened criminal after he is finally released from prison. Plot developments especially in the last third are hard to follow, partly because they are hard to believe. L’Argent goes way afield of its starting point with Tolstoy and kids passing counterfeit bills as it follows Yvon’s return to civilian life and his strange involvement with an older woman in a relationship that is unclear, perhaps even intended as inscrutable. Then he starts robbing and killing people.
But it’s Bresson’s world, as usual in his pictures, we’re just there to watch events unfold. Prison scenes and imprisonment generally are often part of his pictures, representing, I guess, the imprisonment of the soul in this life. Most of the players are amateurs—Bresson thought they brought more authenticity. I must admit it’s a little hard to get used to seeing him work in color, but the strange rhythms of his editing remain evident. He often holds longer on the ends of scenes than we expect before cutting away, or his camera arrives at a scene long before the actors. Just when we start wondering what we’re looking at, the players walk through. He leaves us continually just a little off balance.
I know people love Bresson’s stuff, but beyond Balthazar, his donkey movie, and certain parts of Pickpocket (namely, the parts about pickpocketing), I’ve never been entirely sold on him. More often he seems to me like a good idea, the cinema of spiritual agony let’s say, that doesn’t translate all the way into the movies. It’s not so much the slow pace and contemplative air, austere or even arid, that put me off—I’m used to that and often like it in these art film classics. But too often Bresson’s stuff just doesn’t seem as profound to me as it seems to think it is. You have to give his pictures a lot of rope, a lot of credibility, and they can still feel like make-believe pretend. But filmmakers and critics I respect, such as Paul Schrader, idolize him, so there you go. I’d say approach L’Argent with caution. If you haven’t seen anything by Bresson start with Pickpocket or Balthazar.
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