“L’argent” (1983)
His final picture, made at the age of 82 (he lived on for another decade and a half, passing away at the age of 98 in 1999), “L’argent” is one of Bresson’s most disheartening and darkest films. But to simply describe it as cynical or a moral censure is to miss the filmmaker’s coolly objective distance (and its caustic sense of irony). Earning its maker the Director’s Prize at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival, “L’argent,” is loosely inspired by “The Forged Coupon,” a short story by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, and illustrates how greed sets off a chain of events that affects the lives of dozens. A counterfeit 500 franc note is used by a pair of callow and well-to-do middle school students at a photography and camera store, but instead of tracking down their parents, the unscrupulous photo manager vows to pass off the note himself. Yvon, an honest, unsuspecting gas man (Christian Patey) pays the price when he comes in with a bill, is duped, and then is later arrested for trying to buy dinner at a restaurant with this phony note. While he is spared jail time at the trial, the desperation of losing his job and means of supporting his family eventually leads this victim to become the getaway driver in a friend’s attempted (and foiled) bank robbery. During his three-year prison sentence, Yvon learns that his young daughter has died and his wife is now leaving him. And it only gets bleaker and more heartbreaking once Yvon is released from prison. While its mordant take on class, social injustice, and arguably the evils of money can be viewed through a Marxist lens, as Vincent Canby wrote in 1983, its outlook is actually “far too poetic – too interested in the mysteries of the spirit.” Ultimately, “L’argent” is one of Bresson’s late-career astringent, cruel jokes; deeply depressing and haunting, it’s an unsentimental and dissociated look at amorality, and how its effects trickle downward. [A-]
The Lost Film: All but missing from the Bresson oeuvre is “Les Affaires Publiques,” a 1934 comedy short whose only surviving print is evidently slightly abridged (missing what is said to be one or two musical numbers). Unfortunately, this has been absent from most or all Bresson retrospectives.
Not convinced of Bresson’s mysterious power? “I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman,” the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky once said. While “Robert Bresson is French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is the German music,” opined Jean-Luc Godard. And it should be noted: so enamored was the “Breathless” filmmaker with “Au Hasard Balthazar,” he would go on to cast its unknown star Anne Wiazemsky in his own films thereafter (starting with 1967’s “La Chinoise“) and married her the same year. – with Julian Carrington, Samantha Chater & Chris Bell
An update: Criterion has released “A Man Escaped” on Blu-Ray/DVD (finally a terrific version) and have delivered their video “Three Reasons: A Man Escaped” and the video essay “David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson Listen to A Man Escaped.” Watch below.
