L'Argent (1983)

So, let me get this straight.

I'm supposed to accept this film's technical failings as "art" sheerly because they are intentionally committed in the service of objectivity? Right.

That's not art. It's an experiment and a bad one at that.

I guess if you like manipulative, facile films, lap this one up. I dislike this genre of film whether the director is Bresson, Haneke, or Schlondorf.

This makes Lars Von Trier's worst films seem opaque by comparison. It's films like this that make mass audiences shy away from any film that can be construed as an "art" film. And the fact that critics swoon over it only makes the case more damnable.

Fmovies: This film expresses perfectly the affliction humanity suffers from because of it's devotion to money. It communicates at a level which is rather far beyond words and simple rhetoric, and which is easily understandable if you take the time to watch it carefully and with an open mind. It's the sort of film one should watch several times throughout life.

I just wanted to make a quick comment regarding the comment of suekendall about l'argent. L'argent is one of Bresson's biggest masterpieces. A merge of minimalism and strong observation. And as for the actors in l'argent, they are not wooden, they are real. Bresson made frequent use of non-performers to give his film a certain authenticity. I think he succeeded in every aspect. It is a ground breaking film which taught the viewer that it does require very little to create a story. Bresson works demands the viewer's imagination. Moreover, for everyone who has a keen interest in cinematography, this film is a must. Bresson truly succeeded in making the most economic and sensible use of the camera.

For everyone who does not like the film, there will be other films to enjoy...but for everyone who is willing to enter Bresson's world, this film is a true eye opener about film, art and humanity.

L'Argent fmovies. I first saw L'Argent in 1983 during its original theatrical release. The ad campaign at the time proudly boasted, "The only film to receive Four Stars from all three of Chicago's major movie critics!" which at the time included Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert, and Dave Kerr. With eager anticipation I trooped down to Chicago's Fine Arts theater, and there I and a full house of other viewers endured this horrible film. As the house lights went up, we slumped out of the theater in misery, our souls left barren and hollow by what is easily the worst 'serious' film ever made.

For 25 years I've regaled my friends with tales of this movie's awfulness. However, a person's outlook, insights, and perceptions can change over the course of a quarter of a century, so I was willing to give it a second screening. Sadly, I must report that L'Argent is as ghastly as ever. The arc of the film's story remains as completely pointless, arbitrary, and capricious as it was 25 years ago. To say the acting is wooden, as others have done, is an understatement. By the end of his career, Bresson was using amateur performers exclusively. I've heard that he would go through dozens of takes on each scene to "de-emotionalize" the content. Well, he could have saved everyone a lot of trouble if he had just administered Qaaludes to his little troupe at the beginning of each day's shooting. Better yet, shooting life-size photo cut-outs of the characters with a voice-over dialog track would have provided a more perfect realization of his vision.

L'Argent is essentially a blank canvas upon which viewers are required to paint whatever sort of meaning they can. If you are already a Bresson fan, I'm sure you will be thrilled by this film. On the other hand, I think Bresson is a charlatan, the emperor with no clothes, and that this movie is a barren desert.

On the DVD for the film L'Argent, it's writer/director Robert Bresson says that he dislikes his films being called "works", because he sees each films as being a sort of "striving" or attempt towards something more and more perfect with cinematography and so on, and most specifically to strive towards truth with what's up on the screen. It's an interesting position to see from the film's own creator, because the truth as presented in L'Argent is that really of repression. It's not just the characters, or particularly the actors portraying them, or the deliberate flow of shots in a scene of violence or physical altercation or something that should be run of the mill in a crime movie. It's the society itself, and even in the subtler ways the mechanics of society, of money as well, drive along people, especially when they do wrong. Like other Bresson pictures, L'Argent is interested in man's conscience and what it is to go over the line of what makes one guilty or not based on the cruel fates of such a society, only this time even more restrained and- as the word gets thrown around so often- detached.

But I would be a little hesitant to label it outright as detached. Bresson's definitely no Scorsese, let's make that clear, and one's not going to get a camera movement that jolts you in your seat. On the other hand there's a level of low-key engrossment in the material. It's not very easy to get through, to be certain, as Bresson is all about both subtleties and hitting you over the head with the message, although not seemingly so much with the latter. His story comes from a Tolstoy short, and it seems fitting for a man who's masterpiece, A Man Escaped, also dealt with the feelings of dread against a clockwork structure where any and all feeling comes in smaller doses. The protagonist, Yvon, gets handed a twist of fate with some counterfeit money, and gets put to jail after taking a deal on a job that leads to a car crash (perhaps the one and only time, ironically of course, that Bresson probably tried an action scene like this). After a stint in prison, where coming face to face with the man originally responsible for putting him in there via the counterfeit money only brings a sense of loss in lacking revenge, he goes through a murder spree.

But a murder spree, of course, as Bresson would only do, where omitted details are all apart of the mis-en-scene and in adding an emphasis on the aftermath more-so than the actual grisly details of what goes on in the moment. There's even a moment towards the end of something out of Sling Blade, only here not so much out of the simplicity of the mind from knowing right or wrong but from the simplicity of being numbed by the experience: the lack of a conscience. Yvon is the kind of criminal that never gets shown in movies, and rightfully so. He doesn't fit into a comfortable mold, and it will be a little sluggish for some viewers, even in an 81 minute running time, to see the usual Bresson tactics going on; likely many, many takes to wear down the already non-professional actors, and this time stuck in a near-rigid control of Bresson's in an emphasis of camera over performance. As one critic pointed out, it's more like 15th century icons than usual 'actors'. And, truth be told, it's not quite as fascinating as A Man Escaped or Pickpocket because of Bresson making it tougher to get into the detachment of the main character (the lack of narration may be attributable to this,

"L'Argent" (French, 1983): When I saw Bresson's 1974 film "Lancelot du Lac" in 1977, I was amazed. What a stripped down, abstract, minimalist film! How empty, unemotional, and full of dread can one film be? Well, he met this challenge nine years later with his own (and last film) "L'Argent". Imagine screen writing a very interesting, linear story (taken from Tolstoy's short story "The Forged Note"), creating many characters who occasionally cross one another's paths, but then using static, nearly frozen camera work; stiff, nearly frozen "actors" (non-actors, "deliverers of the few lines"); and no major action to depict the events of your story. The result is almost like a "recreation of actual events". If you're looking for an intelligent story, here it is. If you're looking for entertainment, powerful acting, fascinating interaction, dizzying camera work, Dolby sound or a single special effect, go elsewhere.