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France, Switzerland · 1983
1h 25m
Director Robert Bresson
Starring Christian Patey, Vincent Risterucci, Sylvie Van den Elsen, Michel Briguet
Genre Crime, Drama, Thriller
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A forged 500-franc note is cynically passed from person to person and shop to shop until it falls into the hands of a genuine, honest fuel delivery man named Yvon. As Yvon uses the forged bill at a restaurant, the bill is exposed, and he suffers a series of troubling consequences.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by
There is no psychology in L'Argent, no acting to speak of; every scene is a minimal sketch which drives the didactic story forward. This use of narrative may sound ordinary, but, in Robert Bresson's pure filmmaking, it becomes extraordinarily relentless. [20 July 1984]
Constructing a work of implacably interlocking images, the 76-year-old director -- as clear-eyed, still and attentive as a beast of the forest observing human folly -- has produced an Olympian protest against the modern world. Yet his lucid mastery produces not despair, but an odd exhilaration. [16 April 1984, p.93]
Compelling morality tale that works on multiple layers.
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Every shot plays a part in the director's underlying scheme - to probe the actual and symbolic roles of money in society, and grander yet, to explore the relationship between matters of the flesh and the human spirit, as manifested by the struggle between aspiration and corruption. [22 March 1984, p.21]
Slant Magazine by Eric Henderson
Robert Bresson's film hits with the effect not so much reflecting a cleansing of the soul, but rather a ransacking.
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
It goes beyond the impartiality of journalism. It has the manner of an official report on the spiritual state of a civilization for which there is no hope.
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