Product Details

• Actors: Christian Patey, Sylvie Van den Elsen, Michel Briguet, Vincent Risterucci, Caroline Lang
• Directors: Robert Bresson
• Writers: Robert Bresson, Leo Tolstoy
• Producers: Antoine Gannagé, Daniel Toscan du Plantier, Jean-Marc Henchoz
• Format: Subtitled, Color, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French (Unknown)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: New Yorker Video
• DVD Release Date: May 24, 2005
• Run Time: 85 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000929UQY
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #87,204 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "L' Argent" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Robert Bresson's final masterpiece, L'Argent is a stunning protest against greed and corruption. A boy's parents refuse to lend him money, so a friend gives him a counterfeit 500-franc bill. This one act sets into motion a chain of events that will lead to murder.

The bill passes from hand to hand, and with each exchange comes another betrayal. To protect themselves, shopkeepers pass the bill on to an unsuspecting delivery man, Yvon, who is arrested and sent to prison. Rejecting the world that ruined him, Yvon turns to crime and destruction.

Inspired by a Tolstoy story, one of cinema’s great masters creates a powerful tale of innocence corrupted.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tolstoy meets Bresson, and loses, July 14, 2000

By 

"lexo-2" - See all my reviews

This review is from: L'Argent [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This was, as it turned out, Robert Bresson's final film - he died last year, having spent the better part of the century making only fourteen feature films, most of which are truly remarkable. Fairly loosely adapted from a Tolstoy story, it starts off with a middle-class kid passing a forged banknote and ends in axe-murder. Bresson displays commendable artistic nous in avoiding the preachier, more moralistic bits of the original story (it's not one of Tolstoy's better tales) and concentrates instead on the man-made but nevertheless impersonal forces that conspire to drag the oilman Yvon from decent family man to murderer. (The murder itself is one of the most stunning, and yet most discreet sequences in the history of film.)

Bresson's usual crawling pace is sped up here, as there are so many stories and sub-plots to get through. Kent Jones, in his excellent study of the film, has observed that while Bresson has a wonderfully acute sense of what young people are like, he falls down a bit when he tries to depict the Paris underworld; but it doesn't matter, as this is a film with its eyes on bigger matters than documentary realism.

Bresson was at least 80 when he made L'Argent, and his uncanny sense of rhythm and timing were not at all dulled; the fairly gentle pace of the opening scenes accelerates into hyperspace before the end. L'Argent is about as far from the conventional crime picture is you'll ever get; the opening shot, of the metal screen of an ATM machine sliding shut, establishes the sense of inexorability. There are no Good But Troubled Cops, no Criminal Masterminds. Everybody in the film is humanly inexplicable, inexplicably human. When Yvon, at the film's visceral climax, asks the question "Where's the money?", it was Bresson himself who, in an interview, gave the answer: Everywhere. If only most directors' final films were as good as this.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Last Word from a Giant of Film, July 14, 2002

By 

R. Williams "code slubber" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: L'Argent [VHS] (VHS Tape)

It's amazing so few people know of Bresson's films; he's one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. This film, his last, is brutally efficient in laying out his often bleak view of the world. Based on a Tolstoy story 'Le Faux Billet', it's an exercise in zero sum eliminative logic. The fact that the culprit (a conterfeit bill) is set in motion by playfully malicious youths and then the path is cleared by the greed and malice of their hypocritical parents is a beautiful setup for this dark meditation on the subjugation of human beings to their ruthless god.

The abstract mechnanized backdrop for the titles sequence is a money machine. As is so often the case, behind the deadpan performances of his nonactors (many of whom are superb in this movie), Bresson fetishizes on his subject unto hypnosis; in this film, notice how many times doors, small and large, are slamming, beginning with the automated one closing the first transaction, to the last image of a row of people gawking at the door. This film retains its searing impact through many viewings.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bresson's greatest work..., May 6, 2006

By 

Grigory's Girl "Grigory's Girl" (NYC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: L' Argent (DVD)

This is Bresson's greatest, and last, work. It is a work from a true cinematic auteur. No one made films like Bresson did, and I don't think anyone ever will. This film is based on a short story by Tolstoy entitled The Forged Coupon (aka The Forged Note), except Tolstoy's story is much different that Bresson's take here. It is about how a forged note of 500 francs passes from one hand to another, ruining the life of a fuel oil delivery man. Bresson made this film when he was 82, but you couldn't tell that it was made by a man that old. Quite often, critics assume that filmmakers (and artists in general) have nothing to say as they get older. On the contrary. They have even more to say. A real artist's vision deepens as they grow older. Kurosawa made Ran at 75, and Eastwood made Million Dollar Baby at 74. Those are their best films. Bresson is rather feisty and combative (which is a good thing) in the interviews presented here. He doesn't mince words, and he doesn't seem interested in doing the usual inane questions that featurettes on DVD's usually have from bubble headed reporters (even though these were shot for French TV, not Entertainment Tonight). He has something to say. This is my favorite film of his (even though Lancelot of the Lake and Au Hasard Balthazar are close behind). Sadly, he never made another one after this, but the 13 he did make are all brilliant. Not one bad one. Great film, great man...