L'ARGENT - DVD review

An old man walks down the street while reading a newspaper. He passes by a parked car in which our protagonist Yvon (Christian Patey) sits quietly and looks straight ahead. Several police cars speed by, sirens blaring. The old man continues walking until he sees three men, presumably police officers, crouching behind their cars, so still they could be sculptures: the old man hurries away. Across the street, a man (we cannot see who) comes out of a bank, holding a woman in front of him. One of the crouching men very slowly aims his gun.

We cut back to Yvon as he sits in his car still staring blankly; a single gunshot rings out off-screen; if Yvon hears it, he does not react. We return to the man retreating slowly back into the bank: who fired at whom and why doesn't anyone seem to be panicking? We once again cut back to Yvon as a volley of gunfire rattles off-screen. He reaches slowly for the ignition and starts the car. We hold on a very long shot of Yvon's hands on the steering wheel as more sounds play out: shouts, police whistles, etc. We finally cut to an exterior shot of Yvon's vehicle as a police car pulls alongside him. Yvon, his expression still blank, shifts the car into drive and peels out.

It's the strangest, most subdued bank heist you've ever seen on film; it is also a text book example of the defining techniques of Robert Bresson, one of the most idiosyncratic and remarkable directors in the history of film. At least three quintessentially Bressonian features are on display here. First, there is Bresson's oft-discussed approach to acting. He employed non-professional actors, whom he referred to as "models," and trained them (often using multiple takes to tire them out) to perform as automatically and mechanically as possible: the goal was for the models to act without inflection, often resulting in the stoic, passive "Bresson face." For more discussion of Bresson's use of models, please read my review of "Au hasard Balthazar."

Second, this scene offers an instructional lesson on Bresson's revolutionary approach to sound. For Bresson, sound and image are often redundant, and if the two work together they do not necessarily reinforce each other but sometimes cancel each other out. If a sound conveys the essential meaning of the scene, there is no need to show a similar image. Therefore, when we hear the volley of gunshots and the whistles, we do not see the police shooting at the robbers but rather Yvon's hands as they rest limply on the steering wheel as if awaiting further instructions from their master. As for what precisely occurs at the bank, we are left to wonder; in Bresson's view, the ear is more imaginative than the eye, and sound is not merely the bastard child of image.

Third, Bresson's emphasis on economy and precision ("L'Argent" runs at just 81 minutes) is evident in this scene. Bresson ruthlessly stripped away all extraneous elements from his films, until he was left with only the barest essential elements required to tell the story. After Yvon speeds away, we see a brief car chase which Bresson conveys by two primary images: Yvon's feet as they switch from the accelerator to the brake and a shot of the police car as seen in the side mirror of Yvon's car. Cut back and forth between these two shots a few times and… there's your car chase. It is also worth noting that this is not merely economical from an artistic point of view but from a pragmatic perspective as well: Bresson seldom worked with big budgets.

These three elements (as well as others) defined Bresson's films for the bulk of his career and combined to produced one of the most eccentric, hermetic and endlessly fascinating bodies of work in all of cinema. If Bresson had not perfected these techniques (how is such a thing possible?), he had finely tuned them by the time he directed "L'Argent" ("Money") in 1983. Bresson was 82 years old when "L'Argent" was released, and it was the last film the great French master would ever make. Bresson, who died in 1999, intended to continue directing, but was unable to secure financing for his long-planned adaptation of the Book of Genesis and he retired by the end of the 1980s. Fortunately, Bresson's final film is also one of his greatest.

"L'Argent" is loosely based on the Tolstoy short story, "The Counterfeit Note" which also translates as "The Forged Note" or "The False Coupon." The story begins with two young men who pass off counterfeit bills to a local photography shop. The store owners discover that the bills are forged, but don't want to get stuck with the loss so they, in turn, pass them onto Yvon Tage, the young man who delivers heating oil to their store. After Yvon is caught with the counterfeit money, he returns to the store with the police in order to prove his innocence, but the owners pretend not to recognize him. From this point, Yvon's fate is sealed and his situation degenerates from bad to worse to unspeakable.

"L'Argent" traces the spread of evil from its first flowering to its final violent explosion. In true Marxist fashion, evil flows along the same path as capital. As the counterfeit notes change hands, they leave a path of destruction in their wake and leave nobody fully unscathed. In the opening scene, a young man asks for a handout from his father; in the climactic scene a murderous Yvon has only one question to ask: "Where's the money?"

Bresson believed in predestination and Yvon is an innocent victim fated to be laid low by circumstances beyond his control. He is not merely falsely imprisoned but is actually transformed by the system; once released from jail, he decides he might as well become the person everyone seems to think he is. Bresson's films were always considered to be pessimistic and grim, but "L'Argent" ramps that dark vision up to a new level. In many of Bresson's films, the characters achieve a kind of grace or even redemption by way of their suffering, but there is little, if any, sense of redemption in "L'Argent," the ending of which is about as bleak as you will ever see.

Like most of Bresson's films, "L'Argent" accumulates its remarkable power through its puritanical restraint. Yvon remains an opaque figure with a blank, staring face even as he transforms from an innocent into a killer. We could easily imagine the Hollywood version of the same story with a classically-trained method actor raving and gibbering and chewing the scenery, but Bresson does not pursue that route. Nor does he linger on any of the typical gory elements. As he does in the car chase, Bresson simply picks a few objective details and uses them to convey an entire scene. Bresson's tendency to elide the main action is so pronounced in "L'Argent" that even an attentive viewer might miss altogether the fact that, in one sequence, Yvon murders two hotel owners. The ending is all the more potent and unnerving because of the sense of clinical detachment cultivated by Bresson; we are all invited to consider the proceedings with the dispassionate eye of a coroner rather than as a sympathetic and involved viewer.

We do not quite know why Yvon does what he does or why he selects his victims, though it is obviously related to his unfair treatment by society. Bresson's cinema is one of surfaces, not psychology. Character is revealed only through behavior, not through exposition or analysis; there are no "character moments" offered as a sop to the audience, and Yvon's sudden decision to cross the line into violence comes as a shock as we have not been prepared for it as we might expect. Bresson provides the "what"; the viewer, if he must, provides the "why."

"L'Argent" has not generally received as much attention as Bresson's twin masterpieces "A Man Escaped" (1956) and "Au hasard Balthazar" (1966), but if it is less accomplished than either of those films, it is only by a hair's breadth. At the age of 82 Bresson remained at the top of his game, and "L'Argent" is one of the most remarkable final films by any director. Precise, meticulous and magnificent, it is a must-see for any student of the cinema.

Video

The film is presented in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio. I have the old VHS released by New Yorker and the difference in image quality (even setting aside that the VHS was full screen) is like day to night. On the tape, the desk in the opening scene is dull brown and the curtains are gray; on the DVD, the desk is cherry red and the curtains much brighter. The flesh tones on the DVD really pop out as well. This is an excellent transfer, almost certainly the best version of the film most American viewers have ever seen, a great job by New Yorker.

Audio

The DVD is presented in Dolby Digital. I don't think any DVD can fully preserve the quality of Bresson's rich and textured sound tracks but this version does a more than creditable job. The music and dialogue are clearly separated, and the sound effects are well-mixed. Optional English subtitles support the French audio.

Extras

The main attraction is a commentary track by critic Kent Jones who literally wrote the (BFI) book on "L'Argent." Jones' commentary is enjoyable not just because of his keen insights, but also because of his halting, nervous delivery filled with awkward pauses – it adds a very personal touch. Jones blends an academic approach with his obvious love for the film and delivers one of the more lucid and engaging commentary tracks I have ever heard.

In addition to a very short trailer, the disc also includes three short interviews: two with Bresson (6 min. and 13 min., respectively) from French television in 1983 and one very brief one (1 min, 30 sec.) with director Marguerite Duras who expresses her admiration for the great director.

Closing Thoughts

Any attempt to rank films is both subjective and arbitrary but it is also a lot of fun. For me, Bresson's best films are, in order: "A Man Escaped," "Au hasard Balthazar," "Lancelot du Lac," "L'Argent" and "Pickpocket" (I have not yet seen "Mouchette). They are all, however, brilliant and I would rank all five among my personal Top 100. It is easy for a die-hard Bressonian to assume an elitist stance and dismiss all "non-believers" as merely unsophisticated viewers, but this would be unfair. Bresson is not suited to everyone's tastes and his meticulous, austere style can be decidedly off-putting. He is, however, one of the most unusual and, dare I say, thought-provoking filmmakers you will ever encounter. His movies are so unique they almost feel like they are "written" in their own cinematic language, one separate from all other films. It is easy to understand that he can be a polarizing figure: just as some viewers find his films a rough slog, others embrace them passionately. When we think of cult directors, we usually think of people like Sam Raimi or John Waters but I think Bresson fits the bill as well. As for me, I'm happy to be a member of the Bresson cult. If you give his films a chance, you just might feel the same way and if not, hey, Bresson's films are usually pretty short.