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.

Robert Bresson's last film is based on a short story by great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.L'Argent is not at all a direct adaptation of Tolstoy's work of literary production "Faux Billet".It is a film for which Bresson infused some of his own ideas in order to create a different narrative.It was made in 1983 thanks to personal intervention by French minister of culture Jack Lang whose daughter Caroline played an important role in it. L'argent is a Christian story of redemption about an innocent man who is doomed due to the carelessness of reckless people.We see that due to class difference and power struggle Yvon is condemned to hell.L'argent throws light on misfortunes associated with money.It depicts that many people from good backgrounds are involved in wrong doing.In L'Argent, we primarily see a simplicity of actions,gestures,sound and images. Bresson achieved this effect by creating a film in which events happen in quick succession.It is expected that the audience will remain focused in order to appreciate its sequence of events.One would be surprised to note that even violent acts are shown in a cold,detached manner.L'argent is recommended as a good film which is a good example of perfect collaboration between a filmmaker and a writer.

The more Bresson films I see the more I realize that his films are not for me. As usual, the acting in L'Argent (The Money) is intentionally wooden and emotionless. The film is also characteristically (and maddeningly) brief. Rather than explain crucial points, Bresson chooses to hint at them to maintain the "mystery." All that aside, L'Argent begins promisingly enough. The greed of a pair of young counterfeiters and a store clerk leads to major problems in the lives of an innocent man. The misdeeds of these people eventually come back on them, but to nowhere near the level they come back on the guiltless protagonist. He is seemingly naïve and innocent in the beginning, but he quickly loses these characteristics as a result of his interactions with crime. Once he loses his job, he is forced to turn to a life of crime and his morality quickly deteriorates. In fact, it deteriorates ridiculously quickly. By the end of the film, he has become the most terrible criminal imaginable and lost everything of value that he ever had. The concept of small sins leading to large ones is interesting, but it is hurt by the exaggeration with which it is presented. Sad that this film (Bresson's last) was a failure for the director.

"L'Argent" is Robert Bresson's very last film and a piece of work that went through a lot of financial problems to see the light of day. It was dismissed by many producers before being finally taken in hand by the Ministry of the Arts. At that time, Jack Lang was the ministry and his daughter served as a "model" for Bresson in the film where she is Yvette, Yvon's wife.Sourced from a short story by Léon Tolstoï, "l'Argent" is first the assessment of a downward spiral for the main hero of the film, Yvon. Because he was given a forged note, this domestic oil delivery man will be caught in a chain of unfortunate events which will see him jailed, losing his cute, little daughter and wife before turning into a murderer. Through his decay, all forms of dishonesty, cruelty, injustice will be stated with money at their core, particularly in the first half of the film. Money is used for rewarding cowardice (the photograph who rewards his employee Lucien for his false evidence), for buying people's silence (Norbert's mother who gives the photograph's wife money to compensate her) and more generally, money is a God that makes Yvon's fate take a tragic dimension and drives a cruel, unfair world.Its depiction is a perfect opportunity for Bresson to let his sparse, cold, neutral cinematographic writing shine. The more the film goes on, the more these epithets prevail with an accumulation of close-ups of objects, audacious elliptical sequences, a tightened editing and deliberately bland models who recite their texts and don't "act" it. Bresson's minimalist approach of this tragic story and harsh society amounts to a limpid harmony that inevitably brings an unshakable emotion and it's important to note down the moment when Yvon is put up by the old lady. These sequences are like lulls in Yvon's grisly fate and it's impossible to remain indifferent to the old lady's dreary way of life or when she's offered a few hazelnuts by Yvon. There's even a glimmer of hope when she pronounces the words: "I would forgive to the rest of the world".It's true that Bresson's highly elliptical, straightforward style will leave many viewers baffled as there is no psychology or action but if you're sensitive to his unspectacular directing, you will realize that he pushed his art to the extreme to better get the audience involved in Yvon's woes. You can watch it only once but it will forever stay in your mind.