L’Argent (Money)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: B-     Film: B

 

 

Though he may not have known it at the time, Robert Bresson made his final film with the interesting L’Argent from 1983.  It starts out with the relatively more innocent crime of counterfeiting, then lands up being an intellectual rollercoaster ride of one disaster after another, as the two lead teen boys allow this simple and careless act throw them off a path of peace of mind.  It is not the greed but the lack of self that allows one to break the rules of exploitation in a Capitalist system that is more fragile than is ever acknowledged.

 

But instead of being some shallow Marxist diatribe, this Tolstoy-derived tale instead is a study of the character of a society with wealth, of its people and of any civilization is the point.  Bresson’s choice of camera shots, sound design and focus is very telling.  This is a master filmmaker who knew how to speak the cinematic language most clearly and one interesting aspect of the film is how it uses the teens to make this almost a sort of sophisticated send-up of the French heist films of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s.  Later, it becomes much more.  Bresson’s later work has been unfairly criticized in one of those “can’t he just stay the same” instances that separates the real fans from the part-time ones.  This is a welcome DVD release.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is good, but not great, with weak video black and some detail troubles.  However, the cinematography by Pasqualino De Santis and Emmanuel Machuel blends together well and is so good that any image reproduction limits are not as distracting.  I would love to see this in 35mm or digital HD, but this will do until then.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 is simple stereo, but very effective sound design and one of the more complex uses of sound you will find in 1980s cinema, especially in France.  This aspect will not disappoint you either, though it seems to have been credited as monophonic in some text, but it sure does not play like that.

 

Extras include a paper pull-out essays by director Olivier Assayas and Kent Jones, who himself also supplies a fine audio commentary for the whole film and knows Bresson’s work well, this film in particular.  You also get an on camera interview with Marguerite Duras (subtitled) off of old 1.33 x 1 analog videotape and runs 1:26.  TF1 (from Cannes 1983 on film that he directed himself, bookended by tape) and TSR (the same format) interviews with the director running 6:16 and 12:54 respectively, and an original teaser trailer (identified as if it were a full length trailer) round out the extras.  At the end of the longer interview, Bresson actually discusses the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981) and marvels at its cinematographic poetry.  Many art film fans were surprised and even astonished by this revelation, but looking at the careful shots and form of his work throughout his career, one could see how he would appreciate what is still one of the greatest films that series will ever produce.  Maybe it is the Hitchcock connection between himself and that particular Bond, but it also shows how good taste overrides the artificial split between “art” and “commercial” cinema.  L’Argent shows that he was still at the top of his game.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo