Still from L’Argent
City Lights Film Series curator Ahmed Tahsin Shams uncovers the raw pulse of human struggle in Robert Bresson’s L’Argent.
Bresson’s swan song shared the Best Director prize at Cannes 1983 with Andrei Tarkovsky, presented by Orson Welles. What a moment to cherish! It appears to be a summit of cinematic geniuses, a sacred trinity of visionary auteurs on stage. Thirteen films in four decades, yet a style so distinct it became “Bressonian”: non-actors, plain speech, no score, and images that refuse to flatter. Robert Bresson’s L’Argent (Money, 1983, France) is a film that grips you not with explosions or twists, but with the slow unraveling of a life derailed by a single counterfeit bill (Martin 1999). Bresson called it a story of “the visible god” of money clashing with the invisible pull of conscience (Hayward 1986).
In my view, this film not only echoes Tolstoy’s novella The Forged Coupon (1911) but also strips it down to expose how everyday choices can snowball into chaos, foreshadowing modern tales of inequality and inner turmoil. Some films chase you with action; others whisper truths that linger. L’Argent does the latter — it observes lives like a mirror, reflecting the quiet prisons we build around ourselves (Hayward 1986). It does not rush; it accumulates moments, pushing characters toward edges they never saw coming (Johnson 1984).
Bresson’s story unfolds in a world on the edge of the ordinary and the abyss, where a fake banknote passed innocently sets off a chain of lies, loss, and violence (Johnson 1984). Unlike flashy crime dramas that glorify heists or heroes, L’Argent lingers on the mundane: a deliveryman’s routine shattered, a clerk’s small betrayal amplified (Martin 1999). The camera stays close, flat, almost indifferent, capturing hands, doors, and faces that reveal nothing yet everything (Hayward 1986). Time jumps without warning, stripping away explanations, leaving you to feel the weight of inevitability (ibid.).
Still from L’Argent
Robert Bresson makes you look not at plot, but at pressure. L’Argent starts small and widens. Watch the hands. Bresson builds meaning from gestures — passing, counting, folding, refusing (Hayward 1986). Objects keep equal weight with people. A frame can hold money, a latch, and a cheek with the same cool attention. That leveling is the point. Bresson’s realism treats surfaces and textures without hierarchy; we read ethics through material contact, not speeches (ibid.). Space feels tight and exact. The camera sits level, frames stay still, and movement is sliced into clean pieces. Instead of a sweeping pan, Bresson cuts: here to here to here. You feel the gap. Time stays in the present. Cohesion comes from echoes — doors, windows, counters, the next exchange — rather than from backstory (ibid.). The drift is outward. The film opens on everyday transactions and then leaps further each time. The result is tense without tricks. You keep asking a simple question with large stakes: what does money ask of us, and what do we give up to follow it?
Calling it just a drama sells it short. To me, it seemed to echo Gustav Courbet’s realist tradition of composition and framing, which showed life as it is — raw and unromanticized (Hayward 1986). Bresson uses non-actors who speak flatly, move mechanically, turning people into vessels for bigger forces: pride, greed, redemption (Johnson 1984). The young protagonist, Yvon, starts as an everyman wronged by the system — a worker stiffed by the rich — then spirals into darkness, from prison bars to inner voids (Martin 1999). At its heart, can one break free from money’s grip, or does it drag us all down (Hayward 1986)?
Why see it now? Because L’Argent shows how systems touch bodies without preaching. It turns a universal topic — money — into a study of attention and responsibility. The film’s force is how it makes you witness. It is a question that hits home today, in a world of economic divides and hidden motives.
So join us, settle in, and let it challenge you — not just to see, but to question.
References
Hayward, Susan. “Cohesive Relations and Texture in Bresson’s Film ‘L’Argent.’” SubStance 15, no. 3 (1986): 52–68.
Johnson, William. “Robert Bresson’s L’Argent.” Film Quarterly 37, no. 4 (1984): 18–21.
Martin, Adrian. “L’Argent.” Film Comment 35, no. 4 (1999): 51–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43455419.
L’Argent will be screened at IU Cinema on October 18 at 4pm as part of the City Lights Film Series.
Ahmed Tahsin Shams is a Ph.D. student (2023–2028) in Media Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington, USA. His research interests include eco-cinema aesthetics and pedagogy, as well as performance and visual arts in the Anthropocene.