Excellent quotes you utilize in the opening. I think that “L’argent” is probably a staggering masterpiece. The abstract nature of the editing and shot composition gives the film an experimental feel that really drew me in. I’m looking forward to seeing the film a second time so I can take it apart and understand it better. Though I haven’t yet seen all of them, this is probably my favorite Bresson so far.
thanks for the review apursansar! revisiting it through the above has made me reappraise the film and whack an extra star on my rating (which was probably just as comparison to lancelot, my favourite jingling bresson). this is one of two films in the cup i’ve dreamt about, so something about it made an intense impression on me!
This is my first “later” and color Bresson film. After watching and loving Diary, Balthazar, Pickpocket, and Man Escaped, I had a slight feeling that the bulk of his films had to be trudged through to get to the final few seconds of film with the divine transcendence that put it all into perspective. With this film I didn’t get what I was expecting. Yet I loved the film anyways. Perhaps it was because after loving all those other films I now appreciate every moment of them. Or maybe it was because I didn’t need that transcendent moment tacked on in the same way. Maybe it’s still there, but it’s not up to Bresson to spell it out in the same way.
Also I hear a lot of talk in your description and elsewhere that this film is a complement to The Devil, Probably. I haven’t seen that one, but I didn’t feel like anything was missing here. Still, I’ll be interested to see it.
Need some help with this one; fortunately, there is this thread.
My gut says:
1 this is Bressonian in style
2 the style and the message/theme are not mmmmmmmm…producing the quality of the totality I find in other Bresson films.
It is as-if the style and the message are cast in concrete.
I few things:
When he encounters the old woman I wasn’t thinking things will turn around, I was thinking somehow he will kill her.
As Marc says, she has no expectation from life, but I think he still does creating the tension and hence the “Where is the money?” This line also shows the indifference to other’s suffering he experienced.
Also, is there an expectation when he turns himself in – isn’t that a request for a kind of absolution? Only after he is imprisoned can he have no expectation of life – to be indifferent to life. Thus indifferent to others = indifferent to life, the compensation is L’argent
Not sure where I am going, difficult film to process….
-Also, is there an expectation when he turns himself in – isn’t that a request for a kind of absolution?-
This is where Bresson departs from his source (discarding the second part of Tolstoy’s story). From part two of “The Forged Coupon”:
“And what will become of those who have done evil?” asked Stepan.
“The Scriptures give an answer to that,” said Chouev, and read aloud to him Matthew xxv. 31:—"When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory: and before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth His sheep from the goats: and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave Me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took Me in: naked, and ye clothed Me: I was sick, and ye visited Me: I was in prison, and ye came unto Me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, and fed Thee? or thirsty, and gave Thee drink? When saw we Thee a stranger, and took Thee in? or naked, and clothed Thee? Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me. Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungred, and ye gave Me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink: I was a stranger and ye took Me not in: naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited Me not. Then shall they also answer Him, saying, Lord, when saw we Thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee? Then shall He answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."
Vassily, who was sitting on the floor at Chouev’s side, and was listening to his reading the Gospel, nodded his handsome head in approval. “True,” he said in a resolute tone. “Go, you cursed villains, into everlasting punishment, since you did not give food to the hungry, but swallowed it all yourself. Serves them right! I have read the holy Nikodim’s writings,” he added, showing off his erudition.
“And will they never be pardoned?” asked Stepan, who had listened silently, with his hairy head bent low down.
“Wait a moment, and be silent,” said Chouev to Vassily, who went on talking about the rich who had not given meat to the stranger, nor visited him in the prison.
“Wait, I say!” said Chouev, again turning over the leaves of the Gospel. Having found what he was looking for, Chouev smoothed the page with his large and strong hand, which had become exceedingly white in prison:
“And there were also two other malefactors, led with Him”—it means with Christ—"to be put to death. And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus,—’Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ And the people stood beholding. And the rulers also with them derided Him, saying,—’He saved others; let Him save Himself if He be Christ, the chosen of God.’ And the soldiers also mocked Him, coming to Him, and offering Him vinegar, and saying, ‘If Thou be the King of the Jews save Thyself.’ And a superscription also was written over Him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying, ‘If thou be Christ, save Thyself and us.’ But the other answering rebuked Him, saying, ‘Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.’ And he said unto Jesus, ‘Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.’ And Jesus said unto him, ‘Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.’"
Stepan did not say anything, and was sitting in thought, as if he were listening.
Now he knew what the true faith was. Those only will be saved who have given food and drink to the poor and visited the prisoners; those who have not done it, go to hell. And yet the malefactor had repented on the cross, and went nevertheless to paradise. This did not strike him as being inconsistent. Quite the contrary. The one confirmed the other: the fact that the merciful will go to Heaven, and the unmerciful to hell, meant that everybody ought to be merciful, and the malefactor having been forgiven by Christ meant that Christ was merciful. This was all new to Stepan, and he wondered why it had been hidden from him so long.
From that day onward he spent all his free time with Chouev, asking him questions and listening to him. He saw but a single truth at the bottom of the teaching of Christ as revealed to him by Chouev: that all men are brethren, and that they ought to love and pity one another in order that all might be happy. And when he listened to Chouev, everything that was consistent with this fundamental truth came to him like a thing he had known before and only forgotten since, while whatever he heard that seemed to contradict it, he would take no notice of, as he thought that he simply had not understood the real meaning. And from that time Stepan was a different man."
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the film, but I take Bresson’s more abrupt ending to be more at Meursault’s revelation at the end of Camus’s The Stranger:
“As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”
Personally, I felt there was an element of fulfilling a pre-determined social role or function at play in the film, and as such the encounter with the old woman felt like both people knew how their encounter would turn out. The old woman, in a sense, needed or had to be killed and she took him in knowing that would or even must happen, it just took him a while to realize he needed to fulfill the social contract expected of him the same way all the other characters filled or completed their social roles in differing ways. I guess I think of it not being “about” the man directly, but about him coming to accept how he isn’t free to do what he wants and must perform the function demanded of him. His final acts of murder and turning himself in then would be a sort of resignation to his fate. At least that is what I felt the structure and style of the film was suggesting and how it works within the concerns shown in other of Bresson’s films. I take his insistence on using “models” to deny some aspect of agency to his characters, to trap them in a way within the structure of the plot and not permit the audience to identify with them in a more dynamic manner that could take them away from what is being described or prescribed. It is somewhat similar to the way I felt about the Straub and Huillet films I’ve seen so far, particularly Not Reconciled, but there it is more of people within a longer historical arc than Bresson’s “of the moment” cultural settings.
@Matt
That Camus passage is like a balm – I feel better already.
@ Greg fulfilling a pre-determined
How did she know he killed the others – I went back and couldn’t figure out how she knew.
to deny some aspect of agency to his characters, to trap them in a way within the structure of the plot and not permit the audience to identify with them in a more dynamic manner that could take them away from what is being described or prescribed.
Yes – that is sort of what was bothering me about the film maybe.
If the “model” lacks agency, there needs to be at least the potential for agency.
The old woman had money and she wasn’t indifferent to him, and yet he did’t seem to be able to differentiate her from the others.
This may be a story where the central character can’t be a too puppet-like.
To be thematically trapped by fate would seem to require some evidence from within the central character that agency is contemplateable.
Yes, I should have been more clear, first I meant fully free agents rather than suggesting a complete absence of awareness of their place. The film suggests to me that one’s possibilities may be constrained, but one’s awareness or knowledge of that constraint is more open. I would say that opening scenes with the young boys and the father suggest a greater degree of mobility or freedom for some than others, and I think that is shown even in the slightly more dramatic emotional range allowed those characters, or that was how I felt about them anyway.
And as to the old woman, I don’t know if one could say she knew he killed the others at first, but they way he approached/followed her and her reactions to him gave me a feeling that she was aware of his status to some degree and took him in anyway. Again, that’s just the feeling I had watching it and connecting everything together in a whole. I can’t say whether anyone else should or would feel the same way.
My question about the film has more to do with the clerk who robbed the safe and his relationship to the killer. He strikes me as being singled out as coming from the same cloth, so to speak, but he has a different attitude towards his place. The manner in which both men deal with their situations, one ended up in prison by stealing the other by no action of his own. The thief accepted, even relished his role and maintained a internal feeling of freedom even when his possibilities were limited, whereas the unjustly confined man allowed the role imposed on him to dominate or take him over more fully by embracing it in its darkest form.
In a way this film reminds me of the portrayals of Capote’s writing In Cold Blood in the two films about the experience, Capote and Infamous. There was an allusion to the idea that Capote identified with Perry Smith for his transgression against society. That the criminal act was a way of realizing the place of the outsider within the society. In that case there was a sexual connotation to the relationship and the “reading” of the murders, as I saw it, and that certainly could have informed Bresson’s thinking here in an indirect way, unlike say Pickpocket where some similar themes are at work.
But I’m half asleep right now and might not be making myself clear. So I’ll it there for now.
@ Greg I don’t know if one could say she knew he killed the others at first
The subtitles I downloaded were crappy (DVD is different from VHS?), but I think it was here in the kitchen the first time:
01:06:48 —> 01:07:02
Please sit down. Something to eat?
I’m hungry.
01:07:42 —> 01:07:49
Why killing? There should be some reasons.
I don’t think he was reading a newspaper story about the killings. (?)
transgression against society
When caught (00:18:36), the thief says to the photographer: what does it matter, we are both bent.
The thief perhaps represents the individual’s awareness and acceptance of the way society is (freedom?)
The problem with Yvon is we don’t know whether he is aware that everyone else is corrupt or why he can’t join in – there is nothing apparently transitional about Yvon’s thinking.
dp
Hmm, I was thinking that ,perhaps, the thief had internalized or understands the social order and learned to use it, at the margins, to some advantage which would serve to reinforce that same order as people like him make it easier to convict those like Yvon, despite his innocence, based on cultural resemblance.
Yvon, on the other hand, could be seen being naive or ignorant of his place and acts out in what he might imagine to be a way that threatens the order but also only reinforces it.
I’m not sure about that, but I think the film, if it is like Pickpocket, likely uses a sort of double meaning to the concept of sacrifice as it relates to the ideas of faith on one hand, and to that of resignation on the other. At the end of Pickpocket, the man has accepted a sort of faith represented by the girl and her beliefs, but he is also trapped, unable to follow his natural instincts or proclivities. If we think of Yvon being in something of the same circumstance, he would want to destroy the system, but given the possible self-sacrifice of the old woman, or at least her charity, the cost would be to high.
I personally can´t agree with the interpretation of the old woman´s death as a self sacrifice. Her sacrifice was to endure the humiliations from her husband, and she makes it more than clear that she is willing to continue her suffering for his sake and out of Christian forgiveness. Yvon´s murder is thus a selfish decision to relieve her, and considering that Bresson no longer believed in any kind of redemption at the time he made “L´Argent”, it can as well be regarded as a nothing but a cry of rage and despair which causes the death of a defenseless person, so that at least someone has to pay for the trick that was played on Yvon which ultimately made him lose everything that mattered to him. He´s obviously indifferent in regards to the possible consequences, since just like Charles in “The Devil Probably” his life has become meaningless to him, and his attitude is that of a nihilist who doesn´t believe in sacifices. The decision to confess his crime to the police doesn´t appear as a decision for the sake of redemption (contrary to the similar episode from “Crime and Punishment”) since he doesn´t directly go the police station, but in fact he accidentially runs into the police when he visits the restaurant and again acts out of indifference when he confronts them with his crime. There is no hope that remains towards the end of “L´Argent”, and I would therefore regard it as Bresson´s bleakest vision.
Very good read-out, Apursansar.
The murder of the old woman is an acto of rage and despair on Yvon’s part yet at the same time it releases her from a life of horror. In that sense her “charity” towards Yvon is a quais-suicidal act on her part. And we all know how important suicide is to Bresson.
To me “L’Argent” is a feature-length echo of his most forbidding masterpiece “Le Diable Probablement” — which was formally condemned by the church. (Easily the best “bad review” Bresson has ever received.) The controversy was so intense that the lovely Antoinne Monnier (Matisse’s grandson) ’renounced" Bresson and the film, though I very much doubt he was sincere in this.
I’m very glad you included the close up of the axe ans the film’s climactic moment — in which the axe is thrown into the water — results in an audiotry 3-D effect. You can hear — and therefore “see” — the axe floating over your head in the cinema.
Apursansar, my reference wasn’t intended as being one of redemption, but of resignation. I can accept what you’re saying, but, to me, there is or could be something of the concept of the scapegoat involved. I didn’t mean to imply that the woman gave herself up eagerly or directly, but there is a weariness about her that suggested that she had some awareness of her possible end and wasn’t interested in fighting it, she seemed to tacitly approve the possibility or accept it. If that is the case, then her sacrifice could be seen as somehow satisfying Yvon need to act out in the manner he had been doing and allowing him to adopt a similar stance in regards to the rest of the culture. I don’t think anyone was redeemed, just the opposite, his giving himself up allows the system to perpetuate itself as it know has its victim on which to pin its sins.
I have a hard time understanding the “why” of Yvon giving himself up at all without there being some more meaning attached to it than it being a random decision, which seems to be implied if nihilism or indifference was his guiding emotion. It would also seem to make the long segment with the old woman less necessary in the amount of information given and the emphasis placed on it given that we already know he’s a killer, and so murdering her doesn’t really add much to the understanding of him without there being some more significance involved.
But, as I was saying, I’m just toying with these notions rather than asserting them as a strong interpretation since I hadn’t sat down and tried to “read” the film before this thread came up. I’m open to all suggestions on it.
I think he gives himself up because his killing spree has run its course. Also the killing of the old woman is markedly different than that of others he has killed.
just toying with these notions rather than asserting them as a strong interpretation since I hadn’t sat down and tried to “read” the film before this thread came up. I’m open to all suggestions on it.
Likewise, just trying to make sense of the film.
Still not buying into the end making sense. What I am interested in is his motivation – if nothing matters why do anything? why turn yourself in? The fact that meeting the police is coincidental doesn’t really matter – he has to act.
I’d like to see in Vincent Canby’s notes where he worked out this is a great masterpiece.
I’m not sure what you mena by “makes sense” in this conctext.
Bresson started out believing in predestination. He also started out by believing in God. Clearly with “Le Diable Probablement” he’s bailed.
Yes, I agree on the first part of that David, there is something of a feeling of Yvon being sated by killing the old woman, which is part of where my thought came from. Her death, in a way, empties Yvon of the need to kill, and could be seen as fulfilling his mission of retribution or destruction for injustices committed against him. In a similar way, locking Yvon up for the counterfeit money fulfills society’s need for justice. In both cases, the person suffering the act that satiates the one feeling wronged is innocent of anything themselves, but their punishment appeases a need. What the old woman gave to Yvon, Yvon gives to us in a way. What each gave may permit Yvon or us to feel better, but it leaves the real injustices intact and allows the system to repeat or reconstitute itself endlessly, which is definitely a bleak way to see things
(Judging from Bresson’s earlier films, this may also carry some implication about the Christian mythos and a wider view of mankind, but I’ll leave that as an aside.)
He’s definitely sated — which is why Bresson makes tossing the axe away such an overwhelmingly cinematic moment.
And even gives him a little “after dinner” drink…
-What I am interested in is his motivation – if nothing matters why do anything? why turn yourself in?-
Camus’s conception of the Absurd again. The Myth of Sisyphus (can’t find my copy, so, wiki):
It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when “my appetite for the absolute and for unity” meets “the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle” . . . Taking the absurd seriously means acknowledging the contradiction between the desire of human reason and the unreasonable world. Suicide, then, also must be rejected: without man, the absurd cannot exist. The contradiction must be lived; reason and its limits must be acknowledged, without false hope. However, the absurd can never be accepted: it requires constant confrontation, constant revolt . . .While the question of human freedom in the metaphysical sense loses interest to the absurd man, he gains freedom in a very concrete sense: no longer bound by hope for a better future or eternity, without a need to pursue life’s purpose or to create meaning, “he enjoys a freedom with regard to common rules”.
Motivation = living the contradiction = revolt = “freedom re: common rules”
@ David Ehrenstein Context? Making sense of the entire film by way of the end of the film – tying the scenes into the totality of the film.
Ah, the axe toss – yes, good reference point.
Yvon turning himself in, like the axe toss, is a capitulation.
@ Greg Tough to digest; hence, the digestif.
The “totality of the film” is that “L’Aregnt” is Bresson’s slasher movie. His “Friday 13th” as it were.
“Motivation” doesn’t really figure in Bresson very much. “Shit happens” is what pretty much moves the narrative events ( I hesitate to say “plot”) along in all cases.
@ Matt absurd can never be accepted: it requires constant confrontation, constant revolt
Ever present conflict remains….
Yvon apparently commits suicide by police…
In this context it also needs to be added that Camus regard the revolt as a peaceful and non-violent process as opposed to Hegel’s dialectics. Yvon is certainly far from Camus’ rebel, a man in revolt whom he described in his following work, but similarities to Meursault are nevertheless striking.
Camus is not relevant to Bresson. Doestoyevsky and Bernanos are.
Also jean Cocteau (his collaborator on “Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne”)
Doestoyevsky was quite “relevant” to Camus, David.
Bresson, by the way, sought out Camus with the intent of collaborating on an adaptation of La Princesse de Clèves around the same time Cocteau was collaborating on an adaption with Jean Delannoy.
Indeed, Doestoyevsky was one of Camus’ mayor influences, which is why both of them highlighted human choice to oppose the adverse (or in Camus’ context absurd) circumstances man is confronted with, even though Camus strips away the faith in God (as did Dostoevsky-follower Nietzsche before him). Once can therefore regard Bresson’s nihilist later works that also contrast his more Dostoevsky-like “Pickpocket” as in-a-line with this philosophical development, even though Bresson likely wouldn’t have used the term “existentialist”.
Besides the Dellanoy/Cocteau “La Princesse de Cleves” has been adapted by Manole de Oliveira as “La Lettre” (with Chiara Mastroianni) and Christophe Honore as “La Belle Personne” (with Louis Garrel and Gregoire LePrince-Ringuet)
Doestoyevsky was certrainly relevant to Camus but to make an instantaneous Camus-Bresson cponnection is much too glib. I know y’ll are trying to turn Bresson into an Existentialist, and Camus is Mr. Existentialism (next to Satre of course) but it’s a bad fit. He’s not there.
No Juliette Greco music cues for bresson.
apursansar
“It was only from a distance that he saw the human being in himself…” (Leo Tolstoy, The Forged Note)
“We seek to avoid freedom by fusing ourselves with others, by becoming a part of an authoritarian system like the society of the Middle Ages. There are two ways to approach this. One is to submit to the power of others, becoming passive and compliant. The other is to become an authority yourself, a person who applies structure to others. Either way, you escape your separate identity.” (Erich Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion)
Toward the end of their lives both Tolstoy and Bresson ultimately got disillusioned by the Christian Church and modern age materialism, and their final works are bitter and precise depictions of a pathological society. Bresson deliberately left out passages that didn’t translate too well into 1980s France (which had meanwhile witnessed the failures of Communism), but the general story arcs of the film can also be found in Tolstoy’s original work. Though unlike the Russian novelist Bresson himself no longer believed in any kind of redemption (which followed the murders in the original story), and thus ended his film with a more radical and abrupt scene in which the protagonist admits his deeds to the police, bringing back to mind the similar ending of “Crime and Punishment”.
“L’Argent” begins and ends with shots of cash machines. In between the film shifts from one protagonist to another and starts to focus on the tragic destiny of Yvon Targe, but as the title suggests, money is actually its true protagonist, or rather a parasite which contracts its manifold hosts. While on the one hand the chain reaction caused by the forged 500 franc note does leave a certain space for individual decisions, each person who gets involved simply reacts as self-serving as a materialist society determines with acquired money obsession leaving not much room for sincerity, and readiness to make sacrifices becoming the unthinkable.
But it’s of importance to take a closer look at the film’s deconstruction of individuality, since after all “The Devil Probably” which preceded it dealt with the search for individuality in a consumer society. I think that both films are closely related and can be better understood with the simultaneous consideration of the respective counterpart. Yvon’s preoccupations that lead him to attempted suicide (and murder) are of a concrete nature (legal injustice; imprisonment; family separation), the desperation of Charles, the protagonist of “The Devil Probably”, is abstract and rather existential, but leads him to the same consideration (in the spirit of Camus’ “The myth of Sisyphus”). Even though Charles is basically a thinker and Yvon a doer, both characters are two faces of the same coin, because of their essential clash with society, which is not only irreversible, but circuitously leads to their ultimate destruction.
But Bresson’s last film also further develops the insights that “The Devil Probably” provided, the spectator has been made aware that a separate identity which opposes society can’t be succesful, and in “L’Argent” the desparate need for an individual opinion gets entirely replaced by collective nihilistic destructiveness. In a late interview Bresson mentioned: “Perhaps you recall that at the time of The Devil Probably quite a few people were burning themselves alive to make a statement. Not anymore. The present generation is not even remotely interested in that. It’s very odd. To them it has all become normal. They belong to an era in which the fact that we are ruining this earth of ours is no longer shocking.” The corollary of this sobering awareness was that Bresson relinquished to continue displaying images of environmental destruction which haunted “The Devil Probably”, and instead shifted his focus to examine the maladies caused by indifference and selfishness, thus ending his career by holding a mirror up to society.
The rhythm of scenes which Bresson had elaborated throughout his color films is defined by sound devices which bridge scenes and interrupt actions. In “L’Argent” he made use of sounds like rustling and jingle as well as car noises to create harmonic intersections and connect scenes which would otherwise choke on a visual level. The characters (especially Yvon’s wife) are frequently framed between doorways to signalize transition, there are few moments of rest throughout the movie, and Bresson’s editing style adds to the feeling of constant disquiet.
The detail and pars pro toto shots which became Bresson’s trademark are evently spread throughout the film, and mostly used when money is being exchanged; most strikingly the empty hand towards the beginning and the hand with an axe towards the end contrast each other, thus illustrating the transition from innocence to guilt. Bresson stated that feet and hands have a will, and “L’Argent” marks his fragmented psychological classification at its highpoint.
The spatial divergence is another important aspect of “L’Argent”, and becomes strikingly in the narrowly framed prison sequences which Bresson crosscuts with unconfined outdoor spaces. Yvon relates to it in very a different way than former prisoners that can be found in Bresson’s filmography (A Man Escaped; The Trial of Joan of Arc) who managed to oppose enclosure with a tough-minded spirit. The space itself and the separation from the outside world destroys Yvon’s unprepared psyche. On the one hand he remains unable to satisfy his desire for revenge and on the other hand he doesn’t manage to end his own life; the prison can be regarded as his ultimate downward spiral which also makes him disregard the value of life.
Bresson makes no attempt to dramatize Yvon’s first murder that suddenly creeps in, and not unlike Haneke’s “Benny’s Video” and “Funny Games” the emotional distance with which it is recorded has a far more inconvenient effect on the spectator. The following part which Yvon spends at the old woman’s farm seems to suggest an alleged redemption and is a depiction of subtle, ambiguous interactions between two determined characters who no longer expect anything from life; the scenes are likely among the most beautiful while at the same time ominous moments that can be found in Bresson’s entire œuvre. The sterile spaces and metallic sounds which dominated the first two parts of “L’Argent” suddenly get replaced with natural environments and the sounds of insects, but it’s a deceptive idyll.
The public humiliation of the old woman who gets slapped by her husband makes Yvon aware of her miserable condition, and both characters confront each other with equally distorted world views. The following murder scene is remarkable, since the moment Yvon threatens to kill her and asks “Where is the money?”, the question around which the whole film seemed to have centered immediately begins to sound absurd. Yvon rather appears to have killed her for a number of other reasons, and money becomes a pretense to perhaps release her from a life of misery and obedience, or maybe cave in to a compulsion to murder. The banality of evil is not just banal in Bresson’s microcosm, but through a close observation of Yvon’s gestures one might at least get an impression of what could have been on his mind.