L’argent

NOTE: This is a region-1 DVD which requires a region free DVD-player.

In his ruthlessly clear-eyed final film, French master Robert Bresson pushed his unique blend of spiritual rumination and formal rigor to a new level of astringency. Transposing a Tolstoy novella to contemporary Paris, L’argent follows a counterfeit bill as it originates as a prop in a schoolboy prank, then circulates like a virus among the corrupt and the virtuous alike before landing with a young truck driver and leading him to incarceration and violence. With brutal economy, Bresson constructs his unforgiving vision of original sin out of starkly perceived details, rooting his characters in a dehumanizing material world that withholds any hope of transcendence.

Special features: 
– New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
– Press conference from the 1983 Cannes Film Festival
– “L’argent,” A to Z, a new video essay by film scholar James Quandt
– Trailer
– New English subtitle translation
– PLUS: An essay by critic Adrian Martin and a newly expanded 1983 interview with director Robert Bresson by critic Michel Ciment