In-Person
Screening: L'Argent (1983)
This event has passed.
320 York Street New Haven, CT 06511
- All Ages
DCP |1983 | Directed by Robert Bresson | France, Switzerland | 83 minutes | French with English subtitles. With an introduction by Jonathan Hourigan.
Free admission. No registration required. Please arrive early to secure a seat.
“An evil deed is not a dead thing, like a stone dropped into water, but a seed sown, which grows and brings forth its kind.” –Tolstoy
In Robert Bresson’s austere final film L’Argent (1983), loosely based on Tolstoy’s The Forged Coupon, a counterfeit banknote sets off a chain of moral and material corruption, propelling an innocent man toward ruin and violence. With spare dialogue, elliptical editing, and a dispassionate gaze, Bresson transforms a simple act of deceit into a devastating study of greed, guilt, and grace—his ultimate parable on the dehumanizing power of money. The film won the Director’s Prize at Cannes (in ex aequo with Tarkovski’s Nostalghia), a fitting capstone to his singular career.
In conjunction with Annotating Bresson, a symposium around Notes sur le cinématographe, November 7–8.