Robert Bresson (director, writer) L’ARGENT (1983) Film script

Paris. 16 June 1982. [1],126 leaves. Photomechanically reproduced typescript, printed on rectos only of comb-bound A4 stock, printed card wrappers. Light use, very good.

A combined continuity script for Bresson’s screen adaptation of Tolstoy’s short-story, “The Counterfeit Note.” Bresson directed Christian Patey, Sylvie Van den Elsen, Michel Briguet, et al, Film Critics Award for same.

This was the final film of Bresson’s mythic career, and it is one of his harshest. Maltin, 2015 MOVIE GUIDE, p. 787: “How the petty maneuverings of some upper-class boys and shopkeepers result in the ruin of workingman Patey: the rich lie, and get their workers to lie for them, but are aghast when the workers lie to them.” The film is directed with a very stylized minimalism, in which the actors show very little affect. Repeated viewings do not diminish its strength. Bresson’s films, including this one, often contain portraits of teenage boys, in this case amoral, greedy boys from wealthy families.