Robert Bresson’s final film, an adaptation of Tolstoy’s novella The Forged Coupon, is simultaneously bleak and luminous, and sharp enough to cut diamonds. The story of a counterfeit bill’s passage from hand to hand and the resulting tragic consequences is rendered with a clean force that would be startling from a filmmaker of any age; coming from one in his early eighties, it was, and still is, astonishing. L’argent burns white hot—not with anger but with a perfect clarity of purpose: to direct us to see that habitual human callousness is what keeps us out of paradise.

L’argent had its U.S. premiere at the 21^st New York Film Festival in 1983, and returned to NYFF earlier this month as a Revivals selection in this beautiful 2K digital restoration, scanned in 4K from the original negative.

1983 | 83m | French and Latin with English subtitles | Color | DCP | A Janus Films release

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