"With minimal embellishment and great subtlety French filmmaker Robert Bresson's L'Argent is a powerful, moving and thought-provoking tragedy about a working stiff who is railroaded toward a bad end by the thoughtless machinations of a society obsessed with
l'argent
(""money"" in French). Based on Leo Tolstoy's story The False Note, the mess begins with a pair of middle-class teen-aged counterfeiters. One of the boys is angry that his parents refuse to give him pocket money. He turns to his pal who gives him phony francs. In turn, the youth gives the money to a clerk in a local photo shop who passes it to his boss who quickly devises a scheme to get rid of it. As soon as the delivery man comes in, the shop owner hands him the bogus bucks and sends him on his way. Later the deliveryman stops at a local cafe and innocently pays his tab. He is immediately arrested. Meanwhile the shopkeeper attempts to keep the matter hush-hush. The mother of the boy behind it pays the proprietor to insure he stays silent. Still the truth eventually comes out and the hapless courier is acquitted. Unfortunately, though technically free, the scandal cost him his job. Unable to find another, and with a family to feed, the former deliveryman resorts to crime. He is functioning as a getaway driver for bank robbers, but the heist goes awry and he ends up serving a three year prison sentence. By the time he is finally released, his child has died, his wife has left him and he has no job and no money. With nothing else to lose, the ex-con becomes a cold-blooded killer and thief. When the film was first released in France, it generated political controversy among French conservatives because Bresson cast the daughter of the Socialist French Minister of Culture Jack Lang, Christine, for his female lead."