Bresson is probably the most stringent stylist that narrative cinema has yet produced, the French cinema’s brilliant monomaniac. He forces total concentration: scenes are enacted and assembled without differing degrees of emphasis. Whatever inspires people can only be inferred from their laconic utterances and meager gestures. Taken from Tolstoy’s “The False Note,” L’argent is a serenely composed crime story that tells its ruthless tale without once raising its voice. An ordinary young man is caught up in a spiraling sequence of crimes that culminate in a double hatchet murder. His acts are inexplicable, but they are triggered by false testimony, abandonment, ordinary people on the take—and something totally mysterious in the soul of the protagonist. L’argent has the manner of an official report, the tone of a spiritual autopsy.