“Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money.”

I love that line from David Mamet’s Heist (2001), the idea that the thing is so important that it can only have been named after itself.  That’s why L’Argent is called L’Argent.

Based around a tale of stock-market manipulation and unrequited love, Marcel L’Herbier’s film is a dive into finance and acquisitions of all kinds that is stunning in it’s drama and technical brilliance.  Made right at the end of the silent-era, it rivals A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929) in it’s daring and movement as it places the camera on the trading floor and throws you into the hustle and bustle whilst never loosing the avant-garde edge that places the best of silent cinema into the realms of purity.

This is the movies and the final line is priceless.

Highly Recommended.

Detritus.

The Masters of Cinema DVD really is fantastic as, along with the usual high quality extras, it contains the contemporaneous ‘making of’ documentary Autour De L’Argent (1928), which is worth the purchase in it’s own right.