Its pleasures are the classic pleasures of the art film -- niceties of technique, juxtapositions of image and sound, a judiciousness in choosing what is shown, and what isn't.

Bresson, working his sound track as assiduously as his visuals, once again makes us realize how little use most films make of the resources of the cinema. A masterpiece.

A harrowing scour of ideological cinema.

The gradual brutalization of this once-honest man plays out like a grim certainty, but what *is* surprising is L’Argent’s final suggestion that redemption, even after so much ugliness, is possible. What a note to end a career on.