The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“Perhaps the first authentic masterpiece of fiction from the cinema Quebecois.”

Louis Marcorelles, Le Monde

The savagely bleak commercial debut of former NFB filmmaker Denys Arcand is a sinuous tale of rapacity run amok, set firmly within the misanthropic gutter-world of film noir. When hard-up couple Roland (René Caron) and Berthe (Luce Guilbeault) take umbrage with a wealthy uncle’s meager financial gift, they hatch a plan to burglarize—with balaclavas and brutal force—his rural farmhouse. The scheme goes sideways when they discount the cunning of a mousy lodger (Marcel Sabourin) willing to kill for a windfall. Arcand, still in the wake of a public dust-up with the Film Board over his banned exposé of exploited Quebec textile workers (On est au coton), delivers a pitch-black portrait of dog-eat-dog society where backstabbing and body dumping are par for the course. Though the Oscar winner earns laurels for his talky, bourgeois dramas, Dirty Money demonstrates Arcand’s second calling for nasty, neo-noir fare.

In French with English subtitles

“A shockingly coal-dark crime film [and] an under-recognized neo-noir classic.”

Anthology Film Archives

“Loosely inspired by the B‑movies of the ​’40s, while anticipating Blood Simple and other neo-noirs of the ​’80s … An unforgettable blend of pastiche and provocation.”

Canadian Independent Pictures