“L’Argent” (1983, Robert Bresson)

A teenage boy in Paris passes off a counterfeit bill to make some extra money, and we follow the repercussions, eventually leading to a man’s incarceration, and a family’s murder. Robert Bresson, cinematic genius and Jansenist Catholic, delivers his final film, and the only one completely devoid of any hope for redemption. Dealing with the manner in which duplicity and dishonesty are passed along from generation to generation, this is recession special #1.

“Thieve’s Highway” (1949, Jules Dassin)

Nick Garcos comes home from war to find that his father has been crippled by a crooked produce distributor in San Francisco. He sets out to take revenge, but gets wrapped up in a plan to drive a truck full of Golden Delicious apples from Fresno to San Francisco, running into more than a few troubles once he gets there. Directed by later-blacklisted director Jules Dassin (“Never on Sunday,” “Topkapi”) this is another one that takes on our corrupt system, scrutinizing it at its most basic level, the selling of food.

“Wages of Fear” (1952, Henri-Georges Clouzot)

Yves Montand is a drifter who’s come to a dreary oil town in Venezuela with hopes of striking it rich. He and his friends spend most of their time in a dingy town bar drinking and waiting for their big break; then suddenly it comes—an offer of two thousand dollars to drive a truck full of nitro-glycerin over treacherous roads to the other side of a jungle. One false move and—BOOM—the whole rig’ll blow sky-high. The best suspense set-up ever (sustaining the constant risk of death through a whole picture), and another relentless portrait of a world where money always trumps a man’s life, and humanity itself is worthless. Also, the only sequence in movies where a man drives a truck to the rhythm of “The Blue Danube Waltz.”

“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” (1969, Sidney Pollack)

All of the action in this film takes place during a dance marathon on the Santa Monica Pier in 1932. Contestants dance for as long as they possibly can, with a ten minute break every two hours. The prize at the end is fifteen hundred dollars, though some just dance for the free food (which they must consume while dancing), or in order to be noticed by the Hollywood scouts they’ve been told will be in the audience. A film about exploitation, people’s perverse willingness to be exploited, and our insatiable interest in watching the results, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They,” is a great movie to watch when you have the recession blues, because, hey, those suckers got it way worse than you, don’t they?

Recession and the movies. As Daily Variety will tell you, hard times equals good box office business. That’s because Hollywood assumes that during a recession you, the moviegoing public, crave escape from your misery, and that the easiest place to find that escape is at the multiplex.

But easy escape isn’t for you, right? You’re an adult, after all, an intellectual, and during hard times the last thing you need is some false sense of security. No—what you want are confrontational films. Films at whose heart lie scathing criticisms of our nihilistic, money-hungry society. Films that show how capitalism corrupts even the best of us, sullies us, and forces us, if we ever want to survive in this world, to commit reprehensible acts of evil, eventually stooping to the same base level as all the other scum on this earth, just to get ahead. Isn’t that right? I thought so. Well then, friend, here are a few choices to help you nurture all that righteous indignation. Enjoy.

“The Sweet Smell of Success” (1957, Alexander Mackendrick)
You art types might know it as the source for Christopher Wool’s painting, “Cats In Bag Bags In River,” but the film’s got another line that’s apt for anyone struggling to get by during recession time: “Watch me run a fifty meter dash with my legs cut off.” Press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) commits one morally reprehensible act after another in a bid to get in good with his boss, the all powerful gossip columnist, J J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), but nothing he does is quite good enough. Featuring one of the best scripts of all time by legendary leftist playwright Clifford Odets, the film is one of the most clear-eyed indictments of capitalism ever printed on celluloid. With beautiful on-location cinematography in 1950s midtown-Manhattan by the great cameraman James Wong Howe.