Casque d'Or

Jacques Becker's "Casque d'or" is a fine example of the best in the French cinema. At times, this splendid 1954 film, keeps reminding us about paintings of the impressionist school, especially Renoir, because it takes us back to that era. In fact, the beginning of the film almost gives the impression we are witnessing characters that inspired the painters of that art movement.

"Casque d'or" is enhanced by the magnificent black and white photography of Robert Lefevbre who has a poetic way to get the best of what M. Becker intended him to do. The atmospheric music of Georges Van Parys takes the viewer back to those places one has seen in different paintings of that era.

The lovely young woman at the center of the picture, Marie, gets taken with Manda the moment he enters the country restaurant where she is seen with some of the petty criminals she is friendly with. One realizes this is a passion that is not meant to be from the start. Marie belongs to one of the Felix Leca's gang. When Roland senses his girl has an eye for another man, he wants to take get rid of him.

Georges Manda has also been to jail, but now is a carpenter and trying to go straight. Fate is not kind to Manda, who, when provoked, reveals he is not to be made a fool. Leca, who is also quite smitten by Marie's beauty plans to get rid of Manda so he can have the blonde woman all to himself. Leca, who knows his way around the law, and is friendly with the police, will prove to be Manda's undoing.

What Jacques Becker achieved with this film was to create the right atmosphere to set his story. Working in France he had the access to the great movie locations one sees in the movie. The film evokes that period convincingly. The director adds touches, that even when watched today, are a delight to watch.

M. Becker got good performances out of his cast. Simone Signoret at that point of her life was at her prime. Her Marie is a fine example of what she was able to project without much effort. Her beauty is evident and she plays Marie with elegance. Serge Reggiani plays Manda with conviction. M. Reggiani covered quite a lot of ground in the French cinema. Aside from his good looks, he was an accomplished actor and singer. His contribution to our enjoyment of the film made "Casque d'or" to be a classic it became. Claude Dauphin is Felix Leca, the unscrupulous man in love with Marie who will stoop so low in order to get the woman that he wouldn't have otherwise. M. Dauphin conveys the evil in Felix Leca with an economy that works well in his portrayal of this sophisticated monster.

Finally, this is Jacques Becker's triumph. "Casque d'or" is one of the best films of all times.

Casque d'or is one of the greatest films about passion I have ever seen. The intensity of the feeling between Simone Signoret and Serge Reggiani, particularly the former, is overwhelming. These people are outsiders from the very beginning, being part of the criminal underworld from which they will never escape. The honest, bourgeois world is permanently closed to them. Children in French secondary school write essays about this film as if it were a classic French novel. It certainly is a classic, and it could not have been made in any country other than France.

Simone Signoret plays a beautiful woman of ill repute who is at the center of several men's affections - her hotheaded gangster boyfriend, an ex-criminal who's turned over a new leaf, and the leader of the gang himself. It's a pretty simple story but very well told by Jacques Becker, with the scenes involving a double cross and its brilliant ending standing out. The cinematography is wonderful, including an outdoor dance evoking the paintings of Renoir, a beautiful walk along the riverside, and the claustrophobic cells inside a police van. Signoret is radiant, defiant even as she's slapped around and with an air of sweet happiness when she's able to get away from it all, and Serge Reggiani is strong as well. Really just a solid film, one that expresses the spirit of France in the 1950's via its filmmaking, and a small window into the Belle Époque as well.

Despite the corsets and petticoats and horse-drawn cabs, this lush, richly textured film has more in common with the bleak, fatalistic modern-dress films of the period than with conventional historical romance. The action takes place over the course of only a few days, but in France that's long enough for a passion strong enough to change a life, or end it--more than one man dies because of the bewitching Marie and her golden hair that shines like the sun. The intensity of the characters' emotions and the suddenness of their violence is powerfully countered by the reserve of the playing--of the solemn, laconic toughs and of Simone Signoret as Marie. In moments of great emotion, her slight smile changes to a broad one, but with her lips still closed. There's none of the giggling and wriggling that marked the other blonde Fifties sex symbols, Bardot and Monroe, and countless others since, and obviously no nudity, total or partial, but in her morning-after scene with Serge Reggiani, you can practically smell smoke.

Like Zola's Nana, Marie is neither a villain nor a victim, simply an elemental force of nature. This elemental-woman business can, in French and non-French movies, be pretentious and unwittingly comic, but there's none of that here, because neither Signoret nor the director indulge in any fancy dialogue or vocal tricks to play up how alluring she is--they don't have to. We are always aware of Marie as a figure of enormous strength, with a broad, strong back, round shoulders spilling out of her blouse, and a mouth too wide for coyness.

In an otherwise favourable review, Pauline Kael said that the film's tone was slightly trashy, as if it were saying, of the low-life characters, "Look, they have feelings too." I disagree--the scene of the wealthy, slumming group in evening dress who find the characters "marvelously amusing" show us what Becker thinks of that viewpoint and implicitly reproaches anyone who shares it.

Simone Signoret and Serge Reggiani star in "Casque d'Or," a 1952 film also starring Claude Dauphin and William Sabatier.

Signoret plays Marie, the kept woman of a good-looking gangster, Roland (Sabatier), but she is also desired by the gang's boss Felix Leca (Dauphin). One night she is introduced to Manda (Reggiani), a carpenter who, after a prison term, is trying to go straight. The two have an instant attraction, which angers the jealous Roland.

After a fight in which Roland is killed, Leca sees a way to get rid of Manda too. But Marie steps in, and the result is tragedy.

This is a beautifully photographed film that takes place in the 1890s, the Belle Epoque. Signoret is the center of a story about passion and love, as well as the lives of women back then at the hands of their keepers, and the brutality. Jacques Becker frames each scene magnificently.

Signoret wasn't in any way a typical star by Hollywood standards. She had a raw sexuality and sensuality, a voluptuous figure, and an earthy presence that gave her the edge over all of them. Each film she was in was elevated by her presence. You can well believe all three of the men in this film desired her.

Highly recommended.