Preface

I doubt that I am the only one who saw the New Wave films of the late 1950s and early 1960s before seeing many of the French films from earlier in the 1950s. As I've seen more of the pre-New Wave French movies, I've become more and more puzzled about what the film critics who became the New Wave critics were rebelling against. I know and understand their admiration for American noirs (by Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann, Orson Welles, Otto Preminger, Nicholas Ray, , et al.), American thrillers (Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, et al.), and American westerns (by Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann, John Ford et al.), but (a) there were some excellent French movies in the earlier 1950s before the New Wave, and (b) The Cahiers de Cinema admired many of their immediate predecessors, especially Jean Renoir, Jean Cocteau, Jean-Pierre Melville, Max Ophuls, Robert Bresson, and Jacques Becker.

In his piece "Frère Jacques" following Becker's death early in 1960, Jean-Luc Godard wrote: "There are several good ways of making French films: Italian style like Renoir, Viennese like Ophuls, New Yorker like Melville, but only Becker was and is French as France." Who does this leave (there is plenty of other documentation of Godard's and Truffaut's veneration for Bresson's and Cocteau's films)? Perhaps René Clair (whose 1950s films are unknown to me), And Marcel Carné was despised by some for making his masterpiece "Les enfants du paradis" during the German occupation (and whose 1950s films I have not seen? René Clément , director of the great masterpiece "Jeux interdits"/"Forbidden Games"? Henri-Georges Clouzot—can they not have liked "Diabolique" and "Le Salaire de la peur"/"Wages of Fear"? The only one I'm sure of being despised is?


Yves Allégret (the only movie of his I've seen, Les Orgueilleux/The Proud Ones very good). And I think the view by Godard et al. of those to be overthrown included Jean Delannoy (La symphonie pastorale). Since both of them had connections to André Gide, I wonder if the literary rivalry between Gide and Cocteau was mixed into the advocacy of "pure cinema."

A golden helmet in the gutter

Becker's (1952) "Casque d'or" (the title refers to the helmet of blonde hair on Marie, a gangster moll played by the great Simone Signoret) would seem to fall within the structures against "well-made movies" (in the MGM style in contrast to RKO and Warner Brothers movies). The costumes and coiffures are perfect and there is something of touristy slumming in the whole enterprise. The movie focuses on the doomed love of a gangster, but was set in the "belle époque" of the late 1890s (which were as close to the time the movie was made as we are now to the time the movie was made...).

It begins with a scene of a boating party on the Marne River that could have been painted by Auguste Renoir or short by Jean Renoir. A surprise is that one of the boats is rowed by a corseted woman with a pile of blonde hair: Marie (Signoret). The group then invades an outdoor tavern. It is there that Marie's eyes connect with those of Georges Manda (the intense bantam Serge Reggiani, who had costarred with SIgnoret in Max Ophuls's "La Ronde"). She already the moll of a brutish and very possessive gangster Raymond (Raymond Bussières).

It soon becomes clear that the head of the gang of robbers (who is paying off the police) Felix Leca (Claude Dauphin) lusts after Marie. If Marie is going to trade in Raymond, Leca wants her to trade up to him. But that would not provide the love tragedy that is needed...

Plot spoiler alert

A sensible moll would pass upward to the leader, but Marie is self-confident and chooses for herself (and goes to visit Manda, who has gone straight after being in prison with gang-member Danard (Gaston Modot). Manda's boss' daughter believes he is pledged to her and there is a notable confrontation between the women.

Inevitably, Manda has to fight Raymond. Raymond is bigger than Manda and it looked to me that Leca gave Raymond an additional advantage. Nevertheless, Manda kills Raymond before Raymond kills him. This involves plunging Raymond's knife into Raymond's back, while Raymond is on top of Manda, choking him. That Raymond was killed in self-defense never comes up on Manda's indirect route to the guillotine.

Leca makes some dastardly maneuvers that I will not spell out. Marie and Manda have a rural idyll (back along the River Marne) that is gorgeously composed and executed. The wheels of injustice grind up Manda. There are other casualties, and a brilliantly austere finale that would not be out of place in a film of Robert Bresson.

End spoiler alert

Simone Signoret was nothing short of magical in "Casque d'or": running quite a gamut of emotions. Her Marie is very self-confident but abases herself to try to save her man, and is devastated at her failure to save him. And reborn by romance before the plotting of Leca intervenes.

Claude Dauphin is excellent as the crime boss with police connections, completely dominating his gang, and coldly furious as his failures with Marie.

Serge Reggiani does not much look like an irresistible "Latin lover" or like a great romantic. He would seem more in place as an Everyman knocked about by fate in a cinema noir. Manda does not strut like Raymond or even like Leca. He is trying to go straight and get along (to the extent of seeming self-effacing, in marked contrast to the other main characters), but has considerable inner strength (and, unlike Raymond and Leca, a code of honor by which they can destroy him).

The movie shows how much "palette" there is in black-and white. Marie is frequently radiant, while there are some very dark shadows as befits the gangster/noir genre (in which alleys always seem to figure prominently). And the light is very muted in the montage of scenes at the end of the movie. Hand-on a director as Becker was, credit for the photography some of the credit must go to Robert Lefebvre, even though his other work was not close to the greatness of the photography of "Casque d'or."

The Criterion DVD

The rich black-and-white cinematography is a triumph of film-to-DVD transfer. The audio (monaural, of course) transfer is also superlative.

The disk has some very interesting extras, including nearly half an hour about Becker from the television series "Cinéastes de notre temps", a 1963 interview with Signoret and a 1995 one with Reggiani, and an 8-minute silent movie showing Becker preparing to shoot the outdoor tavern part. This last has optional commentary by Philip Kemp who also wrote the insert essay. Signoret and Reggiani clearly adored Becker and each other. They also recall that the movie failed miserably in its initial French release, but was a hit across the English channel. Signoret won the BAFTA for best actress in a foreign-language film and on rerelease the movie was applauded in its homeland.

The disk also includes commentary by Peter Cowie, as do too many Criterion DVDs. I have to grant that he is not stupid nor does he lack for information (some of which is useful, as in regard to the prehistory of the songs used in the movie), but there is something annoyingly condescending in his presentation and some trivia delivered leeringly. There's too little analysis of the technical accomplishments of the scenes he blabs through.




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD