 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
| Casque d'Or | |||
"Casque d’or, set during the clutter-filled Belle Epoque, is a gloriously tactile movie. Eyes substitute for skin as bread and cheese, a shiny black feather boa, decaying walls, and the sensual curves of a footboard become paradoxically tangible. They aren’t vital in themselves to the plot, but they accumulate in the mind to tell their own story of our sentient responses. The synopsis sounds like a James Cain novel, filled as it is with gangsters, murder, betrayal, criminal justice, and one experienced dame who’s nobody’s fool. But quite apart from the American film noir tradition is Casque d’or‘s romanticism that was inspired not just by Becker’s mentor Jean Renoir but by the whole of French impressionism. Multiple scenes in Casque d’or look like Monet reimagined in mid-century black-and-white celluloid. Serene rural scenes of river boating, picnics, and blooming groves are contrasted to a street-lit assault, garbage-strewn cobblestones, and execution by guillotine. How Becker juggles images of pleasure and pain without stumbling is the stuff of film alchemy." – Matthew Kennedy, Bright Lights Film Journal "Opening with a gorgeous riverside reverie that commentator Peter Cowie calls a French impressionist painting come to life, Casque d’or evokes the Belle Epoque, with all its attendant glamour and passion. Serge Reggiani plays a reformed tough who has graduated to the simple life of a carpenter after spending five years in the pen, but one look at the stunning Simone Signoret seals his fate. Bored moll to an oily henchman, Signoret aggressively pursues Reggiani after a turn on the dance floor, but their courtship leads to immediately dangerous consequences, especially when deceptively affable mob boss Claude Dauphin takes active notice. Looking like an angel in Becker’s gorgeous spotlighted monochrome, Signoret makes a memorable femme fatale, not because she’s duplicitous, but because she can’t help but inspire a tragic sequence of events. By pursuing her in spite of his best instincts, Reggiani commits the blunder of a thousand crime-movie heroes, but Becker allows the lovers a few glorious moments of respite in the country.…" – Scott Tobias, The Onion AV Club "This elegant masterwork is a glowingly nostalgic evocation of the Paris of the Impressionists, focusing on the apache underworld and an ill-starred romance … with an elusive density, a probing awareness of emotional complexities, which reminds one that Becker was once Renoir’s assistant. Not his equal, perhaps, but the relationship is inescapable in the texture of the movies themselves. Signoret, as voluptuously sensual as a Rubens painting, has never been more stunning, and she is perfectly partnered by Reggiani, seemingly carved out of mahogany yet revealing an ineffable grace in movement, as the honest carpenter who defies the malevolent apache leader to claim her." – Time Out Film Guide |
|
||
| France 1952 | |||
Director: Jacques Becker With: Simone Signoret (Marie, “Casque d’Or”), Serge Reggiani (Georges Manda), Claude Dauphin (Félix Leca), Raymond Bussières (Ramond) 96mins, 35mm (1,37:1), black and white In French, with English subtitles PG low level violence Dunedin Film Society |
|||
