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Casque d'Or (The Criterion Collection)

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Eyes are the source of visual perception though which most people conceive the world and all of its wonders. A moment where two pair of eyes catch one another and there is a spark of mutual interest could lead to further emotional investment. This mutual interest is most frequently triggered through the visual experience, which catches something that fascinates the individual. The fascination rapidly releases a rush of hormones as the visual contact continues and intensifies the emotional sensation through out the whole body. Occasionally, there are physical manifestations revealed through butterflies in the stomach and uneasy feelings that could cause sweatiness and involuntary stuttering. This is a common phenomenon, which most people undergo at least once in a lifetime, known as falling in love.

The moment of falling in love can be overwhelmingly passionate, as the affected could drift into oblivion with muffled thought and reasoning. This kind of love could be damaging to the person, even painful to those near and dear. Casque d'Or opens with such a spellbinding moment where the two main characters, Marie and Manda, gaze at one another unaware of their future predicaments. The title, Casque d'Or, refers to Marie (Simone Signoret) golden hair, which serves a symbolic meaning through the hypnotic effects it appears to have on men. Manda (Serge Reggiani) seems to be under its spell, as he passionately stares at Marie.

The carpenter Georges Manda's luck, or maybe more rightfully misfortune, began when he accidentally bumped into his old jail friend, Raymond. Through Raymond's acquaintances and criminal friends he meets Marie (Simone Signoret) who currently is together with Roland (William Sabatier). Bad omens surround the initial meeting between Marie and Manda, as Marie's jealous boyfriend is ready to turn to violence in order to end to Marie's infatuation.

Roland's boss, Felix Leca (Claude Dauphin), shows his interest in the love quarrel, as he openly expresses his concern for Roland, but internally has an alternative motive to why he wants to help Roland. Felix displays his own interest to Marie and requests that she respond to him later that evening after having thought about it. In the evening Manda appears to express his love for Marie while Roland's jealousy flares out as he suggests that they should go outside to solve their mutual problem. Felix lurks in the social shadow as the two men go out in the backyard to fight for Marie, and he appears the instant before the fight in order to put his dubious plans into action.

In the 1950's most films coming out of Hollywood were heavily influenced by guidelines of what was morally acceptable to depict. This is much due to the harm that the Catholic Legion of Decency accomplished in the 1930s, as the religious organization began to influence the creative process of filmmaking through their moral stipulations. Casque d'Or does not show these stipulations as the story dwells on the nitty-gritty of a love affair amidst criminal elements in Paris. Jacques Becker's story does not glorify or bottle up the darkness in human nature. He simply illustrates the actions of a group of characters in a specific social environment during the turn of the century. It does not turn into a period film, which he also tried to avoid. Instead Becker depicts a doomed couple hoping for a better time and place, as they are aware of their difficult situation.

In a historical perspective Casque d'Or is a masterpiece. François Truffaut and other directors thought it had a tremendous effect on the French New Wave some years later. This is amusing to ponder, as the film was at first received with very little praise in France while the Brits thought it was one of the best films of the year. Today an audience can still rejoice in the triumph that the film offers to its viewers from the beginning to the end, as the end offers something much darker than expected.

Casque D'Or may take a little while to get into, with the first half hour being largely milieu and set-up, but once the plot kicks in it's compelling. Seen today it seems certain to have been one of Scorsese's influences in Gangs of New York, not least because Jacques Becker takes the standard period costume drama setting and then plays a down-and-dirty movie that pays no attention to the niceties you're expecting: these characters really are low lives. The knife-fight is tough stuff, and its aftermath beautifully staged, and the finale has real emotional power - not least the shots of Serge Reggiani's almost-dead waltz with Smone Signoret that in a more 'modern' (1940-50s) setting would have pegged out his fate from the moment he met her. Having only seen Signoret in her later haggard roles, it was also a surprise to see just how luminous she was in her youth. Impressive stuff.

Not being a Becker fan *at all* I guess I can be objective. This film
is enjoyable like if it weren't a classic. Once begun, you'll want to
watch it till the end. Simone looks gorgeous here, IMDb reviewer
"pzanardo" from Padova, Italy is right when he writes that the director
seems to have filmed her specially well. By the way, have you noticed
how bad Italians fare on French period films? Thérèse Raquin (1953)
from the next year is one of a string of examples...

The Mafia aspect is so naive it's almost lovable in comparison with
nowadays'. So is the city, the police, the woman/man relationships,
class divisions... Félix Leca's character is stereotype incarnate, but
at the same time very "believable", in spite of his constant narcissism
and tics.

Trevor Willsmer on Amazon is right at why it works: we expect a
romantic period piece but during the knives fight in the beginning we
realize crime is never nice, only made to look so. Yet somehow, our
aesthetically expectations still are about something "nice", while the
plot is dark. The police seems like a pantomime, in most of the film
the State seems to be absent, and Félix the only one who does the
thinking for everybody. The romance is almost enhanced by the heavy
censorship. Nothing whatsoever is "shown" (even a kiss on the grass
turns into the sky :)) but you feel enough passion. Signoret specially
knows how to vibrate with a swagger attitude. Look at her entering a
bar, greeting everybody, self assured and always knowing how to deal
with men. Manda on the contrary, is a "too perfect hero" to be of my
liking. My favourite scene is when he's doing nothing with a branch and
she takes the initiative: "Kiss me" and then we have to watch the sky,
if not, we'll burn :).

Randy Buck on Amazon is right the film has a sort of documentary feel
totally lacking in "Gangs of New York", that Willsmer writes was
heavily influenced by this gem.

Then only moment Félix Leca looses the grip of authority is when he is
responsible of Raymond's death. Even thugs have rules... On the
contrary, when they dispose of the blonde barman who talked too much,
only the dumbest of them feels sorry for it.

It's true it's not exactly believable that a mobster would be so cautious and "Machiavellian" when he could just grab and use the lady, but, sincerely, I don't care for feasibility in this sort of films.

It's only with a twinge of nostalgia that I corroborate the swarm of
reviewers & fans this film has. I'm absolutely glad about it, as of
having watched this film.

This is Belle Époque Paris, which can be a dangerous world where there are few second chances, and none for lovers. Innocence seems to have been long ago wrung out of Marie (Simone Signoret). She's a prostitute and the bought woman of Roland, a handsome, arrogant member of Felix Leca's gang, a group of bullyboy thieves, pimps and murderers. Leca (Claude Dauphin) combines slyness, danger and oiliness in equal measure. Leca wants Marie, and on his terms. She's beautiful in a coarse and knowing way, with a swagger and a hand on her hip, a gangster's girl who takes being slapped as part of the life. When Marie meets Georges Manda, "Jo" (Serge Reggiani), a man who had been part of the life, had served time and now is a carpenter, everything changes. In the dance at the start of the movie, with the gangsters in their tight suits, their women in flouncy gowns and ribbons, cheap waltzes playing, beer and wine on the tables, Marie sees Jo, likes him and flirts. For Jo, he can't take his eyes off her. The music plays on, they dance. The next day Marie sets out to see Jo at his carpenter's shop. Her feelings deepen in some inexplicable way. Marie regains a measure of innocence with Jo and we watch this happen. Jo will do anything to protect her. Marie will do anything to protect Jo. Leca, always there, is determined to have his way.

What first appears to be a turn-of-the-century tale about gangsters and their women turns seamlessly and with foreboding into a hopeless and emotional love story. When we last see Marie I started to choke up. Does Casque d'Or, the story of Marie and Jo, reach the level of tragedy? Probably not, but it will do.

The Criterion DVD of Casque d'Or looks just fine. Among the extras is a commentary track that I didn't listen to and two interesting, short filmed interviews, the first with Signoret recorded in 1963 and the second with Reggiani recorded in 1995.

Jacques Becker, the director, didn't make many movies. He was 54 when he died. Criterion has released two. Both are excellent. Le Trou - Criterion Collection is a tough, nerve-wracking and ironic tale of several prisoners who attempt to dig their way to freedom. Touchez Pas au Grisbi - Criterion Collection is a gangster film, but even more a view of what middle age will do to us, even gangsters. You won't know whether to smile or just shake your head when Jean Gabin has to reach for his glasses to read a phone number.

It also is somehow pleasantly satisfying to recall Signoret and Reggiani four years earlier in the opening and closing sequences of La Ronde, she the prostitute who loses her heart and he the soldier who quickly forgets her.

Jacques Becker's classic romance, cleaned up by Criterion in this splendid new transfer, is essential viewing for anyone interested in French cinema. Signoret, never seen to better advantage than here, and Serge Reggiani are unforgettable as the film's doomed lovers. Co-star Claude Dauphin, as the treacherous gang head, is also masterful, as indeed is the entire cast. In doing a costume film, Becker was concerned that the actors inhabit the clothes and period settings, not vice-versa, and CASQUE D'OR certainly achieves that; eschewing either sentimentality or melodrama, at times the action seems almost documentary in feel. Despite the censorship limitations of the period, there's a marvelous sensuality to the romance on display here -- the morning-after scene between the lovers glows with passion. Somewhat ignored in France upon its initial release, this movie's reputation has grown through the years. This fine DVD release will win for it a new generation of fans.

Wonderfully filmed and acted story of tragic love amidst the French
underworld at the turn of the 20th century.

The complex, layered relationships, and subtle manipulations and
interplay between the characters show the hallmark of all Jacques
Becker's work, an interest in the subtle details of human behavior and
emotion, instead of grand, sweeping, complex plots.

Both romantic and cynical, and filmed without any attempt to create a
cliché 'period' look, this brings an air of reality and immediacy to a
story that in other hands seem familiar, maudlin, or trite.

The Criterion transfer is excellent (no surprise).

Good typical quiet european noir from this period of film making. Subdued male lead is interestingly different than American loud-driven lead characters. Sad love story ultimately drives plot.

"Casque D'Or," ("Golden Helmet," or "Golden Marie,") (1952), is a classic black and white French gangster film/crime drama/romance/costume drama, set in Paris at about the turn of the 20th Century, the 1890's "Belle Epoque." In springtime, at an Impressionistic, riverside, open-air dance hall, the members of Leca's gang are relaxing with their women. One of them, the cheerful prostitute Marie, aka "Casque d'Or" (Golden Helmet) meets Georges Manda, an ex-con trying to go straight as a carpenter. The pair instantly has eyes only for each other, an instance of what the French call a "coup de foudre," literally a thunderbolt of madness. But the man who keeps Marie, Roland is jealous, and the boss Leca himself has his eye on her, giving us a story of the glory of love, illicit romance, death, friendship and jealousy during the Belle Epoque. The movie was written and directed by Jacques Becker and it was not successful upon its initial French release. However, after it received critical acclaim in New York, and Simone Signoret's nomination for a BAFTA (the British equivalent of an Oscar) for her performance as Marie, it began to be recognized for the masterpiece it is. It has now been painstakingly restored by the Criterion Collection.

Becker came by his filmic Impressionism naturally, as he studied with the great French director Jean Renoir (Grand Illusion - Criterion Collection), son of the widely beloved Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. "Casque" successfully recreates the ambiance of Paris at the turn of the century: it is bathed in dazzling golden light that frequently reflects off Signoret's golden hair. The exquisite black and white photography was by Robert Lefevbre, who had poetic ways to get the shots M. Becker wanted. The atmospheric music of Georges Van Parys will remind the viewer of the paintings and places of that era. Location shooting was done at Annet-sur-Marne, Seine-et-Marne, and Belleville, France: the latter then a small country town near Paris, now absorbed into the greater city. Sources say that Becker had wanted to make a gangland picture for years, but couldn't raise the financing, until he signed La Signoret, then at the height of her beauty, power, and sensuality - also at the height of her affair with Yves Montand (The Wages Of Fear - (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]), then simply a cabaret singer. But the director now needed a major part for Signoret, and so based his plot on actual police records of the time. The straight-forward, linear plot has almost the neatness of a De Maupassant short story. Despite it's being a gangland tale, there's little onscreen violence in the film, nor onscreen sex - but some of Manda's and Marie's fully-clothed scenes in this moody romance could scorch film. And despite the corsets and horse-drawn cabs, the film has more in common with the bleak, fatalistic films being released at the time it was made than it does with conventional costume pictures.

Georges Manda ( Serge Reggiani, La Ronde) also a cabaret singer and then a close friend of both Montand's and Signoret's) has been released from prison where he served five years for an undisclosed crime. He's a soft-looking, taciturn man with a handlebar moustache, becomes a hard working carpenter, determined to go straight. But when Raymond (Raymond Bussieres), a fellow gang member with whom he served time in prison, introduces him to Marie, the life he was trying to build begins to crumple. Manda kills the jealous Roland (William Sabatier) in a knife fight. The gang boss Leca (Claude Dauphin--Le Plaisir), to the world a successful wine merchant, actually a cunning and Machiavellian outlaw, now sees his opportunity to get Manda out of the picture and take Marie for himself; but he fails to realize Manda will insist on doing the right thing.

The acting of the three stars is superb; although the laconic Manda speaks fewer than twenty lines in the film, we understand him perfectly. And Signoret gives us a strong, unashamed prostitute, wholly in love, but still mindful of who and what she is. Like Zola's "Nana," Marie is neither villain nor victim: she's an elemental force of nature, a femme fatale who will be responsible for the deaths of several men. (Mind you, this is a part frequently almost laughingly overplayed, but this star and director have not fallen into that trap.) Signoret is simply monumental, as one of Picasso's women. The action takes place over the course of only a few days, but in France that's apparently long enough - if passion runs high enough -- to change, or end a life. The intensity of the characters' emotions and the suddenness of their violence might tear another picture apart, but Becker, and his stars, tells their story with reserve.

An IMDB reviewer calling himself Melvelvit1, from the NYC suburbs, has done some stunning research and tells us:

"The bands of roughnecks of Belleville were also a passionate lot, not like the cynical pimps of Montmartre and La Chapelle. Here a man took out a knife for a girl he really cared for. In 1902 the story of 'Casque d'Or' made the headlines throughout Paris, both east and west. Two enemy bands of Apaches Mohicans de Paris - sporting their customary insignia of caps, bell-bottom trousers and polka-dotted scarves, had taken to the streets that lay between Belleville and Charonne: 'Le Popincourt' headed by the Corsican Leca, 'Les Orteaux' by Manda, l'Homme! The object of their dispute was not territory but a girl called Amélie Hélie, nicknamed 'Casque d'Or', with a stunning, golden-reddish mane. The confrontation turned into a fullscale pitched battle on Rue des Haies, in which neither knife blades nor guns were spared. To the inquisitive public prosecutor Manda retorted during his trial: 'We fought each other, the Corsican and myself, because we love the same girl. We are crazy about her. Don't you know what it is to love a girl?'"

Jacques Becker must be considered both a luminous artist and a director. His legacy is a trilogy of masterpieces: "Casque d'Or", Touchez Pas au Grisbi - Criterion Collection, Le Trou - Criterion Collection. Signoret, who was later often typecast as a femme fatale, won the Best Actress in a Leading Role for Room at the Top, (1959), and was also Oscar-nominated for Best Actress for Ship of Fools (1965.) You've got star and director at the top of their games here: it's a must-see.

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

"Casque d'Or" known in English as "Golden Marie" or "Golden Helmet" is a nice French film about Belle Epoque women and their relationships with different men.

It has an interesting plot and has some nice scenery also. The film's music includes the ubiquitous waltz "Over the Waves" by Juventino Rosas, a song very often heard at amusement parks but rarely mentioned by name.

The DVD has a nice set of special features. There is an optional audio commentary by Peter Cowie, silent footage made during the film's production with optional commentary by Philip Kemp, a scene from the French TV series "cineastes de notre temps", a 1963 interview with actress Simone Signoret and a 1995 interview with actor Serge Reggiani.

In addition, there is an optional English language dubbed soundtrack with some of the original actors doing their lines.

This is a nice release and worth getting.

Having just finished watching two of Jacques Becker's gangster films of the 1950s, "Casque d'Or" ("Golden Hair") and "Touchez pas au grisbi" ("Hands off the loot"), I fear that most 21st century viewers will be underwhelmed by both, and such a conclusion is a pity because both films are well made for their time and genre. "Grisbi" is, _mutatis mutandis_, the better of the two films, and (I know; I know) although it influenced all the subsequent French detective films, including "Rififi," it is very pedestrian by today's standards, which possess "enhanced filmic techniques," reminiscent of the "piece-bien-fait" (French well-made-dramas) of the late 19th century, the "formula dramas" against which George Bernard Shaw so valiantly fought. Nevertheless, compared to "Rififi" or even the Goddard gangster-films, "Grisbi" and "Casque d'Or" are very pedestrian in their pacing, requiring a connoisseur's patience in viewing them. Additionally, one may read all the attached critical notes included in the DVDs boxes and find them curiously unhelpful in accustoming oneself to the slow pacing of each film. The type of suspense and expectation present in the late 20th century gangster genre is just not to be found in Mon. Becker's works. Surely, surely, these films require further "adjustment" of one's expectations to Mon. Becker's aesthetic style. The Susan Sontag approach in her "Against Interpretation" will not suffice here, because both these films require further accommodation in one's narrative anticipations, formed by a half-century of subsequent gangster films.
The problem with the Sontag's view point of "Against Interpretation," in reference to an historically distinct aesthetic, is that she posits the notion that a viewing audience or reader (for such works) must possess the same cultural- perspective or developed-sensibility possessed by the original audience for which the works were intended, or must demonstrate an educated sensibility to comprehend such cultural and _weltanschauung_ differences and, hopefully, such an audience will mentally amend for them. Unfortunately, this adjustment does not appear to be forthcoming in mass-cultural audiences of the early 21st century, or even in the semi-educated audience of the multicultural "scholars" therein; for, rather than adjusting one's waking reality to that of another, many of these politically correct writers merely impose a rigid ideology as a "Procrustic bed" of one-size-fits-all, underscoring an unabashed ignorance of the aesthetic nuances in any artistic work of the past, produced as series of "now points," to use T.S. Eliot's terminology, which do not appear to migrate well from one generation to another.
Yet, oddly enough, Mon. Becker appears to use this Sontagian approach in "Casque d'Or" by imposing, rightly or wrongly, contemporary behavior of the 1950s onto his characters living in the early 1900s, a period-piece for the uninitiated, as it were. Now, one should realize that such an imposition supposedly allows for contemporary audiences to "empathize" with fictional characters whose behavior patterns would reflect their own in such a selfsame, contemporary situation. The problem, of course, is that the pattern of behavior and action of Mon. Becker's French petit gang in 1901 is conditioned by each member's upbringing, beliefs, and situational culture of that time period. If a 1950s set of social conventions, standards and values were to be imposed upon such a petit gang, the behavior patterns and social interaction would be altogether different from that which Mon. Becker has thrust upon his characters in "Casque d'Or." One surely recognizes that the behavior of the 1901 characters and the outcome of those actions would be radically different from the behavior patterns of such characters today (or in 1952), and such a recognition leaves an abrupt gap or lacuna in the logical flow of the action/consequence narrative in "Casque d'Or," which is difficult, or impossible, for one to overcome psychologically. "Golden-Haired Marie" should not behave in 1901 as Paris Hilton does in 2005: atavism and anachronism should not inhabit historic narrative, but should forever remain a "visitation unimplor'd" to quote John Milton. We are, today, as far removed in time from Mon. Becker's film, as his film was from its historical setting when released in 1952.
Such an historic-period film as "Casque d'Or" requires both the "aesthetic distance" and an "historical perspective" if the narrative is to have logical, as well as psychological, consequence. "Casque d'Or" suffers from this "cognitive dissonance" by failing to bridge the historicity of the different time periods, a point which is crucial, perhaps fatal, to the success of the film with subsequent audiences, for it may disappoint upon first and subsequent viewings thereof. [The film was a failure when it was first released in France.]
That being said, Mon. Becker's use and emphasis of character-study reminds one that the cinema is not entirely "devoid of ideas" as Mary McCarthy wrote, at least not in the ideation of character development; in fact, "Casque d'Or" (like "Grisbi") is, above all, about character, the narrative of it being set within a narrow parameter of actionable-options available to each of them. That the consequence of behavior occurs as it does, need not necessarily stem from an unalterable determinism. No, quite the contrary; Mon. Becker's visual narrative reinforces the existential _angst_ in which options are always present, sometimes realized, sometime ignored. Within both films is a recognizable, operating, ethical system which especially emphasizes the virtue of loyalty, a virtue which is manifestly absent from the cultural currency of most of the current gangster-genre cinema. In this respect "Casque d'Or" is almost Aeschylian.
Consequently, like an Aeschylus drama, "Grisbi" is a fatalistic film, reinforced by Jean Gabin's terse performance as Max le Menteur, a precursor to such subsequent European film characters as Tony in Jules Dassin's "Rififi", or "Marcello" in Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," both world-weary "players" who "knows the score" and can only await the outcome of a set of consequences, determined or otherwise, any or all of which are deleterious, negative, and inescapable. Accordingly, it is the "ethos" of Gabin's sad-but-wiser character which gives moral weight and "carries" "Grisbi" to its conclusion of, you guessed it, . . . _c'est la vie_. Of course, these ill-fated, albeit, emotionally appealing anti-heroes have populated drama since the Renaissance, but Gabin's performance (arguably one of the best of his career), has special weight in the hands of a director like Jacques Becker, whose nuanced approach to cinema-narrative requires of the audience erudition, sympathy, patience, and above all, a developed, aesthetic sensibility. That "Casque d'Or" or "Touchez pas au grisbi" will find in the 21st such an audience in sufficient number remains, so far, a statistical variable, but, as Max might say, " _C'est la vie_."