alr

Casque d'or
(Golden Marie)

Screening on Film
Directed by Jacques Becker.
With Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani, Claude Dauphin .
France, 1952, 35mm, black & white, 94 min.
French with English subtitles.
Print source: Janus Films

Opening onto a pastoral setting worthy of both Renoirs, the Impressionist painter and his filmmaking son with whom Becker worked on many occasions, Casque d’or delicately glitters with all of the finely wrought detail of a master artisan’s work. Becker respectfully departs from the Reniors, however, by revealing the underpainting of a Belle Époque Paris, one whose waltzing couples are gangsters and prostitutes; yet in his sensitive construction, they are not defined by their profession but by their complicated humanity. Magnetically drawn to the hypnotic eyes and golden tresses of Simone Signoret’s kept Marie, the recently reformed Manda—played by a laconic Serge Reggiani—swiftly steals her heart, thus enraging another of her admirers, the local crime boss. Marie shares with her lover an intelligent, fearless independence and devotion to authentic human connection. Locked—and briefly lost—in a utopian passion, the heroic couple are not above duplicity or depravity; nor are Becker’s unscrupulous criminals beneath vulnerability or empathy. The dangerous terrain of Becker’s fin de siècle landscape encompasses both the sublime and the stark; Becker blends them with a heart-shattering seamlessness.

Part of film series

Read more

Rediscovering Jacques Becker

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Melville et Cie.

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

The Shochiku Centennial Collection

Read more

António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Novo

Read more
sepia photo of Artie Freedman in silhouette with a video camera at show

Boston Punk Rewound / Unbound. The Arthur Freedman Collection

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more

From the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection

Read more
a mausoleum that looks like a miniature Spanish cathedral, next to a variety of others, against an evening sky

The Night Watchman by Natalia Almada