Jacques Becker only directed 12 feature films (and two halves - he quit one and was a replacement on another). Despite this, he made three classics: the gangster film TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI, the prison escape film LE TROU and the Belle Epoque underworld romance CASQUE D'OR.
The film rightly won Simone Signoret her first BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress, she would go on to win two more.
She plays free-spirited Marie, whose lover is in a criminal gang run by venal Félix Leca who secretly desires Marie.
When the gang and girlfriends visit an outdoor dance hall, gang member Raymond meets Georges who he was in prison with once but Georges is now going straight working for a carpenter. Marie and Georges are instantly attracted to each other, triggering a chain of events which brings tragedy to all.
Serge Reggiani and Claude Dauphin lead an excellent supporting cast.
Shelf or charity shop? Now in the limbo of a plastic storage box, CASQUE D'OR is worth keeping. Jacques Becker had been Jean Renoir's assistant director on nine films in the 1930s including PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE (in which he also briefly appeared) and in CASQUE D'OR's opening scene in the outdoor dance hall and the later rural sequence where Marie and Georges escape Paris for a few days, you can see his influence. Beautifully invoking Impressionist imagery both in town and country scenes, the film failed at the French box-office but was one of the main reasons why Becker was championed by the later French New Wave directors. One to treasure... especially for the way Becker lifted his grim final sequence with a touching coda.
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