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''Casque d'Or'' ("Golden Helmet") is a 1952 French
historical History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
directed by
Jacques Becker Jacques Becker (; 15 September 1906 – 21 February 1960) was a French film director and screenwriter. His films, made during the 1940s and 1950s, encompassed a wide variety of genres, and they were admired by some of the filmmakers who led th ...
. It is a
Belle Époque The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque (; French for "Beautiful Epoch") is a period of French and European history, usually considered to begin around 1871–1880 and to end with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Occurring during the era ...
tragedy, the story of an ill-fated love affair between characters played by
Simone Signoret Simone Signoret (; born Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker; 25 March 1921 – 30 September 1985) was a French actress. She received various accolades, including an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, a César Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a ...
and
Serge Reggiani Serge Reggiani (2 May 1922 – 23 July 2004) was an Italian-French actor and singer. He was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy and moved to France with his parents at the age of eight. After studying acting at the Conservatoire des arts cinématog ...
. The story was loosely based on an infamous
love triangle A love triangle or eternal triangle is a scenario or circumstance, usually depicted as a rivalry, in which two people are pursuing or involved in a romantic relationship with one person, or in which one person in a romantic relationship with so ...
between the prostitute Amélie Élie and the Apache gang leaders Manda and Leca, which was the subject of much sensational newspaper reporting during 1902. It was shot at the
Billancourt Studios Billancourt Studios was a film studio in Paris which operated between 1922 and 1992. Located in Boulogne-Billancourt, it was one of the leading French studios. It was founded in the silent era by Henri Diamant-Berger. During the Second World War ...
in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
and on location around the city. The film's sets were designed by the
art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film industry, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and ...
Jean d'Eaubonne Jean d'Eaubonne (March 8, 1903 – July 30, 1971) was a French art director. He received an Oscar nomination in 1951 for his work on Max Ophüls's '' La Ronde''. Selected filmography * '' The Polish Jew'' (1931) * '' Love and Luck'' (1932) * '' ...
.


Plot

Marie (
Simone Signoret Simone Signoret (; born Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker; 25 March 1921 – 30 September 1985) was a French actress. She received various accolades, including an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, a César Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a ...
), a beautiful woman of the demimonde known for her cap of golden hair, is unhappily involved with Roland, a charmless criminal who is a part of a local syndicate headed by Félix Leca. At a dance, Marie is introduced to the handsome young carpenter and ex-convict Georges Manda by his old friend Raymond, who is now also with Leca's gang. Manda and Raymond, having spent time in prison together, have a strong bond of friendship. Instantly, Marie is visibly attracted to Manda, much to Roland's chagrin. After Marie and Manda find themselves locked in an intimate dance, Roland attempts to bully Manda, who then promptly knocks him out cold. Observing Marie's growing interest in Manda, Roland's jealousy builds. Unbeknownst to Roland, Marie has learned that Manda has a fiancee and she has tried to forget about him, resigning herself to life as a gun moll. However, Manda shows up at a nightclub to take Marie from Roland, who then decides to fight him out back as several syndicate members watch, including Raymond. Leca is present as well, since he has asked Marie to meet him at the club with an answer to his offer to "buy" her from Roland. Outside the club, what begins as an ordinary fistfight is suddenly intensified when Leca deviously elevates the danger by throwing a knife on the ground between the two men. Manda gains control of the knife and stabs Roland, killing him. Manda's fighting skills appear to impress Leca, who offers him the late Roland's now-vacated spot in the gang. Manda declines. Meanwhile, a man inside the club who has noticed trouble brewing outside has alerted the authorities, and the police arrive at the scene while the syndicate members are attempting to remove Roland's lifeless body. As a result, everyone flees, including Marie, who seeks refuge away from the syndicate at a nearby village. Roland's body is discovered by police, who begin a murder investigation. As it turns out, the man who had tipped off the police of the nightclub killing later turns up dead himself, under mysterious circumstances; the syndicate members quietly celebrate and, at Leca's urging, contribute money towards his funeral. Manda decides it is best to flee town. He is contacted by Marie and the two meet at her village. The two lovers live an idyllic life together until Leca intervenes by using his connections with a crooked cop to frame Raymond for Roland's killing. Leca believes his plan will force Manda out of hiding to confess in order to save his friend, bringing Marie under his control. When Manda hears the news of Raymond's wrongful arrest for murder, he is unable to remain at peace with Marie. She awakens in the morning to discover that Manda has returned to town to turn himself in to the police. At the police station, Manda writes out a sworn confession explaining that he, not Raymond, killed Roland during a knife fight. Meanwhile, Marie goes to Leca and pleads with him to help Manda escape from police custody, sensing there is no other way out for her lover. Leca leads her on and forces his way onto her; desperate, she allows him to have his way with her. The police decide to charge Raymond as an accessory to the homicide rather than free him. At the police station, Raymond learns that Leca was behind the frame-up. He later shares this information with Manda while they are being transported between jails, suddenly motivating the two men to pull off a daring escape from police custody, with Marie's help. However, Raymond is mortally wounded by police gunfire during the action. Later, as Raymond lay dying among Leca's gang at the local tavern, Manda hunts down Leca to avenge his friend's certain death and his now doomed love. At Leca's house, Manda discovers that Marie has recently been in Leca's bed; he realizes Leca has used the situation to have his way with Marie. Enraged, Manda finally locates Leca and chases him down in broad daylight into a police station, whereupon he grabs a pistol from a holster in front of stunned officers, barricading the two men into a side room and firing repeatedly at a trembling Leca, killing him. Finally apprehended by police, Manda's fate is now sealed. With the two killings on his hands, Manda is sentenced to die by the guillotine. A broken Marie watches in horror from the window of an upstairs flat overlooking a courtyard as her condemned lover is being executed.


Cast

*
Simone Signoret Simone Signoret (; born Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker; 25 March 1921 – 30 September 1985) was a French actress. She received various accolades, including an Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, a César Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a ...
as Marie 'Casque d'Or' *
Serge Reggiani Serge Reggiani (2 May 1922 – 23 July 2004) was an Italian-French actor and singer. He was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy and moved to France with his parents at the age of eight. After studying acting at the Conservatoire des arts cinématog ...
as Georges Manda * Claude Dauphin as Félix Leca *
Raymond Bussières Raymond Bussières (3 November 1907 – 29 April 1982) was a French film actor. He appeared in more than 160 films between 1933 and 1982. He was born in Ivry-la-Bataille and died in Paris. He is buried in Marchenoir. He was married to the ac ...
as Raymond *William Sabatier as Roland Dupuis *
Gaston Modot Gaston Modot (31 December 1887 – 20 February 1970) was a French actor. For more than 50 years he performed for the cinema working with a number of great French directors. Biography Modot lived in Montmartre at the beginning of the 20th cen ...
as Danard *Paul Barge as Police Insp. Juliani *
Odette Barencey Odette Barencey (20 August 1893 – 4 March 1981) was a French film actress. She appeared in more than 50 films between 1927 and 1958. She was married to the actor Marcel Barencey. Selected filmography * '' My Childish Father'' (1930) * ' ...
as La mère d'Eugène *
Loleh Bellon Marie Laure Viole Bellon, generally known as Loleh Bellon, (1925–1999) was a French stage and film actress as well as a playwright. In 1949, for her role in Robert Desnos' ''La Place de l'Étoile'', she was awarded the ''Prix des Jeunes comédie ...
as Léonie Danard *
Dominique Davray Dominique Davray (born Marie-Louise Gournay; 27 January 1919 in Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,4 ...
as Julie *
Jacqueline Cantrelle Jacqueline Georgette Cantrelle (23 September 1925 – 10 October 1994) was a French actress. Cantrelle was the daughter of the violinist William Cantrelle (1888–1956) and the comedian Marianne Cantrelle (1900–1972). Her grandmother was the a ...


Final scene

The film's final sequence is famous. After Manda's surrender to the police, the film shows Marie arriving at night, with one of Leca's ex-henchmen, at a cheap inn in the city, where she rents a room. The filmmakers provide no immediate clues for the audience as to why this is happening. Only later is it revealed that the room in which she is staying overlooks the courtyard in which her lover, Manda, is to be executed. British film critic Roy Armes wrote: "Becker shows all the hurried ugliness and squalor that surrounds the guillotine, so that we feel this execution to be an affront to humanity."
French New Wave French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconocla ...
director
François Truffaut François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more tha ...
, who was a fervent admirer of the film's director, Jacques Becker, particularly praised this scene. He wrote: "If you're at all interested in how stories are constructed, you cannot fail to admire the ingenuity of the plot, particularly the strong, oblique, unexpected way it gets abruptly to Manda's execution in a scene that is as beautiful as it is mysterious, as the Casque d'Or
arie Arie is a masculine given name. As a Dutch name, Arie (pronounced ) is generally a short form of Adrianus, but sometimes also of Arend or Arent, Arnout or Arnoud, or even Aaron. As a Hebrew, Jewish, or Israeli name, Arie (pronounced ) is a tr ...
arrives in the middle of the night at a disreputable hotel. When I or any of my fellow scenarists are in trouble, we often say to each other, 'How about a ''Casque d'Or'' solution?'"


Reception

The ''Lexikon des Internationalen Films'' (Encyclopedia of International Film) wrote: "With ''Casque d'Or'', Jacques Becker has made the most stylistically clear and filmically convincing film about
belle époque Belle may refer to: * Belle (''Beauty and the Beast'') * Belle (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Belle (surname), a list of people Brands and enterprises * Belle Air, a former airline with headquarters in Tirana, Albania ...
. The drawing of the shady
milieu The social environment, social context, sociocultural context or milieu refers to the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops. It includes the culture that the individual was educate ...
, the deeply human interpretation of the love relationship between Manda and Marie – that is fascinatingly dramatised and convinced not least by the excellent actors Simone Signoret and Serge Reggiani. Becker proves to be a master of character representation in mastering a poetic realism that only a few directors of this time succeeded in doing." ''Das große Personenlexikon des Films'' (The Great Biographical Dictionary of Film Persons) found: "His milieu portrait from the turn of the century, the clearly structured story about a gangster rivalry, is considered Becker's masterpiece". ''Reclams Filmführer'' (Reclam's Film Guide) says: "Becker was not interested in making a "historical gangster film"; he created a very unusual film about the "belle époque", in which people are more important than events, feelings more real than criminal involvement. A film of unusual beauty, strict will to style, clear dramaturgy – probably Becker's masterpiece." Buchers Enzyklopädie des Films (Bucher's encyclopedia of film) reads: "Becker gives a masterly account of Paris at the turn of the century, both in the set-up and in the drawing of the characters. Despite the bleak plot, the film has a life-affirming trait, especially in the exterior shots, which is primarily due to the strong charisma of Simone Signoret in the leading role." On
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on , with a
weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
rating of 8.5/10.


Cultural references

In 1986 the French Government issued a postage stamp dedicated to centenary of the French cinema depicting Jacques Becker's "Casque d'Or". In
Don Winslow Don Winslow (born October 31, 1953) is an American retired author best known for his award-winning and internationally bestselling crime novels, including '' Savages'', ''The Force'' and the Cartel Trilogy. Early life Winslow was born on Oct ...
's novel ''
Satori is a Japanese Buddhist term for awakening, "comprehension; understanding". It is derived from the Japanese verb satoru. In the Zen Buddhist tradition, ''satori'' refers to a deep experience of '' kenshō'', "seeing into one's true nature ...
'', the main female character Solange Picard watches ''Casque d'Or'' over and over in a cinema in
Saigon , population_density_km2 = 4,292 , population_density_metro_km2 = 697.2 , population_demonym = Saigonese , blank_name = GRP (Nominal) , blank_info = 2019 , blank1_name = – Total , blank1_ ...
and cries at the end of it each time.


Proposed remake

In 1965, MGM announced it would make a musical remake of the film produced by
Jacques Bar Jacques Bar (12 September 1921, Châteauroux – 19 January 2009, Boulogne-Billancourt) was a French film producer who made more than 80 films. Select credits * '' Branquignol'' (1949) * ''My Seal and Them'' (1951) * '' The Adventures of Mandri ...
, directed by
Julien Duvivier Julien Duvivier (; 8 October 1896 – 29 October 1967) was a French film director and screenwriter. He was prominent in French cinema in the years 1930–1960. Amongst his most original films, chiefly notable are ''La Bandera (film), La Bandera'', ...
and starring
Ann-Margret Ann-Margret Olsson (born April 28, 1941) is a Swedish–American actress, singer, and dancer. As an actress and singer, she is credited as Ann-Margret. She is known for her roles in ''Pocketful of Miracles'' (1961), ''State Fair'' (1962), ''B ...
.


References


External links

* *
''Casque d'or: Tenderness and Violence''
an essay by Philip Kemp at the
Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
{{Authority control 1952 films 1950s historical drama films 1952 crime drama films French historical drama films French crime drama films Films set in Paris Films about prostitution in Paris Films set in the 1900s Films based on real people Films directed by Jacques Becker Films produced by Robert and Raymond Hakim French black-and-white films Films shot in Paris Films shot at Billancourt Studios 1950s English-language films Belle Époque 1950s French films