"Like Moliere, Jacques Becker died on a strange and terrible battlefield: that of artisitic creation. It was the moment when Caroline bites her finger till she draws blood because she has left Edouard, when Golden Marie (Cristobal's Gold, or course) forces back her tears as Manda climbs the scaffold. It was Saturday evening. The studio phoned to say that the mixing of LE TROU was finally complete. Our btoher Jacques breathed again. Mortally wounded for so long, he could now give up the struggle without dishonour. And a few minutes later, Jacques Becker was no longer alive. It was Sunday morning, the hour when Max plays his favourite record, when Lupin meets the Princess at Maxim's when day finally dawns over 7 rue de l'Estrapade.

"There are several good ways of making French films. Italian style, like Renoir. Viennese, like Ophuls. New Yorker, like Melville. But only Becker was and is French as France, French as Fontenelle's rose and Bonnot's gang. I happened to meet him during the sound mixing of LE TROU. Already ill, he was more handsome than ever. He talked about Les Trois Mousquetaires and suddenly I understood. That dark moustache, than grey hair ... he was D'Artagnan in Twenty Years After. And he was Lupin too. Just compare a photograph of Becker seated behind the wheel of his Mercedes with the opening shot of LES AVENTURES DE ARSENE LUPIN and you will see that Robert Lamoureux was his spitting image.

"So Jacques Lupin, alias Artagnan Becker, is dead. Let us pretend to be moved, for we know from LE TESTAMENT D'ORPHEE that poets only pretend to die."

~ Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinema 106, April 1960. Quoted in Godard on Godard, translated and edited by Tom Milne.

[Includes references to Becker's EDOUARD ET CAROLINE (1951), L'OR DU CRISTOBAL (1940), CASQUE D'OR (1952), TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (1954), LES AVENTURES D'ARSENE LUPIN (1957), RUE DE L'ESTRAPADE (1953). Becker was planning a film of Dumas' The Three Musketeers.]

Surprisingly emotional stuff from Godard, I thought. And a reminder that I need to take a look at some of the Becker films lurking in my collection. I saw TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI back in the '80s, I think, but don't remember a thing. But I love that feeling of watching a long-forgotten movie and feeling it all come back.

Reparto principal:
Simone Signoret ... Marie 'Casque d'Or'
Serge Reggiani ... Georges Manda
Raymond Bussières ... Raymond
Claude Dauphin ... Félix Leca
William Sabatier ... Roland Dupuis
Marc Goutas ... Guillaume
Paul Azaïs ... Ponsard
Claude Castaing ... Fredo
Jean Clarieux ... Paul
Paul Barge ... inspector Giuliani

Fotografía:
Robert Lefebvre

Música original:
Georges Van Parys

Montaje:
Marguerite Renoir

Palabras clave:
1890s, Based On True Story, Blackmail, Bleak, cards, Character Name In Title, Code Of Honor, Crime, Crime Drama, Disturbing, Downbeat, Drama, Duel, escape, Extramarital Affair, Film a Clef, France, Friendship, Gangster, Guillotine, Love, Melodrama, Miscarriage of Justice, Murder, Nail-biters, Paris France, Prostitute, Questionable for Children, romance, Sacrifice, Scandal, Seduction, surrender, turn of the 20th century, Turn Of The Century, weapons

TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (Jacques Becker, France, 1954, 8 )

Several postwar French crime-thrillers have gotten theatrical re-releases in these past couple of years. TOUCHEZ (it means DON'T TOUCH THE LOOT) isn't quite as good as RIFIFI, but is notably better than QUAI DES ORFEVRES and miles ahead of the one it most closely resembles, BOB LE FLAMBEUR. In fact, comparison with BOB makes clear the most obvious thing about a policier flick -- you need a charismatic actor in the central role. By "charismatic," I don't mean in a "big, grand star" sort of way. In fact, the great Jean Gabin is notable here mostly for his underplaying, his "seen-it-all" cool, his worldliness that never shades into worldweariness, his wisdom. But Gabin has "It" to spare, while Roger Duchesne in BOB acts like someone waiting for Gabin to pass out some of "That." There is only one big set piece in TOUCHEZ and it's an exchange, not a heist. In fact, the film opens after the gold heist that gained the loot that is the object of contention. Instead, we get marvelous scenes of everydayness and the kind of things villains do when they're not being villainous. My favorite sequence is one where Gabin brings his weak right-hand man to his super-secret lair and methodically lays out a spread of biscuits, pate, glasses of wine, forks, and plates. And then Becker shows the two men preparing to spend the night, getting into their pajamas, laying out their beds, brushing their teeth (no, really). The sequence doesn't move the plot forward in any way, and it really only exists to show the everydayness that binds the two men as friends. But I wish the whole movie were this empty.

OUT OF TIME (Carl Franklin, USA, 2003, 7)

Again, here's a crime film that succeeds primarily because a great actor (Denzel Washington in this case) whom we instinctively like inhabits (yes, "inhabits," not "plays") the central role. Instead of being about the good side of a criminal like TOUCHEZ, OUT OF TIME is about a good man, a police chief no less, trapped in a web of false appearances (some of them the result of his own lies and thievery) when he has to investigate the death of the married woman with whom he had been having an affair. Oh ... and the lead investigator is his estranged wife. If Hitchcock could have ever gotten inside the skin of a policeman, he might have made something like this -- a series of hair-breadth escapes from investigators while the flawed central character struggles to solve the crime himself. And digs himself deeper. As for Denzel, this film is a smart move after his Oscar-winning turn in TRAINING DAY. Then, as a cop rotten to the core, he played on his previous image of righteousness to lead us on. Here, while there's never doubt about his innocence and he's reverting to something closer to his previous attractive image, the memory of TRAINING DAY makes everything feel different, a bit more threatening. Carl Franklin has made a great movie before (1992's ONE FALSE MOVE); OUT OF TIME has more the feeling of a vacation film (the Florida Keys locations look really nice) "just" trying to spin an entertaining yarn and make the filmmakers some money. But this is as good as ambition-free commercial American cinema gets.

DUCK, YOU SUCKER (Sergio Leone, Italy, 1971, 5)

I dunno. Maybe if I'd never seen THE WILD BUNCH. Maybe if James Coburn could play Clint Eastwood better. Maybe if Rod Steiger made a better Eli Wallach. Maybe if Leone had more of the dust, the rocks, the 5 o'clock shadow, the sweat on the faces. Maybe if Leone concentrated more on the mano-a-mano retail killing and less on dynamite, massacres in pits or bombings of trains (yes, I know that's his point with the opening Mao quote; but it's not what he's good at it -- again compare the insane climax of THE WILD BUNCH with the parched showdown in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, both great scenes, but indicative of completely different temperaments). Maybe if Leone's great strength, portraying honor among lone men, fit in better with political material (the weakest scene in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY is the one where politics intersects -- the attack on the bridge). Maybe if Ennio Morricone had written one of his better scores. Maybe if I just didn't hold a director as great as Leone to such a high standard. Maybe I'd appreciate more the tense early meeting of Coburn and Steiger. Maybe the prison rescue and the irony of the praise of Steiger would resonate deeper. Maybe I'd remember the faces of the Mexican peasants. Maybe.

# posted by Victor : 2:44 AM