Starring Simone Signoret at her sensual best, Casque d’Or is master director Jacques Becker’s sparkling tale of small-time gangster guys and their dolls.
Manda (Serge Reggiani) is trying to get on the straight and narrow after a prison spell, but he finds himself pulled back into the demimonde by the arrival of Marie (Simone Signoret), a sparkling diamond in the rough. But Marie is the plaything of the local kingpin (Claude Dauphin), and both draw Manda into a web of hard-hitting double-crosses and trysts.
Pitched intriguingly between social realism and gilded nostalgia, Casque d’Or is one of Simone Signoret’s best performances, and an elegant take on the seedy underbelly that sits between French cinema’s golden age and the more acerbic charms of the French New Wave.
Newly restored in 4K by the Independent Cinema Office in partnership with StudioCanal.