★ 7 / 10
Beginnings.
brogmiller
Having assisted Pierre Prévert on 'Le Commissaire est un bon enfant', directed a 'short' which he was later to disavow and being replaced after walking out of…
Having assisted Pierre Prévert on 'Le Commissaire est un bon enfant', directed a 'short' which he was later to disavow and being replaced after walking out of 'L'Or du Christobal', the cinematic career of Jacques Becker did not really begin until after his release from a P0W camp. He established his reputation as a director of promise with this entertaining pastiche of American gangster films. The plot is somewhat convoluted and the material fails to justify the film's running time but there is plenty of Gallic finesse on display, the cast is eminently watchable and Nicholas Hayer's cinematography provides the 'noir' ambiance.Becker is merely an imitator here but was to find his voice the following year with the extraordinary 'Goupi Mains Rouges' and whose subsequent output before his death at fifty-four includes three undisputed masterpieces.
Read full review
★ 5 / 10
Watchable Crime Drama
boblipton
:Raymond Rouleau and Georges Rollin graduate from the detective academy of the capital of a fictional South American country. They are tied for the highest…
:Raymond Rouleau and Georges Rollin graduate from the detective academy of the capital of a fictional South American country. They are tied for the highest grade, which is a problem, since who is to be valedictorian? Rouleau suggests a practical test to break th tie, so when a murder occurs in an elegnt hotel, he and Rollin are sent to solve it. About 40 minutes after the movie begins, Rouleau has the solution: the dead man was the most wanted criminal in America, and his girlfriend Catherine Cayret confesses. Since this is a French movie, we can say "Eh bien!" and move on to the major problem: why is the dead man's partner, Pierre Renoir hanging around, what happened to his $400,000, and how many people will he and his associates kill to recover it. Rouleau plays turncoat to find out.
Jacques Becker's movie is aa trange one. It starts out as a light-hearted mystery, but soon we are into desperate gangster territory. We have an incompetent police officer in Noël Roquevert, more interested in keeping his job than doing it. It's not corruption, precisely, and since it's a French film and some South American country where they hold bullfights, no censor is going to get upset. But I kept trying to fit it into some genre, and it simply wouldn't go. The elegant sets -- an Art Deco hotel, and even the stairwells of the police precinct has ruffled curtains -- the disrespect towards authorities, the boyish glee of the new graduates: none of these hang together in any recognizable way. Because it is Becker's first time directing a feature, and he's not working from his own script, I can only conclude this is not really a Becker film; he would follow it up with GOUPI MAINS ROUGE, but not begin to attain a consistent voice until the 1950s. For now, he's a cheap director for hire, and the result is watchable.
Read full review
80%
AUDIENCE
5.9/10
283
