Films from Abroad: Crime and Punishment, Sound and Silent

Abstract

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT is, I suppose, the classic subject of the motion picture; Jacques Becker's Casque d'Or is, in many respects, the classic version of it. There is nothing essentially original in the story; its characters are the gang leader and his moll, the innocent young carpenter who loves her, and his loyal little gutter-rat buddy. It is full of brawls and knifings and shootings. Most of its episodes can be anticipated: that the slightly soiled hero and heroine will have an idyllic country interlude, that it will be interrupted by the gang leader, that the hero will return to save his buddy who has been accused of the crime he committed. Those of us raised on Hollywood's moral code will not be surprised that the hero goes to the guillotine for his crime, though we may be surprised when the heroine watches the execution impassively from an upper-story window overlooking the prison yard. But the film is full of surprises because of the loving attention to detail with which it has been directed. The period is 1900 and M. Becker has lingered on the ladies' slightly overripe period finery with great affection. The cobbled streets, the morning-after disarray of the room shared by the two cocottes, the metallic gold of Marie's hair, the heavy bad taste of the furnishings in the mob leader's rooms, the benevolent obscenity of the deep-seamed face of the old lady with whom the lovers stay in the country-these are stressed with almost tactile reality. The sound track is equally full of loving observation; one remembers the wheezy accordion music to which the lovers revolve so jerkily, the creak of oarlocks