This is one of my favorite films ever made.

Maybe Jacques Becker was just a minor auteur, but he holds a large place in my heart because of this film.

It’s what we can’t have in life.

Who.

Back that reification up.

The pretty blond.

The girl will pay us no mind.

Because we are just carpenters.

Workers.

No, even lower than that.

We are failed workers.

It makes you wonder whether Hitchcock felt most alienated from the objects of his desire while directing them?

There’s that reification again.  Thingification.

If we’re learned anything from Marxism, it’s that.

Humans are not “its”.

But our language is structured to make them so.

Blonde on blonde.

Perhaps a pickguard on a Telecaster.

Even in black and white we can tell that Simone Signoret is a blond.

Her beauty is flooring.

Serge Reggiani had to play the role of a traitor in Les Portes de la nuit, but here he is the hero.

The perfect friend.

Faithful.

Criminals stick together.

A code.

And it is touching.

Because the code can bite the big cheese in the ass.

Different systems of justice.

The criminals don’t call the police.

Justice is swift.

It’s all a bit savage.

But how else should we describe the heart in love?

Here we see Reggiani maddeningly in love.

Fatal beauty.

Simone Signoret.

With her hair helmet.

Completely lost in translation.

Everyone has a mustache here.

Maybe that’s why I can relate.

Reggiani plays a schmuck like me.

And it works.

Someone falls in love with him.

All he has to do is be himself.

But most of all this film shows the sadness of love.

All the many things that can go wrong.

The tunnel vision.

The heroic focus.

The jealousy of spectators.

Two in love.

Why can’t they be let alone?

To be happy.

Les Apaches.

“un dégueulasse”

Here it is again.

Just as À bout de soufflé passed on some fashion (garments) to C’est arrivé près de chez vous, so too Casque d’Or hurls that word at a key moment.