Jacques Becker

July 12–August 31, 2018

From hardboiled crime sagas to breezy portraits of postwar Parisian life, the films of this classic French director are ripe for rediscovery.

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Touchez pas au grisbi
Le trou
Antoine et Antoinette
Goupi mains-rouges
Casque d’or

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Past Films

La vie est à nous
- Friday, August 31 4 PM
Jean Renoir, Jacques Becker, Jacques Brunius, Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Swoboda, Pierre Unik, Maurice Lime, Jean-Paul Le Chanois
France, 1936
The first militant left-wing film made in France, this lyrical cine-essay is a collective effort by some of the finest writers, directors, and cinematographers working in France in the thirties.
Le trou
- Sunday, August 12 7 PM
- Friday, August 24 6:30 PM
Jacques Becker
France, 1960
A group of convicts attempts an escape in Becker’s last film, one of the great prison-break movies and, for Jean-Pierre Melville, “the greatest French film of all time.”
Touchez pas au grisbi
- Friday, August 10 7 PM
- Saturday, August 18 6 PM
Jacques Becker
France, Italy, 1953
French legend Jean Gabin is a Montmartre gangster looking to hide—and later find—his loot, with Jeanne Moreau as his tough-as-nails lover. A masterpiece of hard-boiled film noir, French style.
My Journey Through French Cinema
- Thursday, July 12 7 PM
- Friday, August 17 7 PM
Bertrand Tavernier
France, 2017
East Bay Premiere

A great director takes viewers on an idiosyncratic tour of French film in this delightful documentary, which offers an entire lifetime of cinema knowledge and passion within its running time. “Exhilarating and inspiring” (New York Times).
Rendezvous de Juillet
- Saturday, August 4 8 PM
Jacques Becker
France, 1949
A group of students, hepcats, and others spill through the streets of the Left Bank in search of love, life, and jazz in Becker’s spirited portrait of France’s emerging postwar generation, poised between existential despair and liberating action.
The Lovers of Montparnasse
- Thursday, August 2 7 PM
Jacques Becker
France, 1958
The famed (and infamously wild) Italian artist Modigliani’s last days in Paris are reconstructed in Becker’s untamed biopic, a loving tribute to the city’s bohemian life.
Édouard et Caroline
- Sunday, July 29 5 PM
Jacques Becker
France, 1951
A pianist and his wife quarrel as they prepare for an upcoming recital in Becker’s airy, Lubitsch-like portrait of love and life in a slowly modernizing urban France, which was praised by—and inspired—Godard and Truffaut.
Casque d’or
- Friday, July 27 7 PM
- Saturday, July 28 6 PM
Jacques Becker
France, 1952
BAMPFA Student Committee Pick!

A dazzling Simone Signoret is caught between a gangster tough and an honest carpenter in Becker’s “elegant masterwork” (Time Out) set in turn-of-the century Paris. Signoret’s performance is “a triumph of sensuality” (Pauline Kael).
Antoine et Antoinette
- Sunday, July 22 5 PM
Jacques Becker
France, 1947
Becker’s “snappy, sentimental comic melodrama” (New Yorker) follows a young working-class couple and the husband’s desperate search for a missing lottery ticket in this portrait of changing proletarian life in postwar Paris.
Falbalas
- Friday, July 20 7 PM
Jacques Becker
France, 1944
A talented, vain couturier runs roughshod over workers, friends, and lovers in Becker’s vividly realist drama of Parisian haute couture, a fascinating companion piece to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread. Jean-Paul Gaultier is a fan.
Dernier atout
- Wednesday, July 18 7 PM
Jacques Becker
France, 1942
Becker’s “official” directorial debut offers a suitably fast-moving tribute to Hollywood pre-Code programmers, as two rookie sleuths deal with a murderer, a beautiful femme fatale, and even a visiting Chicago gangster.
Goupi mains-rouges
- Saturday, July 14 6 PM
Jacques Becker
France, 1943
Imported 35mm Print

A city slicker departs Paris for the provinces in Becker’s droll satire on city and country folk, family and outsiders, men and women. “Becker gave French cinema its greatest film about rural France” (Bernard Eisenschitz).

Jacques Becker

July 12–August 31, 2018

In conjunction with our Limited Engagement presentation of Bertrand Tavernier’s passionate look at the history of French film, My Journey Through French Cinema, we are thrilled to present audiences with a chance to rediscover (or see for the first time) the films of Jacques Becker, one of the directors whom Tavernier focuses on in his journey; indeed, his film is dedicated to both Becker and Claude Sautet.

Born in Paris in 1906, Becker spent two years in a German POW camp during World War II before returning to France in 1941 to direct Dernier atout, a gangster film, inspired by American crime films, that prefigured such later crime classics as Touchez pas au grisbi, one of French cinema’s most influential noirs. No gangster specialist, however, Becker was that rare filmmaker comfortable in all genres, moving through crime films and comedies, period dramas and modern romances, vesting in each milieu the same curiosity and attentiveness. As critic Roy Armes noted, “his unfeigned liking of people allowed him to be equally at home in domestic comedy and period tragedy, with peasants and with gangsters.” Becker’s colleague and great comrade Jean Renoir (who called him “my brother and my son”) recalled, “He loved humankind not in any generalized, theoretical way but directly, and in terms of the individual.”

Along with his great period piece Casque d’or, Becker’s three loosely plotted, open-hearted looks at working-class Paris life in the immediate postwar period, Antoine et Antoinette, Édouard et Caroline, and Rendezvous de Juillet, were among his most appreciated by the young Cahiers du cinéma critics who were impressed by their modernity and charm. His aforementioned noir Grisbi and his hard-boiled prison-escape film Le trou have also left long legacies in the crime genre. No matter the genre, Becker’s titles are joined together by a genuine affection, and by the director’s passion for showcasing his characters at work. (“No one is idle in Becker’s films,” jokes Tavernier.) A classic filmmaker, a consummate craftsman, Becker is ripe for rediscovery.

Jason Sanders, Film Note Writer

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Presented in conjunction with Film Forum, New York, with thanks to Bruce Goldstein and Elspeth Carroll. Coordinated at BAMPFA by Film Curator Kathy Geritz. We are grateful to Amélie Garin-Davet, Cultural Services of the French Embassy; and Eric Di Bernardo, Rialto Pictures.

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Cultural Services of the French Embassy