Saw Casque d'Or, the film which apparently started the whole French New Wave. It's a sort of romantic crime story. A prostitute is the girlfriend of a gang member. At a tavern she falls in love with a random carpenter who has also been a jail-bird once. When the carpenter was in jail he befriended this thin dude who is also in the gang. The prostitute is also the favored girl of the head of the gang. These are the central conflicts: the prostitute and the carpenter are in love, the gang-leader wants her, a third man has her, and the carpenter has strong, bromantic ties to his jail-friend who (remember!) is also in the gang.
The film follows the seemingly doomed romance between the prostitute and the carpenter. They love each other but, since this is a crime film, honor and duty hang heavy and debts must be repaid. It seems fairly morbid and dismal to me, but then again I'm fairly dishonorable myself. I think I would probably die if I were in a gang one way or the other.
This aside, the film is beautifully shot and terribly, logically, dramatic. You can see why people would be inspired by the film and why it might re-ignite interest in noirs and crime dramas and interesting shots and such. The story is knotty and plausible, the main characters are all somewhat corrupt (although, of course, we root for them anyway.) It's an interesting film which unfortunately contains a lot of very familiar elements. It's noteworthy for having kick-started an artistic movement and a good film in its own merits but not especially interesting to me. Not bad, just not good enough.
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