Antoine and Antoinette

This postwar comedy about a young Parisian couple (Roger Pigaut and Claire Mafféi) who buy and lose a winning lottery ticket sings with the energies of working-class life. Antoine and Antoinette is temperamentally close to the great American pre-Code films of the early 30s, but it is made with a verve and grace that could only originate with one individual sensibility. To quote Godard on the occasion of Jacques Becker’s death at the age of 53: “There are several good ways of making French films. Italian style, like Renoir. Viennese, like Ophuls. New Yorker, like Melville. But only Becker was and is as French as France.” A Rialto Pictures release.