Dernier atout (1942)

Dernier atout is a French crime film first released in 1942, directed by Jacques Becker.  The film stars Mireille Balin, Raymond Rouleau, Pierre Renoir, Noël Roquevert and Catherine Cayret.  It has also been released under the title: The Last Ace in the Deck.  Our overall rating for this film is: good.


In a South American town, two police cadets must solve a real murder to decide who will graduate.  They end up pursuing America’s most notorious criminal, Toni Amanito...

Jacques Becker’s first film is a rather obvious attempt to emulate the American gangster movie / film noir genre.  It is, for all that, an impressive début for the man who is most often credited for popularising the crime/thriller genre in France in the 1950s.

Whilst not as stylish or confident as Becker’s subsequent policier, Touchez pas au grisbi (1953), it is an entertaining first foray in to the sleazy milieu of classic French film noir.  Mindful of censorship from the occupying Germans, Becker was almost obliged to set his film in a fictitious South American country, something which reinforces the artificiality and remoteness of the film and makes apparent its American gangster film origins.

© James Travers 2002

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