His father Louis Becker, from Lorraine, was corporate director for Fulmen, a battery manufacturer; his mother, Margaret Burns, of Scottish and Irish descent, managed a fashion house in rue Cambon near Chanel in Paris.

[1][2] Back in France Becker developed a friendship with Jean Renoir, whom he had first met in 1921 through their mutual acquaintance with the Cézanne family, and they discovered a shared enthusiasm for sports cars and jazz music as well as films.

[10] Becker made two further films, of markedly different character, during the Occupation: Goupi Mains Rouges was a story of greed and murder in a remote French farming community, and Falbalas depicted the (more or less contemporary) world of the Parisian fashion business.

In the middle of these he made Casque d'or (1952), a tragic romance set during the Belle Époque and loosely based on a true story among the criminal gangs of the Parisian underworld.

In 1958, Becker took over the filming of Montparnasse 19 from Max Ophuls who died while preparing the project about the last years of the painter Modigliani, but because of its hybrid origins it remained a troubled production.

[13] In Le Trou (1960), which recounted in almost documentary fashion the planning of a prison escape (based on a real event of 1947), Becker was able to return to a more personal and rigorous style.

[2] Perhaps because his career as a director was relatively short (13 features completed before his early death) and because the variety of his subjects and genres makes him difficult to categorise, Becker's reputation has tended to be overshadowed by those French filmmakers who have fitted more easily into a critical narrative.

[17] For the critic-directors of the New Wave in the 1950s, Becker was one of a select group of French filmmakers whom they excluded from a moribund "tradition of quality" and regarded as auteurs, genuine creators of their own films who often wrote their own screenplays as well as directing.

They were notable less for their subjects or plots than for their economical, pared-down treatment and their explorations of character; "his work is a perpetual challenge to vulgarity, and it is a gamble Becker invariably wins, for his films are alway elegant and dignified".