And with him, the
French cinema regained all that it had lost with the nouvelle vague: magnificent cinematography (I urge everybody
to see this film in a movie theater), elaborate screenplays, Clouzot’s Renoir’s
and Duvivier’s bite , all that made once the French cinema great. “Le juge et l’assassin”
is his sophomore effort , after “l’horloger de Saint- Paul”, but it was one
which firmly and finally placed Tavernier among the greatest, most ambitious
artists of the French cinema.
First of all, he did with Michel Galabru -who used to
play in mediocre comedies - what Claude Chabrol did with Jean Yanne (“Le
boucher” “Que la bête meure”): this actor is playing his lifetime part, revealing
a talent which one would never expect from him.
France, end of the nineteenth century; anti-Semitism
is rampant: twice, a poster appears: “La croix (the cross): a paper against the Jews as no one can”; Brialy’s
character: ”we all need an outlet for our bad deeds: I have chosen the Jews, because
it’s safe”; Renée Faure, the judge’s good mother, serving the “mercy bouillon”
to the Poor, provided that they sign a petition against captain Dreyfus. After
the 1870 war, France was humiliated and the song a buck officer sings speaks
volumes about the loss of Alsace and Lorraine. A world which Zola - whose books
were burned - depicted , where 2, 500 children died in the coal mines... The
killer killed 12 of them..
This is not a serial killer who comes out of the
blue. Tavernier takes time to describe his mind: he was bitten by a rabid dog
(or more like as one scene in a church tells us , he was raped by a priest), he
served in the army but was discharged, and mainly the girl he loved did not
want him anymore. He tried to kill her and to take his own life but he failed
twice, and in the asylum, they wrecked his brain. Although he is a killer, he
is actually a political prisoner: he realized that as far his crimes were
concerned, the blame had to be put on a criminal society: in a remarkable scene,
the judge’s mother reads the reports concerning the awful crimes as if she’s reading
the tittle-tattle of the town.The serial killer identifies himself with Jesus
and Joan of Arc ...
In direct contrast to hîm, we
have the judge: admirably portrayed by Tavernier’s favourite actor, Philippe
Noiret, he epitomizes the bourgeoisie, the man who wants to keep the world as
it is; this is a very complex opaque character: nearing 50, he stills lives with
his mother, and he’s got nasty habits (see the scene when he buggers Isabelle
Huppert).
There are a lot of things to say about “Le juge et l’assassin”:
the film successfully recreates the atmosphere of the period, not only by its
hints at Dreyfus, at a country which is bent on revenge, at a Church which
feels its power slip away (the priest thundering against “school without God”, about
10 years after Jules Ferry instituted secular education, and about 10 years
before the separation of the Church and the State in France). But it even recreates
it with its original songs, which is quite a feat. We really feel we are in the
time machine, and that’s the main reason why Tavernier’s movie is so precious: no
one can find echoes of the seventies in France, which would have dated and
marred the film. Even if the socialists appear at the end of the movie, there’s
no connection with their impending coming in the eighties.
A masterpiece, Tavernier’s best film along with “La
vie et rien d’autre”.
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