Le Juge et l’assassin (1976) - film review

1893.  A sergent in the French army, Joseph Bouvier, shoots his girlfriend when she rejects him and then shoots himself in the head.  Both miraculously survive, and Bouvier ends up in a filthy asylum.  When Bouvier is finally released from the hospital, he wanders the country roads of France and over the course of the next five years he rapes and murders two dozen teenage farm workers.  He is ultimately captured and proclaims himself as God’s anarchist.  The ambitious judge Rousseau has taken on the case and is determined to use it to advance his standing and career.  However, he runs the risk of a humiliating setback if Bouvier is declared insane…

Arguably Bertrand Tavernier’s most compelling film, Le Juge et l’assassin won no less than four Césars in 1977 (including best film and best actor for Michel Galabru).  Although it is distinguished by some hauntingly beautiful photography and sublime acting performances (notably from Philippe Noiret and Galabru), the film also offers a provocative insight into the politics of late 19th Century France.

The crimes of Bouvier, whilst patently grotesque and unpardonable, appear less shocking when set aside the hypocrisies and double standards of an opportunist right-wing social elite.  At one point, the Judge (played superbly by Noiret, a master when it comes to playing ambiguous characters) surpasses the Assassin in his ruthlessness and reveals an obscene animalistic lust for his own personal goals.

The film ends with a salutary reminder that the world represented by Judge Rousseau was as sick as Bouvier’s and that the death of Bouvier would be overshadowed by a major social upheaval in France at the start of the Twentieth Century.

© James Travers 2006

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