Le Pull-over rouge (1979)
Directed by Michel Drach

Film Review

A low-key film in the mould of a typical late 1970s French néo-polar, Le Pull-over rouge makes a surprisingly powerful case against capital punishment.  Indeed, the film contributed significantly to France's decision to drop the death penalty in 1981 - difficult to believe, but death by guillotining was routinely practised in France until the late 1970s.

The film is based on the novel by Gilles Perrault which recounts one of the worst miscarriages of justice to have occurred in France.  It was a classic example of trial by public opinion.  To avoid appearing weak and ineffective, the police and examining magistrates were obliged to deliver a guilty verdict, even if it meant being very selective over which evidence they used and possibly even fabricating evidence to support their version of events.

Le Pull-over rouge does not set out to prove or disprove Ranucci's innocence - Serge Avedikian's portrayal of the accused man is wonderfully ambiguous and the holes in Ranucci's testimony are never fully resolved.  However, what the film does do, amply, is to convinces us that there is insufficient evidence for him to be executed.  As a result, this is a film which makes a compelling, if not incontrovertible, argument against capital punishment.

Film Synopsis

The body of a nine-year old girl, Elisa Garcia, is found about twenty kilometres from Marseille, not long after the girl was abducted by a stranger.  Witnesses, who include the dead girl's brother and a garage owner, report seeing a man in blue trousers and a red pullover, driving a Simca 1100.  At first, this is the only lead the police have to go on, but then they find their first tangible suspect in Christian Ranucci, a 22-year-old travelling salesman whose car broke down on a stretch of road not from where Elisa met her death.  On what is no more than the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence Ranucci is hastily arrested and charged with the girl's murder.  The case against Ranucci is laughably weak, but his mother and his lawyers have a daunting task establishing his innocence.  By now, the public outrage at little Elisa's brutal killing is of such vehemence that the judiciary is under overwhelming pressure to find a culprit and ensure that justice is done as efficiently as possible - at the risk of sending a harmless young man to the guillotine for a crime he did not commit...