Le Témoin (1978)
Directed by Jean-Pierre Mocky

Film Review

Le Témoin appears to be the answer to one of those daft conundrums you find in Christmas crackers:  what do you get if you cross a Claude Chabrol thriller with an Italian comedy of the 1970s?  It is the most implausible mélange of genres that works suprisingly well, although it came about by chance, when the actor that Jean-Pierre Mocky had originally given one of the lead roles to - Jean Gabin - died within a few days of accepting the part.  Mocky managed to rescue the film (a loose adaptation of Harrison Judd's 1962 crime novel Shadow of a Doubt) with the support of Italian backers, and it was they who insisted on a big name Italian actor for the lead role - and they didn't come much bigger than Alberto Sordi, the primo uomo of Italian film comedy.  Sordi's larger than life presence guaranteed the film would acquire a very different identity to the one that Mocky had originally intended, and the result is one of the director's most inspired and entertaining films - certainly the best thing he put his name to in the 1970s.

Le Témoin's glaring split identity (apparent in the mismatch between the sombre visuals and weirdly euphoric score) is accentuated by the wildly contrasting personalities and acting styles of its two lead actors.  In just about every respect Philippe Noiret is the complete opposite of Alberto Sordi and yet they work together brilliantly, the darkness of one conflicting with the brightness of the other to form a kind of stark chiaroscuro representation of the human soul.  Sordi, as ever the likeable clown, is the sympathetic hero who allows himself to get chewed up by the warped monstrosity that was the French judicial system of the 1970s.  Noiret is the pillar of the establishment, a Chabrolian bad man archetype with dangerous psychopathic tendencies who is protected from the law by his bourgeois connections.

Noiret's performance - undoubtedly one of his best - is a masterclass of subtlety, fascinating to watch as the layers of oily respectability fall from his character's back to reveal the monster within.  In comparison, Sordi's turn is gloriously over the top, just what you would expect in a manic Italian farce, but at the same time it is devastatingly poignant.  You feel the inner agonies of Sordi's character as he wrestles with the dilemma of betraying his friend, and then his growing horrror when he realises he is caught in a judicial trap from which there is no escape.  It is the jarring contrast between these two screen titans that makes Le Témoin such an effective and entertaining piece of social commentary - it allows Mocky to get across his anti-establishment messages more forcefully than ever, without resorting to his usual crude excesses.  (That said, the director still manages to work in the politicians kissing the bankers' backsides gag.)

Le Témoin was highly topical when it came out in 1978 as its primary target was the death penalty, a subject around which there was a frenzied debate in France prior to its abolition in 1981.  Mocky doesn't waste time mulling over the morality of capital punishment (i.e. whether the State has the right to execute its citizens).  Instead he invites us to consider its inherent flaws - not only the obvious fact that it can lead to the execution of someone who has been wrongly convicted, but that it can also create totally perverse outcomes, through people's reasonable fears of the consequences of the ultimate sanction being applied.

In Le Témoin, Alberto Sordi's character witnesses a crime but he cannot bring himself to testify against the man he suspects (Noiret) through fear that, if he is mistaken, an innocent party will be guillotined.  As a result, he unwittingly makes himself the prime suspect and, not having friends in high places to help him out, his slow march to the scaffold has a grim inevitability about it.  Mocky makes the point well that France's judiciary is skewed in favour of the rich and powerful, even more so when the shadow of the guillotine is seen in the background, whilst the ordinary man has to fend for himself and, in doing so, risks tying the noose around his own neck.

Like José Giovanni's Deux hommes dans la ville (1973) and Michel Drach's Le Pull-over rouge (1979), Le Témoin provides some excellent arguments against capital punishment and no doubt it played a part in influencing public opinion in the years preceding its long overdue abolition in France.  Because the death penalty had already been outlawed in Italy (hence the film's political message was lost in that country), Mocky was easily railroaded by his Italian producers into changing the ending, so that the condemned man comes back to life after having been decapitated.  Thankfully, the French version of the film is spared this absurd flight of fancy and instead it ends, as it should, on a suitably quiet and sombre note.

Far more controversial is Mocky's handling of a subject that has become much more sensitive since the film was first seen, namely paedophilia.  Le Témoin shows an eerie prescience in warning against the paedophile witch-hunts and vigilantism that have become an almost daily occurrence these days, helped by the increasingly sanctimonious, overly sensational and laughably moralistic media.  Even for someone of his agent provocateur standing, Mocky is remarkably even-handed in his treatment of this issue and he makes a good case against rushing to judgement when crimes of underage sex are committed.  Vigilante murders motivated by righteous indignation should be no less sickening to us than state-authorised executions.

Noiret's character is hardly a model of virtue and yet, disgusting though his crimes are, we are compelled to show him some sympathy whilst recognising that he was lured into an illicit act by a promiscuous teenager who was only too well aware of her power over the male sex.  Whilst it would be ludicrous to deny the existence of paedophiles, it is surely the banalisation of sex and sexualisation of pre-teens (helped by the same media that go after sex offenders like packs of rampaging wolves) that makes occurrences of paedophilic acts more widespread.  In Le Témoin a flawed judiciary and a botched vigilante assault conspire to deliver a just punishment, but with collateral damage that no civilised society should tolerate.  Jean-Pierre Mocky would return to the thorny subject of paedophilia (albeit far less successfully) in his later film Les Ballets écarlates (2007).

Film Synopsis

Robert Maurisson is a successful businessman who married into a rich bourgeois family and is now one of the most important people in Reims.  It is he who invites Antonio Berti, an old friend of his, to restore the medieval paintings in the city's cathedral.  Berti's work proceeds without incident until the fateful day when his teenage model Cathy is found dead, strangled, not far from an uninhabited house owned by Robert.  On the night when the girl was killed, Antonio was passing the house when he thought he noticed his friend engaged in a sexual act.  Realising that the painter suspects him of committing the crime, Robert advises him to keep his mouth shut, otherwise he might incriminate an innocent man and cause him to be executed by mistake.  Antonio's silence protects Robert but it leads superintendent Guérin, the man leading the police investigation, to arrest the Maurissons' gardener.  It turns out that the latter has a cast-iron alibi and is soon released.

Antonio is now torn - he has doubts over Robert's innocence and yet he cannot bring himself to betray a friend who may have had nothing to do with the crime.  Unsure what to do, he checks Robert's alibi and finds it to be bogus.  Having failed to reason with Antonio, Robert resorts to intimidating him during a spot of game hunting in the country.  By now suspicion has begun to fall on Antonio, and when he fails to produce an alibi and a witness comes forward with the news that he was seen fondling another girl in his car (Cathy's replacement model) his guilt seems pretty evident.  With his family willing to testify that he was with them on the night of the murder Robert is now in the clear.  Knowing that his arrest is imminent, Antonio begs Robert to help him.  Together, they plan to escape to Italy, where the death penalty has long been abolished.  But before he can join his friend Robert is mistaken for Antonio by Cathy's father and shot dead.  Now there is nothing that can save Antonio from the guillotine...