Le Coupable (1937)
Directed by Raymond Bernard

Film Review

Raymond Bernard directed many great films - Le Miracle des loups (1924), Le Joueur d'échecs (1927), Les Croix de bois (1932), Les Misérables (1934) - but he is seldom accorded the attention and acclaim that we lavish on other important filmmakers of his generation.  The reason for this is fairly self-evident.  Bernard may have been an extremely competent filmmaker but he is far from what most of us consider to be an auteur.  There is no unifying theme to his work, no consistency of styles. no clear direction of travel.  His filmography is as diverse as it could possibly be, impressive works of cinema alternating with fairly inconsequential pieces of ephemera.  Le Coupable, made towards the middle of the director's career, exemplifies the depressing unevenness of Bernard's work and reveals to us both aspects of his nature - sometimes the inspired artist, other times an uncommitted journeyman.  It's probably the nearest he got to painting a self-portrait.

Le Coupable is based on a novel by the distinguished 19th century French poet and playwright François Coppée, first published in 1896.  Ironically (given Coppée's public support against Alfred Dreyfus in the famous Dreyfus affair), the story concludes with the trial of an innocent man.  In this case, the defendant (a neglected youth) is exculpated when his father (and by inference the whole of society) takes responsibility for greater crimes that cannot be tried in a court of law.  By the mid-1930s, when the film was made, the novel's social themes - single motherhood, juvenile delinquency, failings in the legal system - were all highly pertinent in France and Raymond Bernard had the material for a powerful piece of social commentary.  But he botched it, and the film he delivered was nothing more than a clumsy mishmash of satire, melodrama and court-room drama.  The mix of styles is just as disconcerting. Occasionally, the film flirts with poetic realism and neo-realism.  There is a creepy expressionistic dream sequence (which eerily anticipates the director's nocturnal fantasy Maya) and a full-bodied excursion into film noir.  It's more a scrapbook than a film.

Bernard's skill as a director and the sheer calibre of the cast (Pierre Blanchar is at his best in a made-to-measure lead role) ensure that Le Coupable never ends up being irredeemably bad, but an uneven script and the director's inability to keep to a consistent style prevent it from being a great, or even memorable, piece of cinema.  The film's harsh social messages are blunted by some half-hearted attempts to lighten the tone - presumably this was to make the film fit the generally upbeat mood in France at the time, following the election of the Popular Front government.  After a jolly romantic idyll, there's a quick excursion to the battlefields of WWI (the merest shadow of what Bernard had earlier shown us in Les Croix de bois) and then the film gets mired in the worst kind of melodrama before suddenly turning into a deranged Gallic version of Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), complete with a creepy grim noir look that makes it appear that Fritz Lang was calling the shots.  Raymond Bernard's love of slanted camera angles and sinister lighting effects goes into overdrive at this point.

Just when you feel ready to give up on the film, Bernard finally manages to pull one rabbit out of his impossibly capacious hat that just about redeems it - a marvellously executed trial scene which shows both the director and his lead Blanchar at their best.  Here, for once, Bernard is able to strike an equitable balance between tension and humour, and whilst the outcome is hardly a surprise, it makes the most gripping and focused denouement to a film that had previously been wandering all over the place like an inebriated ant on roller skates.  With Blanchar putting in a performance worthy of an Oscar, the film's social messages hit home with tremendous force and poignancy in the last few scenes - admittedly without the subtlety of André Cayatte's subsequent Nous sommes tous des assassins (1952), which deals more soberly and convincingly with the same themes.  Le Coupable is certainly ahead of its time in arguing how parental neglect can result in many of society's ills, but it fails to take itself seriously enough to have the impact it deserves.  The film was made at the wrong time, and by the wrong director.  I rest my case, m'lord.

Film Synopsis

Left to himelf, Jérôme Lescuyer would have become an artist like his friend Donadieu, but being the son of an important, overbearing magistrate he had no choice but to pursue a career as a lawyer.  Whilst studying for his law exams in Paris, Jérôme meets an attractive florist, Thérèse Forgeat, and becomes hopelessly besotted by her.  His father and Madame Gaude, a friend of his deceased mother, have made up their mind that Jérôme will marry the latter's daughter Marie-Louise Gaude, but it is Thérèse that Jérôme intends to wed, after a whirlwind romance which results in Thérèse giving birth to a little boy which she names after his father.  The outbreak of WWI puts paid to these plans, and as Jérôme goes off to fight on the Western Front, Thérèse is left to bring up the infant alone.

Desperation drives Thérèse to ask for help from Jérôme's father, but, suspecting she is lying, the crusty old man sends her way, insisting that his son is dead.  Believing she will never see Jérôme again, Thérèse has no choice but to marry a cousin of hers.  The marriage is not a happy one and Thérèse dies not long afterwards.  Meanwhile, Jérôme has returned to his home in Caen and, hearing of Thérèse's marriage, allows himself to be coerced into marrying Marie-Louise. Abused and neglected by his stepfather, young Jérôme falls into bad habits and bad company and ends up in a reformatory.  On his release, now a young man, Jérôme Forgeat attempts to sell the watch belonging to his mother but he is mistaken for a criminal.  He ends up being tried for murder.  At the trial, his father, now an important magistrate, recognises the pitiful defendant as his son and realises that he, Jérôme Lescuyer, is the guilty one, having abandoned his only child...