Le Juge et l'assassin (1976)
Directed by Bertrand Tavernier

Film Review

Bertrand Tavernier followed up one highly respectable period film (Que la fête commence...) with another, this time recounting the true story of a 19th century serial killer who is as notorious in France as Jack the Ripper is in England.  Tavernier uses the story of Joseph Vacher (renamed Joseph Bouvier in the film) to show up the hypocrisies that were rife in the political and judicial classes of the 19th century, evidenced by the famous Dreyfus affair, which is frequently alluded to in the film.  The title, Le Juge et l'assassin, is intentionally ambiguous, and could easily refer to the dual nature of the main protagonist Rousseau, who is shown to be both a judge and killer - note how the roles of Rousseau and his prey, Bouvier, are suddenly inverted at the end of the film.  This was the first of Tavernier's films to have an overtly political slant, demonstrating the director's deep-seated mistrust of institutions, specifically those standard bearers of authority who use their position for their own personal gain.

Once again, Tavernier engages the service of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, the celebrated screenwriting team whose credits date back to the 1940s and include such classics as Claude Autant-Lara's L'Auberge rouge (1951) and René Clément's Jeux interdits (1952).  Le Juge et l'assassin was Aurenche and Bost's final collaboration - Bost died a few months before the film was released.  Their well-honed screenplay bristles with the dark humour for which the duo are renowned and took the Best Screenplay award at the second Césars ceremony in 1977.  The film also won the Best Actor César for Michel Galabru and was nominated in four other categories, including Best Film and Best Director. 

In common with most of Bertrand Tavernier's films, Le Juge et l'assassin is beautifully photographed and has a very distinguished cast.  Here the cast includes not only established stars such as Philippe Noiret and Jean-Claude Brialy, but also newcomer Isabelle Huppert and veteran performer Renée Faure, an actress of stage and screen who was at her height in the 1940s and 50s.  The most inspired piece of casting was Michel Galabru for the part of the serial killer Bouvier.  At the time, Galabru was better known in France as a comedic actor, most famous for playing the long-suffering Adjutant Gerber opposite Louis de Funès's Cruchot in the hugely popular Gendarme films.  In Le Juge et l'assassin, Galabru showed that he was also a very capable character actor, and his portrayal of Bouvier is one of surprising depth and complexity, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes deeply disturbing.  We can never be sure whether the serial killer is totally insane or is in full possession of his faculties. 

The troubling ambiguity of Galabru's Bouvier is perfectly reflected in Philippe Noiret's Judge Rousseau, and it is not too hard to see that the two characters are, to a degree, mirror images of one another.  Both seem to be cynical opportunists who intend to play on public sympathy for their own advantage.  Bouvier's claims to be a modern Joan of Arc, an anarchist sent by God to wake up French society, are no less contemptible than Rousseau's attempts to manipulate the killer and others for his own ends.  Noiret was Tavernier's favourite actor - he appeared in nine of his films, often cast as a morally ambiguous authority figure, the role that he played best.  Some of Noiret's most memorable scenes in Le Juge et l'assassin are those in which he plays alongside Isabelle Huppert, who was soon to become one of the most sought after actresses in French cinema.  Noiret and Huppert would appear together in Tavernier's later film, Coup de torchon (1981), another darkly comedic portrait of the abuse of power.

Film Synopsis

France, 1893.  When the young woman he is infatuated with rejects him, Joseph Bouvier, a sergeant in the French army, shoots her and then turns the gun on himself.  Miraculously, both Bouvier and his victim survive, and the former ends up in a state asylum.  Not long afterwards, Bouvier is released from the hospital and begins wandering the countryside.  Over the course of the next five years, he rapes and murders around twenty rural teenagers, mostly young shepherds.  Aware that the arrest and conviction of the killer will earn him considerable prestige and allow him to advance his career, Judge Rousseau takes charge of the case.   Bouvier incriminates himself by revealing that he visited all of the sites of the murders but he quickly realises that he may evade execution if he can convince the authorities he is insane.  Rousseau knows that such an outcome will prove disastrous for his own ambitions and so he tricks Bouvier into confessing to his crimes, promising that no harm will befall him...