Based on an account of the murderer ("assassin" in French means "murderer") Joseph Vaché (called Bouvier in the film), The Judge and the Murderer concerns an egocentric judge named Rousseau (Philippe Noiret) who seizes the opportunity to make a name for himself in his Provence town by catching and prosecuting a man who has made his progress from Normandy all the way to the southeast corner of France, leaving behind him a trail of grisly murders, mostly of young girls and boys. But the man in the film who commits these terrible crimes, Bouvier (Michel Galabru), obviously cannot help himself since he has to live with two bullets in his brain that, when they move around in the non-solid brain tissue, give him seizures and drives him momentarily insane. This diagnosis may sound glib, but it was never admitted as evidence in the man's defense.
Bouvier's life is set on its unfortunate course when he is kicked out of the army because of a suicide attempt. Still wearing his uniform, he pursues an attractive maid named Louise, with whom he has become infatuated. But his increasingly erratic behavior, like following Louise into a church during Sunday service to impress on her, even as she is taking communion, to accept his advances, become intolerable. Louise spurns him, and in retaliation, Bouvier shoots her three times and himself twice in the head. He is placed in an asylum where an attempt is made to operate on his head wounds, but the attempt is abandoned when the doctor is confronted with an apoplectic patient, screaming obscenities and anarchist slogans. Bouvier is released as "cured," despite his protestations that he is not. As soon as he is released, he begins his long trek south and his murders commence. Upon his capture, the actual killer, Vaché (both Bouvier and Vaché are common names for a "shepherd") confessed to eleven murders, but may have killed more than twenty-seven. His name became associated with Jack the Ripper, as "the French Ripper" and "L'éventreur du Sud-Est" ("the South-east Ripper").
Tavernier has a taste for detective fiction, which was reflected in his choices of novels by Simenon and Jim Thompson, but also in his narrative structure. In The Judge and the Murderer, Rousseau becomes obsessed with solving the murder cases (which often included rape and sodomy) that led to the capture of Bouvier. He catalogs their forensic details with a thoroughness that was unprecedented. In fact, the solving of the Vaché case is often credited with the creation of forensic science.
The quite modern problem presented by the story of Joseph Bouvier is one of responsibility. Is Bouvier responsible - legally, mentally, and morally - for his crimes? Legally, there wasn't much room for such a question in late 19th-century France. Insanity pleas were a novelty, but mental incompetence was an obvious factor, because of the brain damage, albeit self-inflicted, that Bouvier suffered as a result of the two bullets he shot into his head. Bouvier confesses to eleven murders, and even cooperates with the investigation, somehow confident that his insanity plea will save him from the gallows. Rousseau, however, is determined that it shall not, and orders that Bouvier be examined, but only so that he should be declared competent. Tavernier gives Bouvier various opportunities to shout political slogans that establish his anarchist allegiances. When his conviction and sentence become clear to him, he vows that he will not take part in his execution. Accordingly, he is dragged by his guards to the gallows. Joseph Vaché was guillotined on New Year's Eve 1898.
The character of Rousseau, magnificently played by Philippe Noiret, becomes increasingly unsympathetic as the drama proceeds and his cynical treatment of the prisoner in his charge becomes clearer. Two characters, Villedieu, an attorney, and Rose, a village girl who is Rousseau's mistress (Rousseau is unmarried and lives with his mother), offer the viewer some contrast to the limitations in Rousseau's character - although he bullies both of them. Villedieu is beautifully played by Jean-Claude Brialy, and his reasonable objections to Rousseau's determination to make justice do only what he wants drives him to despair and, for this and undisclosed reasons, he kills himself. Rose, though initially passive, grows so intolerant of Rousseau's abuses (there is a scene in which Rousseau, perhaps inspired by Bouvier's crimes, sodomizes her), she leaves him and, at the close of the film that returns us to history, visits Bouvier's first victim, Louise, and joins a village strike, singing the words of a popular Communard song, as soldiers arrive to suppress the strike.
The script for The Judge and the Murderer is credited to Jean Aurenche and Tavernier, from an original idea developed by Tavernier and Pierre Bost. Aurenche and Bost, a legendary script-writing team in France, were unfairly black-balled in 1954 by then-Cahier du Cinéma critic François Truffaut. Attempting to perhaps correct this injustice, the two were coaxed out of retirement by Tavernier in 1974 to help him write The Clockmaker, which was based on a Georges Simenon novel. Bost died in December 1975, before the script for The Judge and the Murderer was completed. Aurenche would assist Tavernier one more time, co-writing Coup de Torchon (1981). And in loving tribute to Bost, Tavernier adapted his novel Monsieur Ladmiral va bientôt mourir for his film A Sunday in the Country (1984).
The Judge and the Murderer, like other Tavernier films, has been especially difficult to get hold of since its initial release. I first saw it (twice) on Telefrance in the early '80s, and I've since managed to locate it online, but aside from a Conoisseur Video version and a Laserdisc, it remains unavailable on DVD. This is a problem because the film is not only one of the best French films from the 1970s, but it was met with respectful incomprehension, with notable exceptions, by American critics. For example, in her New York Times review, Janet Maslin was obviously confused: "Judge Rousseau (Philippe Noiret) takes on the task of deciding whether the murderer, Sgt. Joseph Bouvier (Michel Galabru), is a madman or a fraud." Nonsense. Rousseau is not only convinced that Bouvier is a homicidal maniac, he is determined that the detail of his insanity will not save him from the guillotine. The sensational details of the murders (which he coolly relates to his unfazed mother) made national headlines in France, and Vaché's story gripped readers. Later, Maslin states: "after Bouvier is apprehended, the Judge examines him over and over, trying to determine whether the man's claims of insanity are to be believed." (1) Rousseau knows that Bouvier must be insane, but he doesn't care. He tricks Bouvier into convincing everyone else that he is sane so he can condemn him.
Tavernier evokes the period brilliantly, especially through the virulent anti-Semitism that provoked the Dreyfus Case. Bouvier, in fact, emerges as a strange kind of hero of the story, since he is the victim of the injustice forced on him by Rousseau. Incredibly, he arouses in the viewer more sympathy than Rousseau does. Noiret and Galabru become adversaries in the grim struggle over Bouvier's "insanity" defense. The level of acting between them is peerless. Philippe Sarde supplied the film with music that is movingly passionate, especially the ballads written for the film and sung by Jean-Roger Caussimon. This multi-layered and powerful film leaves the viewer with much to ponder about justice and responsibility.
(1) Maslin also makes an incomprehensible statement regarding the film's "period": "Mr. Tavernier's 'The Clockmaker' and his 'Let Joy Reign Supreme' belong to the same period as this 1975 film". Does she mean that the three films were made at the same time or set in the same period? The Clockmaker is set in contemporary (1974) France, while Let Joy Reign Supreme is set in the 18th century.
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