Le Glaive et la balance (1963)
Directed by André Cayatte

Film Review

Three years after his successful wartime drama Le Passage du rhin, French film director André Cayatte made Le Glaive et la balance, a film in which he revisits one of his favourite subjects: failure inside the justice system.  This crime-drama, partly filmed on the French Riviera, deals with a moral dilemma: three men are accused of murder but only two of them are guilty.  As usual, Cayatte exposes the soul of his main characters and confronts the viewer with some complex issues: should we sentence an innocent man or acquit two criminals?  

At the time of the film's release, ardent supporters of Cayatte's work talked about a suspenseful and efficiently made thriller, well-scripted by Henri Jeanson's and with several actors at their best - Oscar winner Anthony Perkins (who played his role in French, a language he knew very well), rising star Jean-Claude Brialy and Latin lover Renato Salvatori (in real life, Annie Girardot's husband).  On the other hand, the film was written off by the young Turks of the rising Godardesque generation.  Maybe it is true that the film has one structural flaw, namely that the issue of guilt is not central to the story and the main interest is which of the three men is not guilty.

Film Synopsis

The American Johnny Parsons is a bad painter who has difficulty selling his work.  His girlfriend, Agnès, works as a secretary for the rich Mrs Winter, a widow who lives in a Riviera villa with her 10 year-old son.  Jean-Philippe Prévost is the owner of an estate agency who is struggling to recover from a serious business mishap.  François Cordier is a water-skiing instructor who makes a decent living, thanks to his mistress, the wealthy Mrs Darbon.  One day, Mrs Winter's son is kidnapped and killed by two men.  These men are pursued by the police but when they are run to ground, on a beach, the police find three men, not two.  These men are Johnny, Jean-Philippe and François.  Each of them tells a different story, each accuses the other two...