Absolutely brilliant

A Disappointing Continuation

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

"The Judge And The Assassin" is a technically well-crafted film, with top-notch performances by Philippe Noiret and Michel Galabru (as well as by a young Isabelle Huppert in a small early role). It's also a wrongheaded film that tries to force a sense of moral complexity on the viewer. The attempts to create sympathy for the human monster played by Galabru are misguided at best, there is a gratuitous rape scene for shock value only, and the final blow is delivered at the very end, when we are informed that, although Galabru's serial killer had brutally raped and disemboweled 12 children, during the same period thousands of kids had perished while working in the mines. So? Is that supposed to make his crimes less horrific? I am reminded, once again, of Pauline Kael's comment on Tavernier's later, and more famous, "Coup De Torchon": "he's saying horrible, senseless, inexplicable things, such as that killing on a small scale is less immoral than killing on a grand scale". ** out of 4.

The leads are both very good—Noiret being perhaps the best of the two …--yet without having much stuff to play. The two central characters are poorly written, with not much intrinsic interest. I expected—I must confess—a thrilling hunt game—a wild hunt, in an ever accelerating pace; a savage confrontation of energies—or, at least, a game of subtlety, intelligence, wit and cunning. Yet, the film is but a police procedural, too well performed by Noiret and Galabru; the truth is that this crap director did not deserve such actors. The characters remain unexplained, unexplored and indifferent to the viewer, despite the prodigious art of Galabru and Noiret. While Noiret elegantly, impassibly exercised his mastery, Galabru looked very willing to invest, to create, to find his character's life ….The director is inept, the script is crap. THE JUDGE AND THE ASSASSIN has nor the excitement of a larger—than—life manhunt ,neither that of an abundant deploy of intelligence, shrewdness, intuition, psychology. The whole movie is wrong—wrong from the concept. It amounts to no more than a police procedural, without excitement, atmosphere or suspense. It also ends on a dignified crap note of social vindication. The viewer has the feeling, the perception that everything in this movie was irrelevant, insipid. No excitement, of whatever kind; no life, that is,in it,and no valid creation. Only a pretentious leftist police procedural. The actors are first—hand, Noiret reopens the drawer with ambiguous, eerie characters (his character here is not without reminding the one in LA GRANDE BOUFFE);yet the movie does not find its tone—that is, the director does not find the film's tone.

The judge and the assassin is a strange and ironic title for this film. It does not represent what your mind immediately leads you to believe. It is about the arrest and trial of a psychopath, alas French auteur style. It bears in odd-about way a resemblance to Lacombe Lucien which was released two years earlier. Featuring a bravura performance by Michel Galabru ( he worn the Cesar, the French Oscar) as the serial killer, his trial becomes a study into the mind and evil of nation at the turn of the last century. Dealing with anti-semitism, civil unrest, disobedience and the tyranny of the France and the Church can make anyone crazy and an assassin. With strong performances by Tavernier favorite actor Philippe Noiret and a young Isabelle Huppert, it is a fine film in the tradition of French cinema prior to the advent of the New Wave.

I can't make a real judgment on this film, although the other reviews are rave ones. I just want to add that the story is based on an actual case of the 1890s in France. Joseph Vacher was the real life murderer who is the basis for Michel Galabrue's Joseph Bouvier. Like Vacher he was a former soldier, and he went about the countryside slaughtering young boy shepherds and young girl servants. His destruction of these victims (in terms of mutilations) rivaled his contemporary Jack the Ripper (Vacher was known as Vacher the Ripper). Although he was quite insane the public demanded a death penalty - he was guillotined in 1898. His crimes briefly took public attention off the matter of Captain Alfred Dreyfus.The Philippe Noiret character is partly based on the noted criminologist Professor Alexander Lacassagne, who (despite considerable evidence of insanity) determined that Vacher was sane, and deserved the death penalty.