We are all killers

Movie
German title	We are all killers
Original title	Nous sommes tous des assassins
Country of production	France , Italy
original language	French
Publishing year	1952
length	110 minutes
Age rating	JMK from 16
Rod
Director	André Cayatte
script	Charles Spaak André Cayatte
production	François Carron
music	Raymond Legrand
camera	Jean Bourgoin
cut	Paul Cayatte
occupation
Marcel Mouloudji  : René Le Guen Raymond Pellegrin  : Gino, the Corsican Claude Laydu  : Philippe Arnaud, Le Guen's lawyer Louis Seigner  : Roussard, a clergyman Georges Poujouly  : Michel Le Guen Antoine Balpêtré  : Dr. Dutoit Léonce Corne  : Captain of the Military Tribunal Henri Crémieux  : Bauchet's lawyer Henri Vilbert : Monsieur Arnaud Juliette Faber  : Francine Sautier Lucien Nat  : Advocate General Jean-Roger Caussimon  : Public Prosecutor Roland Lesaffre  : inmate hairdresser André Reybaz  : Father Simon Paul Frankeur  : Léon, a guard Yvonne de Bray  : rag collector in the café Monette Dinay  : the boss Renée Gardès  : Le Guen's mother Anouk Ferjac  : Agnes As long as Sicard  : her mother Liliane Maigné  : Rachel Maurice Dorléac  : The President of the Tribunal Line Noro  : Madame Louise Arnaud Jacqueline Pierreux  : Yvonne Le Guen Yvette Etiévant  : Madame Bauchet Alexandre Rignault  : Gendarme at the farm Alinda Kristensen  : Madame Sanders Louis Arbessier  : Attorney at the Children's Tribunal Kurt Kronefeld  : Heinrich Stoll, one of the accused of murder Jacques Marin  : cafe clerk Sylvie  : Gino's mother Roger Hanin  : Prison Clerk Guy Decomble  : Inspector

We're All Murderers is a Franco-Italian judicial drama directed by André Cayatte, who specializes in legal issues . This filmic accusation from 1952 postulated the abolition of the death penalty in France.

action

René Le Guen, a completely apolitical petty crook during the German occupation of France (1940-44), was recruited by the Resistance during the Second World War with the order to kill as many of the German occupiers as possible. But after the country's liberation, he cannot stop doing what he learned until 1944: to murder. As a result, Le Guen was arrested by the police, tried and eventually sentenced to death. He is waiting on his death row, along with other convicts such as the justice victim Dr. Dutoit, the Corsican Gino, who once committed blood revenge, the child murderer Bauchet and the sex offender Malingré, for the time of his execution, but hopes for a pardon from the President of the Republic.

While he exchanged ideas with his fellow prisoners and offered him spiritual consolation, Le Guen's lawyer Philippe Arnaud did everything possible to make it clear to the judiciary and the public that Le Guen's social background and his brutality during the occupation are the reasons for his social incompetence he showed on his return to orderly circumstances after 1945. While Arnaud tries hard to help his client, Le Guen's fellow prisoners are executed, one after the other. The film fades out at the moment when Arnaud is still trying desperately to call the President ...

Production notes

We Are All Murderers was filmed from January 7th to March 22nd, 1952. It premiered in Paris on May 21, 1952. In Germany, the film opened on February 10, 1953. The first German television broadcast took place on May 27, 1958.

Jacques Colombier designed the film structures .

useful information

As so often in his artistic work, Cayatte had some problems with film censorship with this film. Above all, they came up against the statement of an examining magistrate in We are all murderers : "Murders of Germans are nothing to do with the judiciary." The French had feared that this attitude, which was evident in French judicial circles immediately after the Second World War, was going on existed that could seriously disrupt the reorganization of Franco-German relations after 1945.

We Are All Murderers was the second part of Cayatte's so-called justice trilogy. This was preceded by a jury court in 1950 ; it followed in 1955 The Black File .

We Are All Murderers received the Special Jury Prize at the 1952 Cannes Film Festival .

criticism

Reclam's guide states: “Cayatte makes it clear that society is complicit in the deeds of its outsiders. From this, and from the sober, realistic portrayal of life on death row, the film gains an intensity that makes it the best part of Cayatte's trilogy of justice. ( Justice est faite , 1950; Le dossier noir , 1955). "

Georges Sadoul wrote: “After a series of secondary films, André Cayatte created an important trilogy on legal issues: “ Justice est faite ” (jury court) shows the psychology and mechanism of a jury court. "Nous sommers tous des Assassins" (We are all murderers) is a heavy indictment against the death penalty. "Avant le Déluge" (Before the Flood) deals with the problem of juvenile criminals in the context of war psychosis ... "

Kay Weniger's The Great Personal Lexicon of the Film wrote in Cayatte's biography about his judicial film productions:

“The core of these films was not so much Cayatte's confrontation with the actual crime, but rather the clarification of the background to a verdict among jury members (“ jury court ”), presentation of incidents during preliminary judicial investigations and police methods (“ The Black Files ”) as well as the screening of the social environment of a perpetrator and the social backgrounds that let him kill ("We are all murderers"). "

- The large personal lexicon of film , Volume 3. Berlin 2001, p. 26

The Lexicon of International Films states: “Cayatte's second judicial film is a brilliant and well-argued indictment against the death penalty; his film is convincing and provides important discussion material in an exciting way, despite or because of the cool distance of his images. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jean-Claude Sabria: Cinéma français. Les années 50. Paris 1987, no.646
2. ↑ Murder on Day X in Der Spiegel from June 4, 1952
3. ↑ Reclams Filmführer, by Dieter Krusche, collaboration: Jürgen Labenski. P. 323. Stuttgart 1973.
4. ^ Georges Sadoul: History of the cinematic art. Vienna 1957, p. 398
5. ↑ We are all murderers. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .  

Web links

• We are all murderers in the Internet Movie Database (English)