Das Leben, die Liebe, der Tod

Claude Lelouch is best known for sentimental movies. Not all are masterpieces, but many are really brilliant -with an excellent camera work (made by Lelouch himself) and long scenes in which facial expressions and movements of the actors replace dialogs, in order to let us imagine their feelings.

This film, made after "Un homme et une femme" (Lelouch's cinematic breakthrough in 1966) and "Vivre pour vivre" (1967) is completely different from the previous two and from the following ones as well. Here the French director quits the sentimental themes for telling a very dramatic story, about a married man who kills three prostitutes and is sentenced to death.

The film is a strong condemnation of death penalty in France -in 1968, when the movie was made, capital punishment was still valid there, it was abolished many years later.

The film shares the same opinion with the US movie "Dead Man Walking" by Tim Robbins (1995): death penalty is useless, no matter which mistake the condemned man has done.

Lelouch films with a lot realism, as if it was a documentary. The story is told in a quite crude way -all the prison scenes are also shot in black and white, whereas the antecedents are in colour.

Death penalty is shown here as a barbarian ritual, a ceremony of the absurd.

I think it still remains a very courageous movie.