In 1971, when he directed 'Les assassins de l'ordre' starring Jacques Brel, Marcel Carne had passed his heyday. The French director had directed several remarkable films that remained as milestones in the history of French cinema in the period before the Second World War, one during the war and a few more in the years immediately after the war. After the 1950s, inspiration seemed to have abandoned him, and the films that followed were almost all failures with critics and audiences in an effervescent French cinema that revolted against the 'classical cinema' he symbolised together with a few other. With 'Les assassins de l'ordre' Marcel Carne was trying, at the age of 65, to return, addressing a political issue echoing the student riots that shook France in May 1968. The results of this attempt are not very conclusive. He made his political stand by the side of the younger generations, but his film-making seemed overcome by events. It was to be his penultimate feature film, and yet the most interesting film of the last decades of his career.
The film's script combines the themes of police violence and corruption of justice with the courtroom drama. The film's hero, Bernard Level, is an investigating judge, this position of magistrate being an original French institution with extensive powers of investigation and prosecution, non-existent in many other countries. The responsibility also involves risks, and the judge Level will need courage if he wants to reveal the truth in the case of a detainee who died in detention and send the police officers who appear responsible for this death in front of the jury. The legal and police systems work hand in hand, protect their servants, consider police violence as a legitimate method in the fight against criminals and deaths in detention as work accidents. The judge will face not only his superiors but also the police officers who are exerting pressure on his close family, including his student son, a representative of the '68 generation. Justice is difficult to reach and injustice accentuates the crisis of trust between the new generations and the state institutions.
In order to increase the public's interest, Marcel Carne distributed Jacques Brel, a very popular singer and songwriter, who was beginning to build an acting career in addition to the musical one. Brel proves here real qualities of dramatic actor in a role reminiscent of those that Jean-Louis Trintignan was creating in the same period. We can only regret that he would only appear in a few other films, because after a few years the cancer that took him too young would be discovered. I think he would have had a remarkable career in film. Among those who partnered in the cast I noticed Michael Lonsdale, an actor who recently left us and whose work I really liked, who in this film plays the role of the corrupt police inspector. However, the main problem of the film is the script, both as a structure and as dialogues. The plot is too transparent and too predictable, and the characters recite (even outside the court) too much rhetoric and leave too little room for personal feelings, fears, doubts. For all its weaknesses, 'Les Assassins de l'ordre' is still a film worth watching and rewatching, both for Brel and Lonsdale, but also for the clarity of exposition and the fluidity of the narration characteristic of Marcel Carne's films.
