Uno dei tre

French critics often talk about Cayatte's cybernetics...But,they say,some day ,the robots went wrong.Roughly from 1960 onwards,well another cheap trick of the nouvelle vague.

At the time,"le glaive et la balance" was slagged off by the young turks of the rising Godardesque generation :"bad actors" "agonizing trial" "overblown" "unlikely story"..you name it...

Well,if a story had to be plausible to be filmed,99% of the production would be dismissed .The problem lies in the fact that Cayatte deals with a very serious story:a child's murder,three suspects,two of whom are guilty.

Retrospection illumines different aspects of the movie,unavailable,contextually,to critics of the time of issue.Firstly ,this is par excellence the kind of movie Hollywood could remake .Its components are contemporary:a suspenseful thriller with a whodunit at that,three long flashbacks searching the suspects' lives,and a final trial which would effortlessly make today's directors (and script writers) drool:shall we sentence one innocent or shall we acquit two criminals?

The populace will rule...in a way a lot of viewers will find unbearable.And justice for all???