Justice Is Done

André Cayatte ,who was trained as a lawyer began his career with Balzac,Zola or Maupassant adaptations.However ,even in those works ,he already displayed his concerns: social justice in "Au Bonheur des Dames" ,and "les Amants de Verone" his towering achievement featured some kind of trial.

But "Justice Est Faite" marked the birth of the director/lawyer who would continue his fight through the fifties ,sixties and seventies ,with few exceptions.Truffaut often laughed at him but who was he to criticize him?Cayatte's films have a bad and -for the best of them-totally unfair reputation.

"Justice est faite" is part of Cayatte's best.The subject was very risqué for 1950 (still is today in 2006): euthanasia.A woman killed her lover : was it to put an end to her lover's sufferings? But there was another man... and a lot of dough at the end of it.Cayatte will not conclude,his ending remaining completely open.

Even more interesting than the trial itself is the way Cayatte shows how the jurors are summoned (the farmer's lines are revealing:"they want us to be soldiers...and now they want us to judge our fellow men").

The last lines -voice over provided by Pierre Fresnay- are downright disturbing.

More in the same vein was to come.