An Officer and a Spy (El oficial y el espía)
An Officer and a Spy (El oficial y el espía)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Starrings: Jean Dujardin, Louis Garrel, Emmanuelle Seigner, Grégory Gadebois, Hervé Pierre, Wladimir Yordanoff, Didier Sandre, Melvil Poupaud, Eric Ruf, Laurent Stocker, Luca Barbareschi
Country: France, Italy
Year: 2019
Author review: Roberto Matteucci
Click Here for Italian Version
"Soldiers degrade an innocent."
One night in March 1977, Samantha Geimer, a girl of nearly fourteen, daughter of a TV presenter, future model, was at Jack Nicholson's house on Mulholland Drive. She was alone with the director Roman Polanski. They had a drink and then had some intercourse.
Is Roman Polanski guilty? Yes, because the agreement between the prosecution and the defence, Polanski declared his responsibility for accusing had sex with an underage but denied the rape, it was a consensual act. Polanski was sentenced to ninety days in prison.
There was a hitch. Something wrong happened, the judge refused the arrangement, even though the victim accepted it. With the prosecutor's commitment broken, Polanski fled the United States.
Polanski believes he paid his fault for having coitus with a minor. Samantha thinks the same too. In an interview she talks about the strange behaviour of the judge:
“His behaviour was inappropriate and immoral, and certainly not out of concern for me or sense of justice. Roman was expected to have parole, and neither I nor my family wanted to see him in jail. People can be redeemed, there is no need to make them pay for life." (1)
Samantha appealed to the Los Angeles court for the definitive closure of the case, and for excluding further imprisonment for Polanski.
Polanski is sure, he was trapped in a misleading legal action.
“The action I am taking is no more than a radical measure to hasten the explosion of truth and justice.
I have but one passion, the search for light, in the name of humanity which has suffered so much and is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry of my very soul.” (2)
Émile Zola wrote the up phrase on January 13, 1898, in L’Aurore, in a letter to the president of the French republic Félix Faure. He explained how, army officer Alfred Dreyfus, had been framed by a putrid and racist machination.
Polanski feels like both Alfred Dreyfus and Émile Zola. The similarity with Dreyfus is obvious. They are intellectual. Zola is a writer, he prepared a letter with a decisive and expressive terminology. Polanski is a filmmaker and directs the film J'accuse to proclaim both of being subjected to a judicial error, and of how calumny can destroy a person.
J'accuse - An Officer and a Spy - El oficial y el espía is presented at the 76th Venice Film Festival, winner of the Grand Jury Prize.
The plot is history. The Jew captain of the artillery Alfred Dreyfus was accused of being a spy. The trial was hasty. On January 5, 1895, he was degraded and sent to Devil's Island, facing French Guiana.
Colonel Georges Picquart was a respected and loyal officer. He was chosen head of the Secret Service to track down new allegations against Dreyfus. His search proved a dissimilar reality and discovered the true culprit. He demanded his release without success. The generals did not want to reveal the reality, Picquart opposed, for professional honesty, his superiors. Accidentally, he found himself guiding the revolt of intellectuals and politics in favour of Dreyfus.
The story is not modern, it is a bit old fashion, but Roman Polanski is an intelligent artist, and, after his work, the film becomes fresh and fun. To achieve this, he composes the script with a different subjective. Instead of the events from Dreyfus' point of view, he prefers to choose the Picquart one:
“Robert Harris was very enthusiastic about the idea so we got down to work straight away. At first, it see- med obvious to us to that we should tell the story from Dreyfus’s perspective, but we soon realised that it wasn’t going to work: all the action, with its many characters and twists and turns, took place in Paris, whereas our central character was stuck on “Devil’s Island”. The only story we could have told would have been about his suffering. We wrestled with the problem for a long time and eventually, after more than a year’s work, Robert found the solution to our dilemma: it was best to leave Dreyfus on his rock and tell the story from the point of view of Colonel Picquart, one of the main characters in the story.” (3)
The Picquart option is crucial.
The two characters are diverse, they are profoundly dissimilar and clash each other. However, they have something in common: morality and meticulousness. Without Dreyfus’s pride and Picquart’s courage, the ending would have been otherwise tragic.
Dreyfus is grumpy, unfriendly, superb, haughty, proud and even ungrateful.
When the truth emerged, Dreyfus was rehabilitated and Picquart was appointed Minister of War.
In the final scene, Dreyfus asks to meet him. The meeting is cold. Dreyfus does not say thank, an explanation, a clarification, but he behaves intransigently, he only wants a career advancement for the years lost due to the suspension.
It is not the first contrast. In the investigation days, they challenge each other. Medium-shot, in profile to the camera, they look fixedly in their eyes. Picquart says he does not like Jews, and yet he would never discriminate them.
Polanski adds a strong human element:
“Picquart is a fascinating and complex character. He is not an active anti-Semite. He doesn’t like Jews, but that’s more out of tradition than belief. As a counter-intelligence officer, when he finds out that Dreyfus is innocent, he very much takes the case to heart and decides to uncover the truth.” (4)
Picquart is an anti-Semite, but honest, objective, with a sense of justice, an excellent soldier and in front evident prejudice, he does not hesitate to tackle his commanders.
There is another link between the two one. Picquart has a sin too. A serious crime, he has a mistress, a woman married. Adultery is not light blame in France at the end of the nineteenth century and the clandestine couple is marginalized.
The sequence to determine his personalities: Picquart returns home after the accusations. The flat has been searched and is devastated. The Colonel keeps calm and, in spite of the disorder, sits at the piano and plays.
The film begins with the degradation of Dreyfus. Long-shot. A huge barracks, hundreds of troopers are lined up. Some noises, a platoon accompanies Dreyfus. A soldier tears off his insignia and breaks his sword, the worst humiliation.
The revenge appears with the publication of Zola's article. A voice-over declaims for each general or politician or investigator the exact charges. The director uses alternate editing. They are upset. Till that moment, no one had ever allowed to inculpate them directly. There is an indicted who reads the newspaper in the street just bought. Who reads it on the table while eating breakfast with a waiter waiting. Who read it in the tub during the bath or who, like the calligrapher, reads it in the laboratory when the subordinates stared at him.
Their faces are impressed with the shock of having been discovered. Furthermore, there is the sublime power of words produced by a learned storyteller. Each term penetrates like an arrow, capable of piercing the most sinister of the lies used to slander an innocent.
Polanski has no sympathy for the arrogant generals. Court session. Reading of the sentence. Long-shot, low-angle-shot. The jury stands up. Footsteps, the audience rises. The officers wear their hat with the waving plume. They are strict, rigid with their moustaches. They are exaggerated, they have something to hide, too confident of themselves. The president reads the verdict in the name of the French people and at that moment all the soldiers make the salute. Cut, frames of Picquart in civilian clothes, medium-shot, always low-angle-shot, the gaze is severe.
The camera goes back, then slowly turns to film the hall. The decision arrives with a voice-over. Shot of the expression of the generals, they seem as unreal in their fatness and with the nonsense physical. The camera moves sideways to the journalists at the same time as the guilty plea. The reporters jump into their chairs to write their versions. Cut, long-shot in the subjective from the president of the court. There are clamours: the generals congratulate each other. Cut, Dreyfus' lawyers shots from below, they are disheartened. Cut, the public has divided feeling, shots of a sad lady embraced by a man. Cut, tribunal recognizes the circumstances for past merits and Dreyfus passes from the death penalty to penitentiary. Long-shot, the generals express their disappointment. The sequence is filmed to ridicule the presumptuous commanders.
The social and historical themes are clear and precise.
Good and evil are perceptible. Dreyfus, Picquart, Zola also the lover, are members of a bourgeois class, leading France in the post Second French Empire period. They still have many obstacles and they need the Dreyfus case to eliminate conservative resistance, mainly among the military.
The characters, rather than historical, are symbolic temperaments, with some ironies like the wit about the Scientific Police of the age: "Divine goodness what can you do nowadays".
The structure is linear, logical, the flashbacks do not disturb the scheme.
He is focused to photograph the atmosphere of the time, as he succeeded in Oliver Twist. The details of the dust on the handrails or the excrement of horses scattered in the streets of Paris are examples.
The scenography, the poses and the scenes are like paintings. There are references to Jacques-Louis David, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the Impressionists, Gauguin in the images of the Devil's Island.
The moral is recognisable, easily identifiable, there are no hidden interpretations, this is the virtue of J'accuse.
Directed by Mattie Do
Starrings: Yannawoutthi Chanthalungsy, Vilouna Phetmany
Country: Laos
Year: 2019