The Truth

Four years after the partial failure of The Spies, a film that somewhat unsettled audiences, including the filmmaker’s admirers, Clouzot made La Vérité with a considerable budget of 7 million francs. It was based on a true story, the case of Pauline Dubuisson, who was tried in 1953 for the murder of her lover. This new film played to packed houses for several months, thanks in particular to excellent word of mouth, ultimately attracting more than 5 million admissions in France. It was a well-deserved success, but one that unfortunately did not lead to anything satisfactory for the director, who not only failed to complete L'Enfer but also found few defenders for his final feature, the superb Woman in Chains, which was not only captivating in terms of content but also absolutely breathtaking in terms of form. La Vérité was therefore his last work to be unanimously acclaimed by both audiences and critics, even admired across the Atlantic, winning no less than the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Above all, it allowed Brigitte Bardot to answer back to her detractors by demonstrating the full extent of her dramatic range, filling the screen from start to finish and leaving little room for her co-stars, despite the undeniable talent of each of them, whether it was Sami Frey, Marie-José Nat (who, in contrast to her role here, played the precocious young girl in Denys de la Patellière’s Rue des prairies the previous year) and, above all, the two lawyers wonderfully played by Charles Vanel and Paul Meurisse, who face off in a rather jubilant manner in the courtroom. Clouzot wanted to make film after covering several criminal trials for prestigious weekly magazines. (Erick Maurel; dvdclassik.com)