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Dupont-Lajoie
1975 Crime / Drama
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Credits
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Director: Yves Boisset
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Script: Jean-Pierre Bastid, Yves Boisset, Jean Curtelin, Michel Martens
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Photo: Jacques Loiseleux
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Music: Vladimir Cosma
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Cast: Jean Carmet (Georges Lajoie),
Pierre Tornade (Colin),
Jean Bouise (Inspecteur Boulard),
Michel Peyrelon (Albert Schumacher),
Ginette Garcin (Ginette Lajoie),
Pascale Roberts (Madame Colin),
Jean-Pierre Marielle (Léo
Tartaffione),
Robert Castel (Loulou),
Pino Caruso (Vigorelli),
Isabelle Huppert (Brigitte Colin),
Jacques Chailleux (Léon Lajoie),
Henri Garcin (Le haut fonctionnaire),
Odile Poisson (Mme Schumacher),
Victor Lanoux (Le costaud),
Mohamed Zinet (Le frère de Saïd),
Paul Bonifas (Le maire),
Abderrahmane Benkloua (Saïd),
Jacques Villeret (Gérald)
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Country: France
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Language: French
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Runtime: 100 min
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Aka: Rape of Innocence; The Common Man
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Summary
Georges Lajoie, the proud owner of a Parisian café, sets out for his summer holidays
at a camping site on the Côte d’Azur, accompanied by his wife Ginette and
his grown-up son Léon. There, they meet up with their old friends, the Colins
and the Schumachers. One day, whilst the campers are participating in an edition
of the popular television game show “Inter-camping”, Lajoie slips away and
finds the Colins’ teenage daughter, Brigitte, sunbathing in an isolated spot.
Unable to restrain himself, Lajoie attempts to rape the young woman. When she resists,
he accidentally kills her. Realising what he has done, Lajoie dumps the body in
a nearby building site and returns to the camping games. When the body is later
discovered, suspicion falls on North African immigrant workers. So distraught is
he by the death of his daughter that Monsieur Colin is driven to take revenge. With
the support of his friends, including Lajoie, he attacks the immigrants in their shantytown
and murders one of their number. The killings are investigated by Police Inspector
Boulard. Although he realises the truth, he is unable to bring the guilty to justice…
Review
In one of the earliest of his political thrillers, director Yves Boisset broached the
controversial subject of racism – not just its banality in society in general but
also its malign influence on police procedure. At the time, this was a daring thing
to do and Boisset had great difficulty finding a location where the local authorities
would allow him to make the film. The social relevance of the film struck a chord
with the public and the film was quite successful. This was an indication of the
growing appetite for thrillers in France with a socio-political angle – which was
satisfied by the scores of “néo-polar” films which were made from the
mid to late 1970s (many directed by Boisset himself).
Whilst Dupont Lajoie is by no means a faultless
piece of cinema, its central political messages – whilst heavily overworked –
are driven home with force and conviction. The film’s first thirty minutes
or so, where Lajoie and his buddies casually spout mindless racist remarks whenever the
mood takes them, shows a portrait of contemporary society that is mildly sickening but
which, several decades on, still appears all-too-familiar. The banality of this
part of the film, which looks rather like a cinéma vérité version
of Les
Bronzés, is then abruptly usurped by something much darker and much
more shocking. The rape of Isabelle Huppert by Jean Carmet comes so unexpectedly
and so suddenly that it numbs the spectator and to some extent weakens the second half
of the film. By contrast, the subsequent lynching of a young Arab man – although
considerably more brutal – has a lesser impact. Could this be intentional
on Boisset’s part? Did he want us to feel more offended by the rape of a young
Caucasian French woman than the horrific slaughter of a nameless coloured man? Are
we all rampant xenophobes at heart?
The film’s serious political commentary
is made in its final third segment. Jean Bouise is excellent in the role of the
investigating police inspector and will re-appear in similar establishment roles in many
other films of the 1970s and 1980s. Here, he plays the film’s good guy –
a man who has a simple desire to see justice done but who ultimately fails because he
is part of a system that places the protection of the state above that of the individual.
As Goethe put it, "It is better to commit an injustice than to create disorder".
There are some powerful statements in this part of the film, but their impact is somewhat
diluted by what follows – a closing sequence in which justice is finally delivered
in true série noir fashion. Boisset
was clearly unable to resist going for the “obvious” thriller ending.
The crime-thriller is certainly the genre in which Yves Boisset works best. His
approach, probably influenced by American action thrillers, shows greater naturalism,
and certainly more explicit violence, than most French thrillers of the time. Whilst
not Boisset’s best work in this genre, Dupont
Lajoie is a respectable piece of cinema, with some notable acting performances
– including a surprisingly strong contribution from Jean Carmet. One
of the film’s highlights is an unexpected spoof of the popular French television
programme “Intervilles” (“It’s A Knockout” for UK viewers),
in which Jean-Pierre Marielle gives a hilarious caricature of a self-obsessed TV presenter.
This well-judged skit is narrowly trumped by the presence of Isabelle Huppert. Although
she appears in the film in a comparatively minor role, Huppert makes a significant impact
and it’s no surprise that she would land some very substantial film roles shortly
after this film.
© James Travers 2004
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Mieux vaut une petite injustice qu’un grand désordre…
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