2023-09-26 19:15:24
The Goldman Trial ***
by Cédric Kahn
French film, 1h55
Struck with vigor, the three shots resonate in the room. They do not announce the start of a play, even if Cédric Kahn’s film takes on all the appearances of one. It is April 26, 1976, at the Amiens courthouse, and the second trial of Pierre Goldman has just begun. The atmosphere is electric because the stakes go far beyond the case being judged.
A figure of the extreme left, the defendant is accused of several armed robberies and the murder of two pharmacists during the attack on a Parisian pharmacy. Sentenced to life in prison during a first trial before the Paris Assize Court, Pierre Goldman admits to the burglaries, but not that of the pharmacy. Gangster, yes, but not murderer. The entire left-wing intelligentsia supports him.
Simone Signoret and Régis Debray are present in the room, as well as his family, including Jean-Jacques Goldman, his half-brother, his friends and his supporters. Behind the civil party as well as on the defense side, two camps clash: supporters of Goldman against supporters of the police and the victims, left-wing activists protecting an innocent against defenders of order seeking a guilty person.
“The star of the film is the trial”
A trial reflecting the image of its time, dominated by the polarization of political debates, which Cédric Kahn carefully reconstructs, planting his camera in the center of the judicial ring to film the muscular exchanges between the prosecution and the defense.
But, unlike lawyers, the director ofPrayer (2018) does not multiply the effects. The system is refined, without camera movement or visual embellishment, served by little-known actors. “The star of the film is the trial”, had underlined, in The cross, Cédric Kahn, during the last Cannes Film Festival. Apart from a few breaths outside the courtroom, The Goldman Trial is a fascinating closed session in the service of speech.
That of Pierre Goldman first. Brilliantly played by Arieh Worthalter, a Franco-Belgian actor who seems inhabited by the character, the accused impresses everyone with his patter and his complexity. By turns exalted, seductive, indignant, provocative, he cannot resist a witticism, playing with the public and not hesitating to vituperate against the police and the prosecution lawyer, whom he accuses of being devious and racist.
“A Dostoyevsky hero”
Even the president of the chamber (Stéphan Guérin-Tillié, impeccable) seems captivated by the ambivalent personality of the accused, whose journey he recalls at length. Flayed alive, Pierre Goldman never recovered from his childhood, torn between his parents, Polish Jews, former communist resistance fighters separated at the Liberation. « I want to free myself from the bruise of being Jewish,” he confesses.
For his lawyer, Me Georges Kiejman, to whom Arthur Harari – better known as a filmmaker and screenwriter – gives all the necessary solemnity, “Goldman is a Dostoyevsky hero, the fruit of a true tragedy, that of the Jews of Eastern Europe.” He dreams of being a resistance fighter or a guerrilla, but veers off into alcohol, partying and petty banditry, as the civil party’s lawyer, Me Garaud (Nicolas Briançon, cheeky as hell) reminds us.
Against the accused, the prosecution has no material evidence, but witnesses who all formally recognize him. All of Me Kiejman’s work consists of tracking down the flaws, the weaknesses and the lies in these testimonies, of sowing doubt among the jurors, of recalling the fundamental importance of the presumption of innocence.
With fantastic precision, the debates were reconstructed from press articles of the time, Cédric Kahn and his co-writer Nathalie Hertzberg not having had access to the minutes of the trial. A strong work on the power of words, the film says a lot about the difficulty of delivering justice.
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A tumultuous life
1944. Birth in Lyon of Pierre Goldman.
1966. After having campaigned in the Unef and studied philosophy, he left for a maquis in Venezuela.
1969. Back in France, he commits several robberies.
1970. Arrested, he is suspected of having killed two pharmacists during a burglary.
1974. Sentenced to life imprisonment by the Paris Assize Court.
1975. A campaign in his favor is being led by left-wing figures. Success of Obscure memories of a Polish Jew born in France, written in prison. The Court of Cassation overturns the first judgment.
1976. Second trial at the Amiens Assize Court, which convicted him for the robberies but exonerated him for the murder of the pharmacists.
1979. Assassination in Paris, the culprits of which were never arrested.
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