As an introductory note: it's true that this review contains spoilers, but then the main page here is full of spoilers. If you wish to be "unspoiled", avoid the taglines and synopsis!
This movie is adapted from a celebrated European play which shares some features with other works of the period. Think Brecht, Ionesco, Pirandello; on the cinematic side, I think this film has a family resemblance to "Les Carabiniers" by Godard. It's not a realistic work and it avoids positioning itself in time and space. So don't waste time asking yourself what country the town of Gullen is really in (the Cyrillic writing on the shops and its apparent proximity to Trieste makes me want to put it in Croatia or Slovenia - but there I am, wasting time) or poking fingers at the plot and asking about this country's currency or legal system or what Serge could have done if he had been quicker on the uptake. It's not realism. It's a parable. It's "everytown". It's about the human race.
And it's a product of a strain of post-WWII European culture that is exploring why those things happened and is pretty darn cynical about the human race. The human race is being scolded here, though through parable, and with a tone often humorous, sometimes sad, sometimes bitter. I don't think this made it an uncomfortable film to watch, but I'm not everyone.
So, as to the backstory. Twenty years ago the Ingrid Bergman character (Carla) was in love with Anthony Quinn (Serge) and was having his baby. But he chose to marry the daughter of the owner of the general store, and, when she sued him for paternity, he bribed two guys with a bottle of brandy each to testify that she was so promiscuous the child could be anybody's. She was driven from the town; the baby was taken from her, and died, apparently of neglect; and she had no recourse but to become a whore in Trieste. "That girl died," she later declares. Now, "by a set of curious chances" (to quote "The Mikado"), she returns to her old home town, mouldering and hopeless as it is, with all the money in the world, and an entourage of lawyers, underlings, and thugs.
The town truckles to her, of course, making a great show of forgetting all the unpleasant events of the past and pretending that Carla might as well. No such luck. She is willing to shower money on the town and its people, but in return she wants "justice", namely, that Serge be put to death. The officials and populace are scandalized at first, but by stages (and not prolonged ones) they come around to her program, strengthened by the realization that everyone else in the town is getting on board, and by the fact that the respectable people are being "realistic" about it all and making it supposedly legal. Ultimately they want even Serge to admit that it's the only reasonable thing, and that he would be impermissibly selfish to want it otherwise. I should say that the depiction of this process is the best part of the film and makes it well worth watching.
Finally, having changed the laws so as to allow for a speedy trial with a predetermined outcome - on the now-capital charge of perverting the course of justice, no less - the town collects its money and is ready to execute Serge. FINAL SPOILER: at this point, in the original play, they kill him, and the corrupt press report that he died of a heart attack brought on by joy. However, this movie has radically changed the ending; in this version, Carla declares that the whole town was just as guilty as Serge, and their punishment would be to go on living with Serge among them, shamefully knowing what murderers they all are, while Serge must go on living knowing that all his friends were about to kill him. Apparently this was her plan all along.
Naturally your first reaction will be that this is just a cowardly way of placating the bourgeois public and evading the logic of the whole work up to that point. It was mine, anyway. And it seems to me that all these people including Serge will not be harshly punished by shame afterwards, as they will have cars and fine boots.
However, my second thought was that, whatever the reason for the plot change, maybe it wasn't so bad, because after all she's quite right: the whole town was indeed complicit in the original crime. I don't think it shocks the conscience that she wants Serge harshly punished, and there are plenty of retribution-hungry characters in contemporary movies who would think Serge was getting off easy if he got killed quickly and humanely. But then what kind of justice is it if he gets killed and the whole rest of the town just gets money?
(And by the way, isn't there an argument that the postwar West had exactly the same problem? How many people, and not only in Europe, shared the responsibility for Nazism and didn't get condemned for war crimes but on the contrary just got rich? I wonder if Duerrenmatt, the original playwright, is on record anywhere with his thoughts about the movie's ending.)
But my third thought is that maybe the movie ends too quickly, and it would be good if Serge were executed and if she then added that, on second thought, real justice would demand more victims - the mayor, say. And maybe the priest and the police chief. And maybe more to come. The body politic surviving by eating itself up one by one.
Or for that matter she could just demolish the whole town and pack everyone off to a whorehouse in Trieste. She has enough money to do it, in a parable at least. Or re-education camps? What would you do?
This movie is adapted from a celebrated European play which shares some features with other works of the period. Think Brecht, Ionesco, Pirandello; on the cinematic side, I think this film has a family resemblance to "Les Carabiniers" by Godard. It's not a realistic work and it avoids positioning itself in time and space. So don't waste time asking yourself what country the town of Gullen is really in (the Cyrillic writing on the shops and its apparent proximity to Trieste makes me want to put it in Croatia or Slovenia - but there I am, wasting time) or poking fingers at the plot and asking about this country's currency or legal system or what Serge could have done if he had been quicker on the uptake. It's not realism. It's a parable. It's "everytown". It's about the human race.
And it's a product of a strain of post-WWII European culture that is exploring why those things happened and is pretty darn cynical about the human race. The human race is being scolded here, though through parable, and with a tone often humorous, sometimes sad, sometimes bitter. I don't think this made it an uncomfortable film to watch, but I'm not everyone.
So, as to the backstory. Twenty years ago the Ingrid Bergman character (Carla) was in love with Anthony Quinn (Serge) and was having his baby. But he chose to marry the daughter of the owner of the general store, and, when she sued him for paternity, he bribed two guys with a bottle of brandy each to testify that she was so promiscuous the child could be anybody's. She was driven from the town; the baby was taken from her, and died, apparently of neglect; and she had no recourse but to become a whore in Trieste. "That girl died," she later declares. Now, "by a set of curious chances" (to quote "The Mikado"), she returns to her old home town, mouldering and hopeless as it is, with all the money in the world, and an entourage of lawyers, underlings, and thugs.
The town truckles to her, of course, making a great show of forgetting all the unpleasant events of the past and pretending that Carla might as well. No such luck. She is willing to shower money on the town and its people, but in return she wants "justice", namely, that Serge be put to death. The officials and populace are scandalized at first, but by stages (and not prolonged ones) they come around to her program, strengthened by the realization that everyone else in the town is getting on board, and by the fact that the respectable people are being "realistic" about it all and making it supposedly legal. Ultimately they want even Serge to admit that it's the only reasonable thing, and that he would be impermissibly selfish to want it otherwise. I should say that the depiction of this process is the best part of the film and makes it well worth watching.
Finally, having changed the laws so as to allow for a speedy trial with a predetermined outcome - on the now-capital charge of perverting the course of justice, no less - the town collects its money and is ready to execute Serge. FINAL SPOILER: at this point, in the original play, they kill him, and the corrupt press report that he died of a heart attack brought on by joy. However, this movie has radically changed the ending; in this version, Carla declares that the whole town was just as guilty as Serge, and their punishment would be to go on living with Serge among them, shamefully knowing what murderers they all are, while Serge must go on living knowing that all his friends were about to kill him. Apparently this was her plan all along.
Naturally your first reaction will be that this is just a cowardly way of placating the bourgeois public and evading the logic of the whole work up to that point. It was mine, anyway. And it seems to me that all these people including Serge will not be harshly punished by shame afterwards, as they will have cars and fine boots.
However, my second thought was that, whatever the reason for the plot change, maybe it wasn't so bad, because after all she's quite right: the whole town was indeed complicit in the original crime. I don't think it shocks the conscience that she wants Serge harshly punished, and there are plenty of retribution-hungry characters in contemporary movies who would think Serge was getting off easy if he got killed quickly and humanely. But then what kind of justice is it if he gets killed and the whole rest of the town just gets money?
(And by the way, isn't there an argument that the postwar West had exactly the same problem? How many people, and not only in Europe, shared the responsibility for Nazism and didn't get condemned for war crimes but on the contrary just got rich? I wonder if Duerrenmatt, the original playwright, is on record anywhere with his thoughts about the movie's ending.)
But my third thought is that maybe the movie ends too quickly, and it would be good if Serge were executed and if she then added that, on second thought, real justice would demand more victims - the mayor, say. And maybe the priest and the police chief. And maybe more to come. The body politic surviving by eating itself up one by one.
Or for that matter she could just demolish the whole town and pack everyone off to a whorehouse in Trieste. She has enough money to do it, in a parable at least. Or re-education camps? What would you do?