Jean-Pierre Miquel
On 9 January 1836, Pierre Lacenaire goes to the guillotine, a murderer and a thief. He gives Allard, a police inspector, his life story, written while awaiting execution. He also asks Allard to care for Hermine, a lass to whom he has been guardian for more than ten years. In flashbacks, from the prison as Lacenaire writes, from Allard's study as he and Hermine read, and from other readers' memory after the book is published, we see Lacenaire's childhood as he stands up to bullies, including priests, his youthful thieving, his first murder, his brief army career, his seduction of a princess, and his affair with Avril, a young man who dies beside him.
Victor Valance a quitté Paris depuis plusieurs années, laissant derrière lui sa mère et ses trois filles, pour réaliser de sombres opérations de casinos aux Bahamas et au Canada. Sa fille ainée, Pauline, est polytechnicienne, attachée au ministre des finances, et s'occupe de toute la petite famille.
Unhappy women are being murdered by Emile, a psychotic young man suffering from the delusion that his acts are mercy killings. The detective assigned to track down the killer resorts to seriously unorthodox and even unethical methods to get his man.
Repression is the rule of the day in this film that skewers Greek governance of the 1960s. Z, a leftist rabble rouser, is killed in what appears to be a traffic accident. But given the political climate, the death of such a prominent activist raises troubling questions. Though it's too late to save Z's life, a postmortem examination suggests that the ruling party was behind his death. As the facts leak out, those who tell the truth pay the price for their honesty.
