00;00;15;27 - 00;00;37;03

Jonathan Hafetz

Hi, I'm Jonathan Hafetz, and welcome to Law on Film, a podcast that explores the rich connections between law and film. Law is critical to many films. Film, in turn, tells us a lot about the law. In each episode, we'll look at a film that's noteworthy from a legal perspective. What issues does the film explore? What does it get right about the law and what does it get wrong?

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Jonathan Hafetz

How is law important to understanding the film? And what does the film teach us about the law, and about the larger social and cultural context in which it operates? Our film today is The Return of Martin Guerre, a 1982 French historical drama directed by Daniel Rene and starring Gerard Depardieu. The film describes the historical case of Martin Guerre, played by Depardieu, who leaves his young wife Bertrand, played by not only by a in the small French village of Arteaga, to fight in a war and travel.

00;01;11;09 - 00;01;37;18

Jonathan Hafetz

Around. Eight years later, the false Martin Pardue character returns to the village to resume the real Martin's life. This false Martin, whose true name is Arnaud Detail, persuades the people in the village that he is Martin Guerre, including Bertrand, with whom he goes on to have two children and who seems finally happy to have a husband who loves her, as opposed to her arranged and loveless marriage with the real Martin.

00;01;37;21 - 00;01;59;25

Jonathan Hafetz

But when the imposter Martin presses his uncle for money he's owed for his land. The uncle denounces him as a fraud. An investigation and trial followed to determine if the Depardieu character is the real Martin. The imposter Martin is on the verge of winning until the real Martin shows up at the final hour, exposing the imposter Martin, who then confesses the imposter Martin.

00;02;00;03 - 00;02;26;25

Jonathan Hafetz

I know is then led to the gallows and hacked. Joining me to discuss the return of Martin Guerre is Joseph de la Pena. Joe is a visiting professor at the Peking School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen, China. Joe is also retired after 40 years of being a professor at Villanova School of Law, where his research and teaching interests included international and comparative law.

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Jonathan Hafetz

Joe has also written a great piece about using films to teach comparative law. Joe, welcome to law and film.

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Joseph Dellapenna

Thank you.

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Jonathan Hafetz

In your long and distinguished teaching career, you've not only researched and written about comparative law, but you've also taught it. And part of your teaching has been to use film in teaching comparative law. So can you tell us a little bit about that process and why using movies like The Return of Martin Guerre makes sense in the classroom.

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Joseph Dellapenna

Well, we begin with most of my students, and I think this is true of most law schools may not be true of a few, but for most law schools, very few of the students have ever been in a foreign classroom. Some of them have never been in a foreign country. And so I wanted to give them two things a sense of the feel, if you will, of a foreign legal procedure, the look and feel of a foreign legal procedure, which you can certainly get from these movies.

00;03;23;04 - 00;04;02;10

Joseph Dellapenna

But I also wanted to give them a larger social context in which the legal proceeding takes place. And so I was looking for movies that satisfy both of those criteria. And I think Martin Geer does so spectacularly well. It turned out to be much more of a problem than I had expected, because although we in the United States in particular, and almost any common law country very accustomed to courtroom dramas on television, plays, movies, whatever as a staple of entertainment, they're actually quite rare in non common law countries, which it's self tells you about the different role that courts play in that society.

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Joseph Dellapenna

Compare it to a common law country. But I managed to come up with a small number that I thought were excellent teaching tools, and Martin gear may be the best, although it is a historical drama to understand why one why it's relevant in a comparative law class and two what I was hoping to achieve from it. You have to know a little bit about French legal history, which goes back to the Roman Empire.

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Joseph Dellapenna

Gaul, as it was called before the Franks moved in, was part of the Roman Empire, thoroughly Romanized subject to Roman law. And yet with the Franks and the Visigoths and the Burgundians on overrunning that part of the Roman Empire. Roman law was pretty much stamped out. But in the south of France, which is where this takes place, it survived as an oral custom and it was used in the courts as customary law, and it became very corrupted compared to the classic Roman law.

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Joseph Dellapenna

But when the classic Roman law was reintroduced after 1100, in the universities, the judges in the south of France quickly seized upon that restructured their courts and their laws. Consistent with classic Roman law. And so by the time you get up to 1560 or so, when this takes place, it's very much a Roman law proceeding, very much a Roman law tradition as interpreted by the medieval mind.

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Joseph Dellapenna

I teach all of this, my comparative walkers, because I want my students to understand where the modern and they, thinking of the civil law trained lawyers around the world comes from, and it comes right out of Roman law. And so what the movie represents in terms of the legal history situation is that transition point between the old customary law and the new written Roman law that was replacing it.

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Joseph Dellapenna

And these judges were trained in the Roman law. They're not entirely comfortable with it. They still have uncertainties about what it means, and some of that is shown in the film. Now, you might ask yourself, well, how realistic is the film? The answer is very realistic. After I'd shown this film to my class a few times, I was curious about certain features of it and whether they were actually in the original record of the case.

00;06;23;13 - 00;06;51;12

Joseph Dellapenna

It turns out they are. The most dramatic incident in the movie is when the real Martin walks into the courtroom and says, here I am. And you say, oh, come on, that couldn't happen in real life. It's in the original record, just like. And and so this record was dug out by a woman historian, Nathalie Simon Davis, I think her name is at Princeton and translated and published and so on, and became the basis of the movie.

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Joseph Dellapenna

And that record, interestingly enough, is written by a judge named John Decker, who was an actual person, and this was based upon his actual record. And John Decker is one of the three central characters in the movie. He represents the audience. He is the one who sees what the audience would be seeing, as opposed to the false Martin, as you call them, and that on the role his wife, who are, of course, the protagonists, the people who are struggling with the plot points of the movie as you were, but it's all written down through the eyes of John The Crown, where the audience see it through the eyes of John de Cora.

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Jonathan Hafetz

And so you mentioned John Ramos, the main judge on the the parliament of Toulouse. What exactly is this Parliament up to lose, and what function did it play at the time?

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Joseph Dellapenna

The word Parliament spelled slightly differently in French than in English, but basically means a place for speaking. And the English took that word to mean legislate. Eventually drew evolved into the legislature, but in France it was a court place for speaking right where you make your arguments and Parliament. Toulouse was the High Court of Toulouse. Now France was a highly fatalistic country until the French Revolution in 1789, just before the French Revolution, and France had 17 parliaments.

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Joseph Dellapenna

Each one is a supreme court. No court is supreme over any other. No parliament is supreme over any other. Not even the parliament, the Paris Parliament. Paris could not review the final decision. Oh, it would be as if we had 50 state supreme courts and no US Supreme Court. And so the Parliament of Toulouse is the highest court in its region, which is a large region in southern France, leading up to the Pyrenees and the Spanish border.

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Joseph Dellapenna

And it was considered the second most important court in France, most prestigious court in France, shall we say? So that in itself was important. And John Dekker was one of the judges. Now, there are actually three stages to the legal proceedings here, and we only see two of them. The first one is kind of reference that the beginning was on the Koran rides into town because he's been sent from Toulouse as what we call the investigating judge.

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Joseph Dellapenna

He's going to go in person, investigate this case. They don't have a prosecuting attorney. They don't have a defense attorney. A wealthy person could afford a defense attorney, a peasant like this. Out of the question. So he's going to go there in person and conduct the investigation. Why did he go? Local magistrate was confronted with this claim that this is a charlatan, a fraud, an imposter, and the local magistrate doesn't know what to do.

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Joseph Dellapenna

And so he's had his investigation and he calls the angel on the cross. And you see the local magistrate advising John Decorah at the beginning of the movie as to what the case is about. So that first proceeding is off camera completely, and as it should be, since Cora was writing about his experiences and not someone else's. Now, even as the investigating judge, if he feels comfortable doing it, he can gather the evidence, hear the evidence, make a decision, and the case is decided.

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Joseph Dellapenna

It, but through various machinations, it ends up. And what we would call an appeal, they would call it as a transfer of the proceedings, because he's already part of the paranormal in Toulouse. And indeed, he sits on the bench with the other judges when the whole case is heard and the case is removed to to lose for the entire bench, 20 or 30 judges to hear it.

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Joseph Dellapenna

Now, when you remove the case to Toulouse from this little village some distance away, in this case, that means you take the whole population of the village to Toulouse and house them in the courtyard of the court while the trial is going on, partly because many of them will be witnesses, partly because even those who were not witnesses will, if you will witness the outcome, they will know that the trial's been conducted properly.

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Joseph Dellapenna

So when they go back home, it's finished. Now, the issue, of course, is been an imposter. If he's guilty, he's accused of being an imposter, which you could say is fraud. That has monetary dimensions. The initial, reason he was accused of being a fraud. He comes home from the war, he ran away. Well, maybe I should even start further back once John Decker starts asking questions and you have flashbacks, and the movie goes back to the marriage of 214 year olds, arranged marriage between, Bertrand Russell, who is who has property because she's the only child of a man who's died, a farmer who's died.

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Joseph Dellapenna

She's got her own farm, but she's not a man. She needs a husband. And she has been married off to the son. The only son, only child of the wealthiest farmer in the village. Arranged marriage from the groom's family's point of view, they're getting more land. And also a young woman to make babies from the, you know, from her point of view, she's getting a protector and hopefully a loving husband.

00;12;09;10 - 00;12;35;14

Joseph Dellapenna

Except this young man seems incapable of loving her. Now, right off there, one of the things you can see going on in this movie, as I've described it, is class conflict and gender conflict. You know, she is, in a sense, being exploited. In a sense, she's exploiting them. Depends on how you look at it. But there's clearly gender roles are an issue.

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Joseph Dellapenna

But class roles, because you've got the wealthiest family village was none too wealthy, but still better off. So there are jealousies, you see, evidence of peasant, other peasants in the village who were jealous of them and not very friendly to them, and take advantage of them. There's a hidden threat. At least as I watch the movie, there's a hidden threat of sexual orientation because there's a strong suggestion to my mind anyway, it's never said explicitly that the young, the true young Martin is homosexual.

00;13;08;22 - 00;13;30;00

Joseph Dellapenna

That's his real problem. He lives with his wife, sleeps in the same bed for 3 or 4 years, and they never have sex until the night before he leaves. He's an elaborate exorcism, the priest says, while you're not having sex, must be the devil. Elaborate exorcism, which succeeds. And so when he leaves, he actually leaves his wife pregnant, although he doesn't know that.

00;13;30;02 - 00;13;56;20

Joseph Dellapenna

And so you've got sexual orientation issues and all cast in the context of 1560. The attitudes and so on. The people in the 1560s, which were rather different from ours, to say the least. The marriage ceremony itself sounds more like a properly transaction than it does what we would think of as the court. I mean, issues in marriage, you know, each other.

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Joseph Dellapenna

Do you like each other? Do you love it? No one cares. But how much property do you get? And do you bring to the marriage and, you know, and what your role will be in managing property and so on and so forth. So that's what's important about the marriage. Very different way of thinking about all of these issues.

00;14;14;11 - 00;14;38;10

Joseph Dellapenna

So you've got class, gender, sexual orientation issues all nicely developed from my point of view anyway. And the young man runs off. He actually apparently joins the Army. He's gone for 8 or 9 years and apparently no desire to come home, even though he's learned that his wife gave him a son, he had no desire to meet his son, let alone return to his wife.

00;14;38;12 - 00;14;59;29

Joseph Dellapenna

And the false Martin was a soldier with him in the army. They spent a lot of time together fighting the Spanish, and, apparently talking. And because false Martin learned a lot of information about the real Martin's life, his family, the village who was nice to him, who was not nice to him. And so, so he knows all this stuff.

00;15;00;03 - 00;15;24;07

Joseph Dellapenna

When he finally shows up and is mistaken for Martin, he doesn't say, I'm Martin, here I am. Someone says, you're Martin and you know he goes along with it as long as he can get away with it. And, the actor who plays that role, Gerard Depardieu, was a well-established French actor but largely unknown on the global scene until this movie.

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Joseph Dellapenna

This movie is his breakthrough as a star and it's interesting in that regard, either because he does a very good job. Natalie Bay does a very good job as well, but she did not make the kind of career progression that Depardieu made out of this film, and I do want to throw in. I'm not sure this is going to be all logic.

00;15;45;21 - 00;16;08;26

Joseph Dellapenna

I do answer, and it is a beautifully stage and beautifully filmed movie. As I have said on other occasions, if you're familiar with the paintings of Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Younger in Flanders around the same time, this movie looks like a Bruegel painting brought to life. In many ways. It's wonderfully done, but now becomes the question is he or is he not?

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Joseph Dellapenna

And the real crime is fraud.

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Jonathan Hafetz

He's charged with fraud, right? But there is also it's wrapped up also, I think in like the issue of like there's a tawdry element, right. It seems to me there's the property element. Yeah. It's like it's a fraud. You're the imposter. But, you know, in terms of like the, you know, what the actual crime or, or specific crimes were, you know, I don't know, it seems like a lot packed up in that.

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Joseph Dellapenna

Well, the fraud, of course, was the accusation was it was fraud to acquire property. It should have gone to the real Martin. Although the uncle was the real. Martin's father had died, and the only man left around in the village from the family was the uncle, who then takes control of all the property and wants to keep control of all the property.

00;16;54;28 - 00;17;18;20

Joseph Dellapenna

And so the initial reason the uncle accuses the false Martin of being a fraud is because the false Martin says, I don't want my share of the property. And no, no, not your property. You're not even Martin. Now, where they concerned about the fact that he was committing adultery with the Martin's wife? That is not made explicit, although it may well have been an aspect of it.

00;17;18;23 - 00;17;40;19

Joseph Dellapenna

The wife, as long as she can. I don't want to go into all the details in the movie, but, as long as she can stands by her new man, who treated her far better than the real Martin. Never did. And one has the impression at the end of the movie when she, is left with the real Martin as her husband, that this might be the fate worse than death.

00;17;40;19 - 00;18;01;08

Joseph Dellapenna

But he's not a loving person. So she stands behind the false Martin as long as she can. But when it's clear that the game is up, she denounced the sermon. And then one of the problems, John, the Koran has is does he condemn her as a participant in the fraud, or does he excuse her? Which he does.

00;18;01;11 - 00;18;22;17

Joseph Dellapenna

And they kind of mention John de Caron in particular, kind of mentions that I have to excuse you. He doesn't quite put it this bluntly, but this is what it comes down to. I have to excuse you because otherwise your children will be bastards, illegitimate. And if we execute you for fraud, your children will die because no one will take care of them.

00;18;22;19 - 00;18;38;28

Joseph Dellapenna

But if you're alive and exonerated, then they're part of your family. And I think that's part of the reason. Again, not made explicit movie, but I think that's part of the reason she denounces the false Martin because she has to think of her children.

00;18;39;01 - 00;19;00;27

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah. It's unclear. That's sort of the ambiguous when she denounces him, she also, I think, in the movie, sort of does. So when she knows. Well, she doesn't initially, but she's under pressure from the uncle. Yes, yes. And then at the trial or the proceeding in the part of the moment she does it, but she says it was only after she sort of knew it was over for Martin when the real Martin.

00;19;01;01 - 00;19;18;24

Jonathan Hafetz

Yes, but it is. It's a great scene between her Bertrand and Jean de Gras at the end, where he comes to sort of talk to her about trial. Martin's been condemned and tries to, you know, explain what's going on and says kind of basically I think sort of off the record. Right. Did you you confidentially, did you know.

00;19;18;24 - 00;19;33;01

Jonathan Hafetz

Right. Because she was probably the one that of all the people with a great imposter in the sense is she says, you know, she did. And, you know, it's certainly, I think, very understandable, very defensible choice given her situation.

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Joseph Dellapenna

Yeah. Then I must say, although the young men in my classes kind of fell in love with their time, they're all watching it. The young women's hearts went out to her, too, because they could see the problems she had in her life and her struggle to escape from those problems.

00;19;51;02 - 00;20;17;04

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, I mean, you're rooting for. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think the audience is sort of intended to root for the Depardieu character because it seems, you know, a better outcome for everybody. And you know, kind of a moral, ethical sense, maybe the just outcome. And also, I think, as you were saying, if Depardieu hadn't pushed it, right, if he hadn't sort of gone after the property, they probably all would have lived happily ever after, so to speak.

00;20;17;07 - 00;20;37;19

Joseph Dellapenna

That's right, that's right. If he hadn't tried to get his hand on the property, no one would have questioned it. And if it hadn't been questioned, the real Martin probably never would have come home. He heard somewhere about this imposter trying to take his place, and he comes home to challenge him. And he heard about it. Because of this very widely known legal case.

00;20;37;22 - 00;20;55;06

Joseph Dellapenna

Otherwise, he seems to have no interest in returning home at all. We don't know for sure what happens between, the real Martin and his wife after the execution of the false Martin, but I at least am left with the impression one of his goals in life after that is make her life miserable.

00;20;55;08 - 00;21;18;17

Jonathan Hafetz

Precisely. Yeah. He's very cold. And, yeah, even crueler than he was before. Let's talk a little bit about the proceedings. You alluded to the different sort of common law versus the civil law inquisitorial system, which is the system that this trial operates within. What was the trial like? The proof, the evidence, the way the sort of actual action in the trial?

00;21;18;19 - 00;21;42;29

Joseph Dellapenna

Well, if it had happened 100 or 150 years earlier, probably trial would have been trial by ordeal, either trauma battle or trial by fire or water, which is basically, from a modern point of view, superstition. You know, God will reveal the truth. You undergo the ordeal if you survive the ordeal, then you're telling the truth. And if you don't, well, then you lost the case.

00;21;43;02 - 00;22;14;06

Joseph Dellapenna

You're also dead anyway, so it doesn't matter. But because of the rediscover and re incorporation of Roman law into the court proceedings, and they kind of illustrate this by having 1 or 2 of the judges questions, whether they should revert to divine truth telling, which is rejected by the court. Nom de Cara becomes the spokesman for the majority, says, no, no, we have to ask about the proper forms of proof which require proof of fact.

00;22;14;08 - 00;22;40;19

Joseph Dellapenna

And also they discuss the presumption of innocence, which was a still a relatively new idea at that time anywhere in Europe. And, you know, that prince comes out of Roman law now by presumption of innocence. They probably mean less than we might take it to mean, because all it means is burden of proof. If you haven't proven the case, he's innocent, which is part of our presumption.

00;22;40;19 - 00;23;26;04

Joseph Dellapenna

Innocence, too. We draw certain further inferences from that, which I don't know that they would have, but it was an important transition from the idea that God would sort out the truth to the idea that we presume innocence. The one who wants to claim a crime was committed has to prove it. Investigating judges much more active. And as you point out, in searching out the evidence and interrogating the witnesses and so on, which although modern European proceedings are much more adversarial than this one would have been, nonetheless, judges in European systems are still much more actively involved in developing the evidence and interrogating the witnesses.

00;23;26;06 - 00;23;59;24

Joseph Dellapenna

And then a judge in an American or common law proceeding would be so right there. You've got a very big, difference in the look and feel of the proceedings. You also get to see, by the way, the pageantry, the kind of robes that the medieval judges wore and so on. And this idea that which actually wasn't so in this regard, not so very different from the common law courts at that time, the judge would not have been an inquisitor, but the judge, the various judges of the one another of the common law courts would write circuit around England.

00;23;59;24 - 00;24;22;06

Joseph Dellapenna

One judge holds a trial if the loser is unhappy, he doesn't appeal in the sense of a modern appeal to a higher court. He just asked the whole court to hear the case. And then it's taken to London. Here we take it to Toulouse, and these courts in the parliament in France were much bigger benches than you would have in one of the common law courts in England.

00;24;22;08 - 00;24;43;04

Joseph Dellapenna

Nowadays, of course, you have an appellate structure in France or wherever, much like our appellate structure. But one way in which procedure, if you will, of this case lives on in France, is the first appeal. You have a trial before one judge or three judges. Depends on the nature of the case in France and decision and a criminal case.

00;24;43;04 - 00;25;10;29

Joseph Dellapenna

You get three judges and nine laypeople. It's not quite a jury because the 12 sit together and discuss it together. It's not like the jurors go off in the corner by themselves and make a decision. But, nonetheless, you get this trial. And in France today, if you appeal to the Court of Appeals, the first appeal, you get a whole new trial in that regard, it's more like what you see in this movie than it would be like a typical appellate proceeding in a common law country.

00;25;11;01 - 00;25;16;02

Joseph Dellapenna

And so in that sense, it's even enlightening about modern legal practice in Europe.

00;25;16;04 - 00;25;38;17

Jonathan Hafetz

You mentioned before that most people didn't have lawyers, and that someone in Martin's socioeconomic class would not have had a lawyer. So the Depardieu character or the false Martin represent himself. And two things kind of strike me through the movie or struck me through the movie. One is during the legal proceedings, how effective the jeopardy character was as a lawyer representing himself.

00;25;38;23 - 00;25;57;04

Jonathan Hafetz

He was very good at his questioning of witnesses and his arguments to the parliament. And then the second thing which is related is how much he knew and how good he was at being Martin. And there's a point where he seemed to know more, about the real Martin than the real Martin did. He remembered.

00;25;57;06 - 00;26;23;09

Joseph Dellapenna

Wow. His memory is clearer now. You don't know. That's at the trial when Real Martin finally shows up, says I'm Martin gear and the false Martin challenges and, you know, ask us questions, see who knows the right answer. And at a couple of points, the real Martin doesn't know the answer. And the false Martin doesn't know. You don't know whether sitting around the campfire at night in the army, he heard it and the real Martin forgot it, and he didn't.

00;26;23;09 - 00;26;42;15

Joseph Dellapenna

Or whether he heard it in the village, because this event in the village is after three or 4 or 5, and they're not entirely clear, but 3 or 4 or five years after he came back to the village. So he's heard a lot from the people in the village during that period of time. So maybe that's why he knows some of the answers that the real Martin has forgotten.

00;26;42;17 - 00;26;54;26

Joseph Dellapenna

But he does seem to have a phenomenal memory, and he's very good at making logical arguments. He almost pulls it off even after the real Martin shows up. But slip of the tongue doesn't mean.

00;26;54;28 - 00;27;09;07

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, it's right. He actually was about to actually knock back the challenge from the real Martin's dramatic entry when he comes in the courtroom and he's, you know, all bedraggled, everything else, and he's still about to do it. And then the slip of the tongue. That was a man.

00;27;09;10 - 00;27;25;15

Joseph Dellapenna

And surprising enough, that's what John to call out, writes in his record. I found it online at least. Nelly Raymond Davis is, translation online. And that's what's there. And, you know, and you kind of look, oh, such a such a melodramatic ending. That can't be true. But it turns out it is.

00;27;25;17 - 00;27;49;26

Jonathan Hafetz

And so once the jig is up and he knows it, he confesses, throws himself on the essentially the mercy of the court, the parliament, but nonetheless, you know, he's found guilty and he's the sentence is a capital sentence, so taken and brought to the front of the house where he lived in the village and hanged. He talked about the significance of the of the punishment, both in terms of the type and the way it was carried out, the execution.

00;27;50;03 - 00;28;07;06

Joseph Dellapenna

Let me make a couple of words. Although it is in front of the house where he lived, I think it's more important because it was the largest public space in the village. Remember, this was the wealthiest family in the village. My impression I may be wrong, but I don't think it was customary to execute someone at the scene of the crime, so to speak.

00;28;07;09 - 00;28;29;07

Joseph Dellapenna

In the second point, that seems like a harsh punishment. But in fact, in the Middle Ages, all across Europe, including England and Germany, France, whatever the normal punishment for any serious offense, including a lot of offenses that we might think of as serious today was death. They did not have prisons. They had dungeons where they might hold someone personal enemy.

00;28;29;07 - 00;28;51;04

Joseph Dellapenna

The king might be put in an iron mask, so to speak, and stuck away. But basically they did not have prisons where they get hundreds or thousands of criminals housed for a period of years until supposedly they reformed. No, I mean corporal punishment of one sort or another for any kind of what we would think of as a serious crime pickpocket, sentenced to death and so on.

00;28;51;04 - 00;29;13;29

Joseph Dellapenna

As I say, we would never contemplate a death sentence or something like that, but that was normal. If it wasn't didn't rise quite to that level, then whipping or amputation of part of, you know, and branding on the face, these were considered normal punished. Corporal punishment was the rule of the day, and for the vast majority of crimes, death was the sentence.

00;29;13;29 - 00;29;48;05

Joseph Dellapenna

Unless the king gave you a part. Now his execution is present and the film is fairly brutal. And yet that was mild compared to the kind of executions that were routine in those days. You've heard the expression drawing and quartering, someone that began with hanging but not quite dead. Take them down, catch each arm, each hand and each foot to a different horse, and drag the horses until the body is literally torn into four pieces that you're drawing and quartering.

00;29;48;11 - 00;30;08;09

Joseph Dellapenna

That was a common form of execution. And you could go on and on with the various beheading, of course, with an ax was also a common form of execution. So, so the one in the movie was actually in terms of actual history, was actually fairly mild, as brutal as it seems to my eyes.

00;30;08;11 - 00;30;30;02

Jonathan Hafetz

You know, one element you mentioned is just the sort of reality. There were no prison. So kind of incarceration, post-trial incarceration was into reality. And so certain serious crimes resulted in capital punishment to what extent was there also an element in terms of the theory behind the punishment of, reinforcement of community norms? Sending a message? Yes.

00;30;30;04 - 00;30;52;28

Joseph Dellapenna

Yeah. It was considered, a deterrent. If the king was in a generous mood, he might pardon you and sell you into slavery. For example, you didn't necessarily go free, but slavery in the galleries, you know, rowing in a boat for the rest of your life. It was a very harsh time, and it was felt that anything short of a harsh punishment would have no real deterrent effect.

00;30;53;00 - 00;31;23;07

Joseph Dellapenna

And also, of course, an educational effect. You know, the, condemned man is expected to march to the gallows, confessing his sin against God and against the King and begging for forgiveness. Otherwise educating people that, you know, God is watching and behave yourself. And so there's an educational element to it as well as a deterrent element. And again, it represents a totally different way of thinking than, I at the modern, at least most people in the modern society think so.

00;31;23;10 - 00;31;32;26

Jonathan Hafetz

At the end, Martin is hanged, you know, just sort of the dramatic ending of the movie or towards the conclusion in the postscript that addresses the fate of John de Cara, the principal.

00;31;32;29 - 00;32;04;12

Joseph Dellapenna

Yes. And that is also true, perhaps one of the reasons why his account of the trial was not more widely famous after 1572. This was also taking place at the time of the Protestant Reformation, which was sweeping across Europe. And, as you know, Northern Europe, all of Europe, all of Western Europe, all the way as far as Poland and Hungary was predominantly Catholic and northern Europe, Germany, northern Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, England, so on broke off and became Protestant.

00;32;04;15 - 00;32;33;13

Joseph Dellapenna

But there were Protestant movements, all across Europe, as well as survivals of the in various places across Europe. And this ended up in a series of wars, the wars of the Reformation that lasted from 1520 thereabouts to 1648, the end of the 30 Years War. And it might be a period of ten years of peace and then another war and another ten years of peace and another war, and so on and so forth, for 130 years.

00;32;33;15 - 00;32;57;20

Joseph Dellapenna

And this was right in the middle of that 1560. Now it turns out it's not mentioned in the movie at all, doesn't overtly play a role in the movie, although perhaps after you see the postscript, you might go back and rethink what you thought about Jean de Cara. When some of the judges say, Let God decide, that sounds more like a Catholic, then he's saying, no, we must use reason.

00;32;57;20 - 00;33;21;12

Joseph Dellapenna

We must use proof that sounds more like a Protestant. Others listening. This podcast might object to the way I've split it out, but that's part of what's going on here. And these wars convulsed France as well as the rest of Europe, and the Protestants in France were called Huguenots. And John to Carroll, we're told in the postscript, was a Huguenot.

00;33;21;14 - 00;33;45;06

Joseph Dellapenna

And the most famous incident in the bloodletting between the Catholics and a Protestant in France is called the Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre, because on Saint Paul on Tuesday it was agreed in advance the Catholics attacked and slaughtered all over France, thousands of Huguenots effort to suppress them. And, the postscript says Jean de corral was murdered with several hundred of his friends.

00;33;45;06 - 00;34;07;26

Joseph Dellapenna

That would have been just in Toulouse. You've got the whole rest of France going on at the same, same day, same time, and suddenly his way of thinking why he's different from some of the other people in his thinking, begins to make more sense. Now, whether there was any division of religious division in the village or not. There's no hint in the movie.

00;34;07;29 - 00;34;32;00

Joseph Dellapenna

And yet the village cannot escape this larger turmoil. One of the reasons the real Martin conserve, or the false Martin for that matter, can serve 8 or 9 or more years in the army for so long constantly fighting wars is this were the wars of religion and they just went on and on. And so a young man who was unhappy with his life, a young woman, was a little more difficult.

00;34;32;02 - 00;34;51;20

Joseph Dellapenna

There are stories of some of various women. Not very many, but some women who managed to pass themselves off as men and serve in the army. But for the most part, it was a young man who was unhappy with his life. He could run away and join the army. A dangerous life, difficult life. But it might be better than the life he left behind.

00;34;51;22 - 00;34;56;13

Joseph Dellapenna

And sort of that sort of a background to this whole story.

00;34;56;15 - 00;35;15;02

Jonathan Hafetz

Yeah, it's a fascinating context for the movie. I mean, the other thing is, when you think about it now, is today the dispute, one would assume, would be resolved fairly easily, documentary evidence with DNA testing. But it's difficult right to resolve at the time.

00;35;15;05 - 00;35;41;16

Joseph Dellapenna

No photo ID, that's for sure. Births, marriages, deaths. Other important events were recorded by the Curia. The parish priest and the parish priest becomes an important source of information, which would have been true important source of information in legal proceedings. Because he not only officiated at these various events, but he kept the written record of them and so he could consult as a written record.

00;35;41;16 - 00;36;05;23

Joseph Dellapenna

But you're still dependent upon his memory. Is this the real Martin, or isn't this the real Martin? And so, you see, that's another aspect that the movie plays. A it's not a pedantic movie, doesn't try to explain or lecture to you about this is what this means, and that is what that means. So they never talk about the role of the priest, but it's very clear he is a central character because he is.

00;36;06;01 - 00;36;26;20

Joseph Dellapenna

People look to as sort of the official memory of the village. This is a movie that bears watching 2 or 3. I've seen it about 40 times because every time I show my class, I watch it. But bears watching more than once because you learn, you see things the second or third time you watch it that you never notice the first time.

00;36;26;23 - 00;36;55;18

Joseph Dellapenna

At the end, when he's confessing in court, he says, I didn't plan taking Martin's place. You know, they recognized me. They thought they recognized me. And I just went along with it as sort of a joke to see how far I could get. Is that true? Well, if you watch the movie a second time, with that question in mind, you discover his joking manner, which the first time, when they first say, You're Martin, you don't notice it, the first time you watch the movie, and so on.

00;36;55;20 - 00;36;59;09

Joseph Dellapenna

It bears watching more than once if you're interested in it.

00;36;59;11 - 00;37;21;01

Jonathan Hafetz

It's so rich from so many different perspectives the legal history, perspective, social, cultural, class, gender. I mean, there's so much packed up in it. And I'll say, well, it's a movie about, you know, mid-16th century France. And it's not an action movie. It's incredibly dramatic, entertaining, gripping. I mean, it is a movie that, you know, I think really kind of grabs you.

00;37;21;03 - 00;37;29;20

Joseph Dellapenna

Yeah, it is excellent movie. And, you know, even if you're only interested in seeing how people dressed back, then it's well worth a watch.

00;37;29;23 - 00;37;41;03

Jonathan Hafetz

Amazing attention to detail, as you say, like a Bruegel painting. Yeah. Well, Joe, I want to thank you for coming on the podcast. It's been great to talk to you about Martin Guerre and, legal history. So thank you so much.

00;37;41;05 - 00;37;43;07

Joseph Dellapenna

Thank you. Do it again sometimes.