Motifs
The trial and justice
The individual crushed or revealed by the machinery of justice.
A man is arrested one morning without being told why, another finds himself reproached for not weeping at his mother's funeral, a sailor is tried for a gesture everyone knows was not a crime. The trial is the place where a society explains what it holds to be just, which makes it a permanent subject: law, confession, rumour and error can all be seen at work there. Cinema adds the closed room, twelve jurors deliberating in real time, soldiers shot to set an example for the others.
works 11
- NovelThe Last Day of a Condemned ManLe Dernier Jour d'un condamnéVictor Hugo · 1829A nameless man condemned to death writes of his last days, from cell to cell.Literature
- NovelCrime and PunishmentПреступление и наказаниеFyodor Dostoevsky · 1866A novel of 1866: a poor student in Saint Petersburg kills a pawnbroker to test a theory, and has to live with his act.LiteraturePublic domain
- NovelResurrectionВоскресениеLeo Tolstoy · 1899Tolstoy's last novel, published in 1899, in which a prince serving as juror finds again in court the woman he lost.Literature
- NovelBilly Budd, SailorHerman Melville · 1924The story takes place at sea, in a navy made wary of its men by very recent mutinies.Literature
- NovelThe TrialDer ProzessFranz Kafka · 1925A clerk arrested for no reason searches in vain for the court that is trying him.LiteraturePublic domain
- CinemaMetropolisFritz Lang · 1927A future city split in two, the towers of the masters and the underground city of the workers, in the most expensive film in German cinema of its time.Cinema
- NovelThe OutsiderL'ÉtrangerAlbert Camus · 1942A man who refuses to lie about what he feels is put on trial for a murder committed on a beach in Algiers.Literature
- Cinema12 Angry MenSidney Lumet · 1957Twelve jurors shut themselves in to settle a case they believe is already decided, except for one.Cinema
- CinemaPaths of GloryStanley Kubrick · 1957A general accepts an impossible mission in exchange for promotion, then looks for someone to blame for the failure.Cinema
- CinemaThe TrialOrson Welles · 1962The story follows an accused man to whom no one states the charge against him.Cinema
- CinemaHarakiri切腹Masaki Kobayashi · 1962A 1962 sword film in which a man asks to take his own life in the courtyard of a clan, and in which we discover what the honour set against him rests on.Cinema