Justice Is Done
1950 [FRENCH]
Action / Drama / Mystery

Plot summary
Elsa Lundenstein is accused of having murdered her lover. The jury discusses the case vividly. All members are somehow prejudiced because of personal life experience and subsequently each member reads something different into the presented facts.
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.BLU 1080p.BLUMovie Reviews
A milestone in the French cinema.
Unique, but long, rambling and dated
The best thing about this film is getting a glimpse of what life might have been like somewhere in France in the late 1940s, after the war. It was another world. Very few people, farms, animals, everyone was French, no foreigners in sight. It looked like everyone had come from the same one or two families.
The woman who is convicted of murdering her lover has a face reminiscent of a young Meryl Streep. She conveys a lot of emotion with her eyes.
Because this is a story of the jurors who decide the woman's fate, there are multiple threads and way too many people to focus on. There must have been a healthy budget for this film because there was one brief ballroom scene that required a small orchestra, men and women dressed in their finery, and a huge flower arrangement. But the scene itself couldn't have lasted more than 90 seconds.
Lots of talking and talking. The sound quality was poor, especially the voiceover at the end, which suddenly jumped up in volume.
The most interesting thing about this film is seeing humanity in a window of time after the war. There was not the threat of Hitler anymore and people were living their lives. The particular story of euthanasia at the heart of this film must have been definitely shocking at the time. There are points of interest, if one can wade through the ocean of dialogue from multiple characters.