Henri-Georges Clouzot

La vérité

La vérité

Beautiful, troubled Dominique Marceau (Brigitte Bardot) came to bohemian Paris to escape the suffocation of provincial life, only to wind up in a courtroom, accused of a terrible crime: the murder of her lover (Sami Frey). As the trial commences and the lawyers begin tangling over Dominique’s fate, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Oscar-nominated La vérité delves into her past, reconstructing her struggle to find a foothold in the city. What emerges is a nuanced portrait of an impulsive young woman misunderstood and mistreated by those around her, and of her ultimately tragic affair with an up-and-coming conductor. With an astonishing performance by Bardot, Clouzot’s affecting and intricately constructed film—a huge late-career success for the French master—renders a harsh verdict against a hypocritical and moralistic society.

Restored by Sony Pictures Entertainment in partnership with The Film Foundation and RT Features.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1960
  • 128 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.66:1
  • French
  • Spine #960

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Le scandale Clouzot, a sixty-minute documentary from 2017 on director Henri-Georges Clouzot
  • Interview from 1960 with Clouzot
  • Interview with actor Brigitte Bardot from the 1982 documentary Brigitte Bardot telle qu’elle
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau

New cover by F. Ron Miller

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Le scandale Clouzot, a sixty-minute documentary from 2017 on director Henri-Georges Clouzot
  • Interview from 1960 with Clouzot
  • Interview with actor Brigitte Bardot from the 1982 documentary Brigitte Bardot telle qu’elle
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau

New cover by F. Ron Miller

La vérité
Cast
Brigitte Bardot
Dominique Marceau
Paul Meurisse
Éparvier
Charles Vanel
Guérin
Sami Frey
Gilbert Tellier
Marie-José Nat
Annie Marceau
Louis Seigner
President of the court
Jean-Loup Reynold
Michel
André Oumansky
Ludovic
Claude Berri
Georges
Jacques Perrin
Jérôme
Credits
Director
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Produced by
Raoul Lévy
Screenplay by
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Screenplay by
Simone Drieu
Screenplay by
Michèle Perrein
Screenplay by
Jérôme Géronimi
Screenplay by
Christiane Rochefort
Screenplay by
Véra Clouzot
Cinematography by
Armand Thirard
Production design by
Jean André
Editing by
Albert Jurgenson

Current

La vérité: Women on Trial
La vérité: Women on Trial

Brigitte Bardot delivers her greatest performance in what would be Henri-Georges Clouzot’s final masterpiece, a stinging indictment of a justice system run by a moralistic patriarchy.

By Ginette Vincendeau

Explore

Henri-Georges Clouzot

Director

Henri-Georges Clouzot
Henri-Georges Clouzot

One of the few contemporaries of Hitchcock who gave the Master of Suspense a run for his money, Henri-Georges Clouzot dealt in misanthropic, black-humored tales of greed, jealousy, murder, immorality, and revenge. Though perhaps best known for 1955’s Gothic noir Diabolique, one of the most influential thrillers of all time and a film that Hitchcock himself admired (and wished to outdo), Clouzot first made his mark in French cinema in the 1940s. His politically charged, 1943 Le corbeau was a highly controversial story of a poison-pen letter that uncovers the dirty secrets of an entire town; viewed in retrospect, it’s Clouzot’s first important statement on the corruption of community. Subsequent Clouzot films would be built on the same theme in different milieus: the entertainment underworld of Quai des Orfèvres, the mercenary imperialism of the white-knuckle adventure The Wages of Fear. Once widely misunderstood—the director was charged with Nazi sympathies for Le corbeau and was derided by the French New Wave—the work of Henri-Georges Clouzot today looks far ahead of its time.