The Return of Martin Guerre

The village of Artigat in the south of France in the sixteenth century. Martin Guerre disappeared years ago; one day he comes back. His wife Bertrande accepts him and so does the village. Then relatives begin to doubt it and the matter reaches court: is this man actually Martin Guerre. Daniel Vigne directs. Gérard Depardieu plays Martin and Nathalie Baye plays Bertrande. The case is real and among the most famous of sixteenth century France. The historian Natalie Zemon Davis worked on the production as consultant. She disagreed with parts of what it said and wrote her own book, which became as debated as the source itself, because it put at the centre the question of whether Bertrande was actually deceived. What the film does best is make identity concrete rather than abstract: in a world with no identity documents, who decides who a person is. Memory, testimony, or interest. Hollywood remade the story in 1993 as Sommersby, moved to the American Civil War. Who it is for: viewers who like historical drama and films drawn from real case files. Who it is not for: the pace is slow and the period detail dense, and since the outcome is historically known the suspense stays limited.