WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY CÉDRIC KAHN
STARRING: ARIEH WORTHALTER – César Winner - Best Actor, The Goldman Case; ARTHUR HARARI – Academy Award, BAFTA and César Winner - Best Screenplay Anatomy of a Fall
In UK and Irish cinemas 20th September 2024
REVIEW by KATHLEEN BONDAR
This fast-paced, courtroom drama centres on the appeal hearing of Jewish far-left activist Pierre Goldman sentenced to life imprisonment for four armed robberies, the last of which resulted in two fatal shootings. The Goldman Case gives a gripping account of the trial which dominated French headlines in 1976. Arieh Worthalter as Goldman is perfectly cast in this psycho-pathological portrait of a passionate radical and a cavalier criminal.
Although he confessed to the other robberies, Goldman insisted he was framed for the shootings by the police for his radicalism. Whether Goldman was a liar or hero became a battle of arguments between the marginalised Black community and the leftist intelligentsia against the authorities.
With the legacy of the French resistance during WWII and the socialist uprisings across France in the sixties, director Cédric Kahn captures the mood of the times. “This is the mid-’70s. The revolutionary ideals of the 1960s are collapsing… the trial of Pierre Goldman is a window onto 1970s France.”
Indeed, the times were militant, and Goldman was a product of the time. The Jewish left, perhaps forgotten in the current climate, was prominent. Goldman’s father, a Polish Jew emigre, fought in the resistance. Goldman joined the socialist campaigns in Venezuela and Cuba. All this underlines the trial.
The Goldman Case strives to unravel the case within this historical context. Goldman’s father’s good character is thrown in, as if synonymous with Goldman’s innocence. Drawing on alibis from the Afro-Caribbean Parisian community, with whom Goldman identified as an underdog, the case becomes a political cause. Crowds from two camps fill the courts chanting for Goldman, the leftist hero and defender of the Black cause. Whilst Police investigations are shown to be sloppy and the statements from witnesses are flawed, Goldman’s criminal track record mirrors the robbery he denies.
Goldman is played with verve by Arieh Worthalter whilst Arthur Harari portrays his young attorney Georges Kiejman with suitable despair and frustration. It all happens within the court setting, the claustrophobia of which is sometimes overwhelming. How the case unfolds is history. Cleverly, in The Goldman Case, doubts about Goldman’s innocence or guilt remain.
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