Martin Guerre Film Analysis

There are still fairly serious discrepancies between Davis’s actual historical monograph and the depiction in the film. Most importantly, we see the trail in Toulouse in the film opened for the public while the fact is that “sixteenth-century criminal justice is always secret; there are no spectators until the sentence is read.” Moreover, the monograph positions Bertrande as being opposed to having an imposter for a husband as she openly rejected him as soon as she realised that he was not Martin Guerre. In the film, Bertrande likely already knew of the fake Martin Guerre and is collaborating with the imposter out of a dire need for a husband, and also out of love.
However, the monograph demonstrates instead that Bertrande immediately spurned the fake Martin upon the first instance she was uncertain of his identity. The

Davis also submits further questions, such as why de Coras’s memoir failed to provide an account of the whole story. Her academic account admits where it is lacking, whereas the movie provides a full, but somewhat fabricated picture. There is another written account of Martin Guerre’s story by Guillaume Le Sueur that covered unaddressed accounts by de Coras in his own statement. By the time de Coras was writing his memoir, he had considered the story as a tragedy with a moral lesson as de Coras “clearly regrets the outcome of the trail and tries to explain why he was deceived.” De Coras’s work also included his annotations, which changed the character of the book making it more of a story, rather than a standard court transcript. Davis stated that the case lacked official court transcripts, and, therefore, she depended on Le Sueur and de Coras’s works as primary