Film Review: Martin Guerre
What Le Retour de Martin Guerre Tells Us About Medieval Life
In The Return of Martin Guerre, Gerard Depardieu and Nathalie Baye explore the life of a peasant impostor in 16th-century France.
French film Le Retour de Martin Guerre (The Return of Martin Guerre) is one of the most famous "accurate" films about medieval life, but it has problems. Most notable is that the story on which it was based was not medieval, yet the film is hailed as an accurate portrait of medieval peasant life.
Set in the 16th century, Le Retour de Martin Guerre is about a decades-long impersonation in a small Pyrenean village that ends tragically. In 1538, Martin Guerre (Gérard Depardieu) was the black sheep of a well-off peasant family. Having got into some disputes with his father, he went off to seek his fortune in the many wars that blighted Reformation-era Europe, abandoning his wife Bertrande de Rols (Nathalie Baye in a highly sympathetic performance) and young son. Eight years later, he apparently returned and took up his old life. But further disputes with his uncle led to two trials. Only when the real Martin Guerre returned, missing a leg, in 1560 was the man who had previously "returned" exposed as an impostor named Arnaud du Tilh.
The film is a strong study of French (specifically Basque) peasant life in early modern Europe. It especially shows the dilemmas of women in the person of Bertrande, who accepts the false Martin back. To this day, historians have speculated about how aware she and other members of Martin's family truly were of the deception and what Bertrande's motives in particular were for accepting the impostor despite any possible doubts. As an abandoned wife, Bertrande was in an economic and social fix; she may have seen this new "Martin" as an honorable way out of it.
But one should exercise caution in seeing this as a definitive portrait of "medieval" life. For a start, the case occurred against a background of witchcrazes--a late-medieval and Reformation-era phenomenon--and recurrent warfare between Protestants and Catholics--definitely a post-medieval phenomenon. The conflicts into which Martin Guerre disappeared were part of this ongoing warfare between Christian religious sects. This warfare differed from the territorial disputes and religious disputes (mainly between religions rather than sects) that ran through the Middle Ages. It's not that the Middle Ages were peaceful, but that their conflicts had a different focus than those during the Reformation.
Finally, while the film does accurately address peasant life in one part of 16th century France, the casual viewer (or even academic) may be tempted to extrapolate this to other countries or earlier periods. This is unwise and inaccurate and an example of why can be found in this week's book review.
