Identity In The Return Of Martin Guerre

The Return of Martin Guerre is a movie that was released in 1982. It is based off a real story which took place in 16th century France. It is about Martin Guerre, a man who left his village for near a decade, and when he returned with all the answers to everyone’s questions, people doubted his credibility. The question remained, was this man really Martin Guerre?

Throughout this movie there are themes based upon identity and a slight undertone of women’s inequality which is played through Guerre’s wife, Bertrande de Rols. These topics are the main links the film has to the past, and these are going to be the key discussions for today.

Firstly, the question at hand refers to how well and what ways the film represents the past. This is a

In the early 16th century, as discussed already, the collective opinion was very important. Therefore, what you have as an individual becomes very important. In the film of Martin Guerre, he adopts someone else’s identity – himself, the imposter, being a man called Arnaud Du Tilh – because Guerre had the wife, child, and property as pointed out by Robert Finlay. This suggests that the film is portraying an image that having a good life consists of having the stability of a place to live, and a family. This became a crucial part of their identity, because they would be ostracised from society if they do not have these things.

The importance of community opinion is made evident in the film when the imposter pretending to be Guerre returns home and is followed by the whole village to see his wife, really showing how tight knit and demanding the community was in those times. It could be implied that this was overstressed in the film due to it being published so far away from the actual events, it needed to be inflated in order to push the

De Rols was Guerres wife, and she was portrayed in the film as though she was innocent and dependent on Guerre, which is why she went along with his fake identity, this is demonstrated in her willingness to believe Guerre is who he says he is. Jean De Cora’s treats De Rols in a patronising manner. He puts his hand on her shoulder whilst she’s sat down, and states ‘you were ready to die for him’. This scene has an element of superiority, which suggests that in the 16th century, women were not on par with men, and were extremely fragile, needing protection. It encourages male dominance if all women are seen this way. At the very end of the film, De Cora’s confronted De Rols, where she admits she knew all along that this man was not her husband, but she was cleared from any criminal