An Airy Convict

In 1986 a man is sentenced to death by the jury of assizes in Liège, Belgium, for murdering his wife. The death penalty has not been enforced in Belgium for a century. But Courts still pronounce the sentence as if just uttering the words “death sentence” were sufficient as a response to the morbid taste of the public that regulary attends criminal proceedings as if it were a horse-race or a variety show. At the end of the trial, the convict has to suffer the boos of the public ant then plunges into prison for what you would expect to be an eternal night – but ten years later we see him walking on the seaside. This documentary is one of the issues of SRIP-TEASE, the magazine that “undresses society” and has been in Belgian Television programmes for about ten years. The top priority of that non-conformist series is the action in progress: mere sound and picture without any comment or kint; you watch and hear and think for yourself, at the risk of being faced with an inner conflict or with ambiguous feelings. This is an unusual style in television, a rather provocative one, displaying the lacks and failures , the meannes or cowardice of human kind: so e. g. in this feature, the public to the Court proceedings are shown as average citizens, allegedly honourable persons who, in fact, speak with an unexpected cruelty and barbarousness. To such extent that the murderer is growingly sympathetic and seems to be less dangerous than those who judge him. Ten years later, however that man turns out to be shameless with no remoose at all, without the slightest concern for his victim, and revelling a good deal as soon as he released.