Line #23 Film/Z


1	[[quoteright:330:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/CostaGavrasZ.jpg]]
2
3	->''"Any resemblance to real events, to persons living or dead, is not accidental. It is DELIBERATE."''
4	-->-- The opening crawl.
5
6	A 1969 Algerian–French political thriller based on the assassination of Greek politician Gregoris Lambrakis, directed by Creator/CostaGavras and starring Creator/JeanLouisTrintignant and Creator/YvesMontand.
7
8	In an unnamed country (hinted to be Greece), an outspoken politician (named only as "the Deputy") is struck down after a peace rally and hospitalized. When he dies, a public prosecutor (Trintignant) is sent to look into his death and finds corruption, coverup, and much more.
9
10	Notable for being darkly humorous and satirical, but still having quite a chilling ending.
11	----
12	!!Tropes:
13
14	* ArcWords: After the Deputy dies, this is what "Z" becomes, since it refers to a popular Greek slogan, "Zei", meaning "he lives."
15	* TheBadGuysAreCops: What the Public Prosecutor comes to realize during his investigation.
16	* BatmanGambit: The Public Prosecutor accuses Vago, one of the perpetrators of the murder of the Deputy, of being a communist, knowing that he will likely reveal his right wing ties to refute the charges.
17	* BigBad: The unnamed General orders the Deputy's assassination and the coverup thereof.
18	* BlackShirt:
19	** Almost all [[AgentProvocateur the troublemakers]] at the peace rally turn out to be members of CROC, an anti-Communist organization run by the [[BigBad chief of police]].
20	** They are also something of a deconstruction--most of them are poor and desperate, and [[PunchClockVillain join the movement for the benefits the bosses provide members]], then adjust their ideology to justify their membership.
21	* CampGay: Vago. [[AllGaysArePedophiles Of the "likes young boys" variety.]]
22	* CarFu: Done with a delivery cart which is used by Yago and Vago to escape after having struck the Deputy, and later a car, failing to assassinate the lawyer Manuel.
23	* CassandraTruth: The day of the murder a woman, Ilya Coste, anonymously reports a death threat against the Deputy, but it is too vague and the peace rally is not cancelled.
24	* CheatedDeathDiedAnyway: [[spoiler:Manuel outruns some assassins who try to run him down late in the movie, but the epilogue mentions that the new regime throws him out a high window some time later.]]
25	* ChestOfMedals: When the officers involved in the conspiracy appears before the Public Prosecutor to be indicted each of them has a bigger chestful of medals than the previous one.
26	* TheCoronerDothProtestTooMuch: The "[[InsistentTerminology incident]]" was clearly a drunken accident. That club-shaped wound on his head was from him hitting it on the curb. Despite being in the middle of the street.
27	* CreatorCameo: Cinematographer Raoul Coutard plays the doctor who tells the Deputy's wife he's dead.
28	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: During the demonstration/assassination scene, there's a close-up of the police holding their clubs at waist-level and wriggling them vigorously. No further comment needed?
29	* DoomedMoralVictor: See DownerEnding below.
30	* DownerEnding: And how! After the Public Prosecutor has arrested all the conspirators, the ending crawl says that the junta takes over, [[ShootTheShaggyDog pardons everyone involved in the assassination, sends the activists to prison, key witnesses die in suspicious accidents, the prosecutor is removed from the case and the junta proceeds to ban nearly everything they don't like]].
31	* EstablishingCharacterMoment: As the Public Prosecutor is having the case summarized to him by [[DetectiveMole the General and his cronies]] with a list of charges given for the culprits that presuppose it to be a drunken accident, he points out that a charge of 'hit and run' should be added, showing his attention to detail, care for the law, and independent mind, all things that are going to wind up causing the General a great deal of trouble in the future.
32	* EvilCannotComprehendGood: Shown over and over by the CROC and future junta members, as they assume that every right-minded citizen will of course approve of their campaign of terror and assassination and are simply amazed that the Public Prosecutor does not agree.
33	* ForegoneConclusion: It's based on an actual military coup.
34	* GeneralRipper: The General's (NoNameGiven) opening speech reveals him to be obsessively anti-communist, and given to bizarre, florid statements and tortured metaphors. [[YesMan And everyone defers to his authority]]. Later scenes reveal he's [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain also an anti-Semite]]. [[spoiler:At the end, he reveals his involvement by using a strange phrase that's been popping up in talks with CROC members.]]
35	* HopeSpot: The Public Prosecutor unravels the conspiracy, and the audience is treated to a montage of various military conspirators being charged with murder and sent to trial. Then the [[DownerEnding ending]] happens.
36	* InsistentTerminology: The Public Prosecutor repeatedly corrects anyone who refers to the assassination as a murder, preferring to call it an "incident." When the Public Prosecutor switches to calling it a "murder", the indictments of military officers starts rolling in.
37	* IntrepidReporter: One of them helps provide the evidence that drives the investigation. He even provides the ending narration [[spoiler:until the part where he gets arrested]].
38	* ItBeganWithATwistOfFate: The IntrepidReporter only attends the rally (and thus winds up pursuing the story and aiding the investigation of the Deputy's murder) as a favor to the friend. [[WorstNewsJudgementEver He was originally hoping to do a story about a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet that was happening at the same time.]]
39	* LongList: The ending crawl gives one for stuff the junta banned: peace movements, strikes, labor unions, long hair on men, Music/TheBeatles, other modern and popular music ("la musique populaire"), Creator/{{Sophocles}}, Creator/LeoTolstoy, Creator/{{Aeschylus}}, writing that Creator/{{Socrates}} was homosexual, Creator/EugeneIonesco, Creator/JeanPaulSartre, Creator/AntonChekhov, Creator/HaroldPinter, [[Theatre/WhosAfraidOfVirginiaWoolf Edward Albee]], Creator/MarkTwain, Creator/SamuelBeckett, Creator/FyodorDostoevsky, the bar association, sociology, international encyclopedias, free press, new math, and "''the letter Z which in Ancient Greek means "he is alive"''".
40	* TheManIsKeepingUsDown
41	* MilesGloriosus: The military officers constantly boast of their courage and patriotism, and yet all they seem to do in the film is encourage thugs to beat up peaceful protesters, and plot assassinations of political opponents. When brought before the Public Prosecutor, several, including the General, declare if charged they will commit suicide rather than have their honor impugned. They do not, and [[DirtyCoward in fact scurry away from the chamber afterwards trying to dodge the press]].
42	* ANaziByAnyOtherName: The military junta in the film that eventually takes over the country.
43	* NoNameGiven: Almost everybody in the film. The public prosecutor is billed just as "Public Prosecutor."
44	* OneLetterTitle: "Z". It refers to the letter that the opponents to the military junta wrote on the walls to signal their dissent.
45	* OurLawyersAdvisedThisTrope: {{Subverted}} with the opening crawl.
46	* PaperThinDisguise: Vago puts on a pair of glasses to avoid being recognized.
47	* PoliceAreUseless: Either by not protecting people against violence, or participating in cover-ups by lying, after being bribed or threatened.
48	* PoliceBrutality: Several policemen, including their leaders, are members of the CROC and take part in the assassination.
49	* PropagandaMachine: The General's opening speech describes how the government is indoctrinating the public, starting with youths in school.
50	* PyrrhicVictory: While the General and his cronies have undoubtedly "won" by the end, the pretense that the country is anything other than a military dictatorship has been destroyed, and the ridiculous and lengthy list of things they've banned strongly suggests that without any checks on their power whatsoever the same foolishness that lead to their horribly transparent assassination is going to ultimately lead the coup to disaster. Which it did.
51	* RedScare: The police's default assumption is that any dissident, whistleblower, or IntrepidReporter is secretly a Communist.
52	* RevealingCoverUp: The General's efforts to interfere with the case are so blatant and obvious that they wind up raising the Public Prosecutor's suspicions. [[StupidCrooks Which leads to him discovering further amateurish efforts to cover-up the crime, all of them easily traced back to the General and his staff.]]
53	* RippedFromTheHeadlines: The movie is based on the 1963 assassination of left-wing politician Gregoris Lambrakis, which played a part in destabilizing Greece and allowing the military coup of 1967. The main characters are [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed very blatantly based on real persons]]: the Deputy is Lambrakis, the Magistrate is Christos Sartzetakis (who was twice arrested and tortured by the junta, and later served as President from 1985-1990), the General is arguably Georgios Papadopoulos, and so on.
54	** The movie's composer, Mikis Theodorakis, was himself arrested, detained, sent into internal exile and interned in a concentration camp at Oropos while the movie was being filmed - his soundtrack had to be smuggled out of Greece. He was released to exile in France after a year, at the intervention of Radical Party leader Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber.
55	* RomanAClef: As previously mentioned, the story is that of Gregoris Lambrakis.
56	* RunningGag: The military officers all vainly try to exit via a locked back door to escape the journalists after getting formally charged one after the other.
57	* SacrificialLion: Manuel, who'd survived an earlier assassination attempt by the conspirators, is one of the few major characters who wasn't just arrested or exiled, but murdered, according to the epilogue.
58	* ShootTheShaggyDog: After all that trouble...things just go FromBadToWorse.
59	* SelfServingMemory: The police are amazingly calm and competent during the demonstration and "accident," if the general's testimony is to be believed.
60	* TheSociopath: Vago. The man is all cheery grins while assaulting people without provocation, and has no qualms of engaging in outright murder. And he's a pedophile to boot.
61	* SoundtrackDissonance: An upbeat rock instrumental plays after the Deputy’s critical condition is disclosed.
62	* TapOnTheHead: Happens repeatedly, with realistic results in terms of concussion. The truncheon blow to the Deputy’s head results in fatal brain damage.
63	* TeethClenchedTeamwork: The Public Prosecutor is a conservative who clearly doesn't like the Deputy's party when they happen to meet face to face, and whose initial thoughts when it seems increasingly likely that the Deputy's death is a murder is that it is the work of communists, either as a sympathy ploy or leftist squabbling. However, as the facts of the case become clearer [[RevealingCoverUp (and the General's interference becomes more blatant)]], he winds up working with the Deputy's party to bring the conspiracy to light.
64	* ThisIsAWorkOfFiction: Memorably {{inverted}} with the opening faux-disclaimer. See the page quote above.
65	* TokenGoodCop: Most of the cops seen are allied with the [[BlackShirt right-wing thugs]] and help cover up their persecution and assassination of their political enemies with gusto, but one beat cop does a good job of investigating the case until his superiors threaten him into stopping. Even then, he eventually tells the Magistrate investigating the case what happened.
66	* TurnOffTheCamera: The journalist who tries to interview the Doctor’s widow ostensibly agrees not to take pictures of her, but keeps taking unaimed snapshots.
67	* WhamLine: Whenever the witnesses say that the death of the Deputy was a "murder", the Public Prosecutor fastidiously corrects them pointing out that, unless otherwise proven, it must be presumed that the Deputy's death was the result of an "accident". Then, towards the end of the film, while he is interrogating a member of the conspiracy:
68	->'''Public Prosecutor''': "Then, I assume that the fact that you were on the scene of the murder was purely casual."
69	->'''Stenographer''': "Excuse me, Mr Prosecutor. Must I write «murder»? You have said «murder»."
70	* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: See DownerEnding, above.

Context Film / Z