Luc Barney

The unsanctioned efforts of a covert unit to gather evidence about illegal arms shipments with the unwitting help of an embassy employee.

Identite Judiciare stars Raymond Souplex as wily French police inspector Basquier. The villain is Berthet (Jean Debucourt), a high-ranking government official. Basquier suspects that Berthet is a vicious murderer, but is unable to prove anything thanks to bureaucratic interference. Thus, the good inspector plays a waiting game a la Columbo, hoping for that one fatal slip on the part of the killer. Certain portions of Identite Judiciare proved a bit too intense for American audiences, and were accordingly snipped by the censors.

Gaëtan (Sim), a small-town hotelier, schemes to scrape together enough money to travel to Paris for a belote tournament, resorting to increasingly dubious tricks and hiding his savings inside his beloved bagpipes.