Jaurès : L’insoumis qui tenaillait la République

His celebration as a great man of the nation has overshadowed the thought and struggles of the founder of L'Humanité, assassinated on July 31, 1914. This documentary restores them in all their power and vibrant timelessness. A century after Jean Jaurès's death, no one hesitates today to honor his memory, and all political camps claim him as their own. This strange unanimity, however, obscures the true stature of the socialist deputy from Carmaux, founder of L'Humanité, whose struggles and ideas aroused as much hatred as enthusiasm during his lifetime. With director Bernard George, historian Jean-Noël Jeanneney sets out to bring Jaurès back to life in all his power, showing how his ideas remain strikingly relevant today. This biographical and political portrait draws on Jaurès's writings and speeches, as well as on the accounts of leading experts on his work: former Socialist ministers Robert Badinter and Vincent Peillon, historian Michel Winock, legal scholar Mireille Delmas-Marty, and Patrick Le Hyaric, his successor as editor of L’Humanité. The film captures the personality of a man of flesh and blood, whose stature towered above the violent conflicts of his era, and recalls the tragic epilogue of his assassination on July 31, 1914, which precipitated the Bloc des Gauches's entry into the war. By blending political analysis with biographical elements, it brings to life the man whom time has transformed into an icon, sometimes at the expense of the man's complexity. The documentary shows how his struggles—defending the oppressed, the role of schools in addressing inequality, rejecting the excesses of state power, the place of the army, public authority versus the market, and the fight against the barbarity of war—still resonate today, sometimes in revolutionary ways. The words of this formidable orator, fueled by his faith in collective energy and his rejection of all fatalism, retain their undiminished power.