“We just didn’t love each other at the same time.” Courtroom dramas, even the greats like Witness for the Prosecution (1957), 12 Angry Men (1957), and Anatomy of a Murder (1959), rarely warrant noir consideration because they revolve around the absolutes and abstractions of legal justice. Still, while its noir credentials remain debatable, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s La Vérité (US: The Truth) brilliantly combines courtroom testimony with protracted flashbacks, the tapestry-like tension between the two creating as much confusion as clarity, culminating in a bleak ending still lacking in firm answers. Spotlighting the almost supernatural beauty of French superstar Brigitte Bardot as Dominique Marceau, the murder trial exposes the intense rivalry between two sisters, the stunning, selfish Dominique and the demure, dutiful Annie (Marie-José Nat), who come to blows over their mutual love for victim Gilbert Tellier (Sami Frey), who ends up with six bullets in his body. The flashbacks following Dominique’s descent into Left Bank counter-culturalism (“You felt at home among such depravity”) seem to tease with the content of the French New Wave, the crowds on the street at night like giant crucibles of postwar, youthful rebellion. While there’s no formal musical score, Clouzot makes use of diegetic music like recitals and record players, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” powering Dominique’s final, frenetic trek to Gilbert’s apartment.