“Today you will be returned to God.” Some viewers may find the anti-capital punishment message a bit too heavy-handed, but lawyer-director André Cayatte’s Nous sommes tous des assassins (US: We Are All Murderers) still packs a dramatic punch through its final image of a sad, young boy desperately waiting the state’s decision about executing his big brother. Marcel Mouloudji stars as the illiterate, alcoholic, restless René Le Guen, who’s recruited from his impoverished existence into the French Resistance after fighters notice that he unrepentantly killed a man who was attempting to rape his sister (Jacqueline Pierreux). Le Guen does his resistance work with gusto and proves himself very comfortable with killing (his pistol lies next to him even while he’s in the bathtub), but this will remain a liability after the war ends, leading to a murder conviction and transport to Death Row. More than half the film takes place in prison, where his cellmates, one by one, are surprised by the guards when it’s their time to be extinguished, each death punctuated by the snuffing out of a candle flame. Le Guen’s young, earnest defense attorney Philippe Arnaud (Claude Laydu) works hard to appeal his client’s fate, becoming so devoted to the inmate that he agrees to take his little brother Michel (Georges Poujouly) into his home. The film contains a few moments of expressionist noir style (note the flashing neon hotel sign as the intruder approaches the sleeping Luigi) but its more interesting visual elements are the settings, which include a wasteland of shacks and shanties, an enormous factory with a dozen smokestacks surrounded by acres and acres of barren land, and the gorgeous, classically trimmed prison corridors where the guards, like a small battalion, march in step to fetch the next victim.