According to official pronouncements, the French legal system functions as a rigid conception of the interpretive and creative role of the civil, private law judge, and this conception is viewed as the official portrait. While the official portrait is produced by legislative provisions and judicial interpretations, the unofficial portrait is produced by doctrine and magistrate arguments. By demonstrating that the official portrait is the most visible of several concepts of the judicial role currently operating in the French legal system, the article seeks to correct skewed common law accounts of how the French judicial system actually functions. The author constructs an unofficial portrait of the French civil judge and examines the effects produced by the coexistence of official and unofficial portraits on French judicial interpretation, discourse, and rhetoric. Traditional common law analyses of the French civil judicial system are presented, and elements of the French legal system that have been the traditional focus of comparative analysis and that comprise the official portrait of the French civil judge are noted. 310 footnotes