La Guerre d'un Seul Homme

I’m a member of the film society at my university. Last term we screened La Guerre d'un Seul Homme-One Man's War-directed by Edgardo Cozarinsky, an Argentinean in writer and film-maker. It’s a remarkable dissertation in what the director calls ‘documentary fiction.’ He’s taken a lot of war-time footage, most from occupied France, Paris, in particular, and some from the Eastern Front, to create a visual essay. Some of the footage is light-hearted, to the point of outright banality, some of it darker and altogether more serious. Much of it contains commentary of the day, particularly on aspects of Parisian life or more generally the politics of France during the occupation.

The whole thing is punctuated by readings from the Paris Journals of Ernst Jünger, who served as an officer in the occupation force for much of the war. Jünger is probably best known for In Stahlgewittern-Storm of Steel-, his account of life on the Western Front during the First World War. He had an international reputation, which give him easy access to French intellectual salons in Paris, where he met with people like Cocteau and Picasso. Jünger was an anti-Nazi, involved in the fringes of the 1944 Plot against Hitler, but he always seems to maintain a sense of Olympian detachment, disapproving of much of what he sees, but never quite prepared to take that final step. It was of particular interest for me because I know Paris so well, wandered the same streets, parks and embankments as Jünger, and had the same kinds of encounter. There is a deep poignancy to the whole thing; there was for me, anyway.

Days of Glory, no, Indigènes!

Days of Glory is a French-language film directed by Rachid Bouchareb. Released in 2006, it won the best actor award that year at the Cannes Film Festival. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film, but lost out on the day to The Lives of Others, a worthy opponent. It was broadcast on BBC 4 a few days ago, when I saw it for the first time.

The focus is on four men in particular: Said, Yassir, Messaoud and Abdelkader. They fight through campaigns in Italy, southern France and on to Alsace. They fight with courage and bravery but they are treated shabbily; they are discriminated against by the nation and the army they serve, forms of discrimination both petty and grand, from denying them tomatoes to refusing leave and promotion. It upset me. I can imagine how those men must have felt, risking their lives when their lives had such little apparent value.

The first thing I have to say is that the English title in retrospect made me angry, a vacuous cliché so lacking in imagination, one that says little or nothing about the movie itself, about what the director was trying to say. Who decides these things, I wonder? Do the film makers themselves have any input? I saw the movie advertised when it first came out but decided not to go because I thought it was just another ‘war movie’, another Saving Private Ryan, and I’m not all that keen on war movies as such. It’s not; oh no, it is not. The original French title is Indigènes, meaning Natives, more appropriate in every sense, as I will explain below.

Indigènes tells the story of the men of North Africa, the ‘natives’, who were recruited in the Second World War by the Free French to fight against the Germans in Europe. They volunteer for all sorts of reasons; because they believe in the cause, because they want to escape poverty, because the want to come to a ‘homeland’ they have never seen, because they are looking for a better life; all sorts of reasons.


The discrimination did not end when the war ended. When the nations of North Africa and the other French colonial territories became independent the French government discontinued payment of war pensions. A long legal battle ensued but it was only after the release of Indigènes that this was reversed and veterans paid what they were due. What a powerful medium for justice cinema continues to be, when it chooses to be.

Hell and the Lamia

I saw Drag me to Hell recently, directed by Sam Rami, the guiding hand behind the Spider Man movies and, still earlier, The Evil Dead. I loved this movie, I love Rami's black sense of humour but then I love the whole horror movie genre. I also love discovering something new. Rami’s movie introduced me to the Lamia, who appears as a devil-like demon in the movie. I looked into this, discovering that the Lamia has deep mythological roots…and that she is female, one with a tragic history, a plaything of the selfish passions of the gods.

In Classical mythology Lamia was a Queen of Libya. Beloved by Zeus, she incurred the wrath of Hera, who, in an act of revenge, killed her children. Either cursed by the jealous goddess, or consumed by grief, Lamia turned a monster. Taking on the partial shape of a serpent, she began to devour other people’s children in furious envy. In Greek folklore Lamia has the same basic form-and purpose- as the witch Baba Yaga in that of Russia, a monster who combines a taste for human flesh with the gift of prophecy; a monster who serves as a warning. Philostratus, in The Life of Apollonius, says that she took on the shape of a beautiful woman at will to entice young men prior to devouring them. Something of the tragedy of Lamia was later captured in a romantic form by John Keats, who describes her thus;

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries-
So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.
Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire
Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne's tiar:
Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet!
She had a woman's mouth with all its pearls complete:
And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there
But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair?

As far as the movie is concerned I thought that Christine’s fate was rather hard. If anyone deserved to be dragged to hell it was the board of directors of the bank she worked for, not a lowly employee. The old gypsy’s curse was misdirected; we can all understand that much!

Body Heat

I love film noir and Body Heat, starring William Hurt and Kathleen Turner, is one of the best movies in this genre. Made as long ago as 1981, Turner plays Matty Walker, a ruthlessly ambitious woman, a femme fatale in the most complete sense.

A married woman, she becomes sexually involved with Hurt, who plays Ned Racine, a small-time lawyer. Their original meeting seems entirely coincidental but, bit by bit, as the story unravels, it becomes clear that Matty has deliberately chosen Racine in an elaborate plot to murder her wealthy husband, played by Richard Crenna. Matty behaves with complete ruthlessness, ensuring the murder is carried out and ensuring that Racine alone will stand blame. In the end she is seemingly killed in an explosion in a boat house, and Racine is arrested for the murder of her husband. But, you see, Matty is not Matty after all! Oh, to be rich and live in a faraway land!

Young Victoria

Yes, I admit it; I like a good story and a spot of romance. Special effects are all very well, but when a film is carried by that and that alone it gets so tiresome; it does for me anyway. So, Young Victoria really hit the spot, a strong story-line that I could really relate to, the story of a girl becoming not just a queen but a woman in the process, growing and maturing in all sorts of ways, casting off the shadows of a restrictive and claustrophobic past. Emily Blunt was so good in the title role, but she was ably supported by a strong cast of first-rate English actors, including Miranda Richardson as the Duchess of Kent, Victoria’s mother, and Jim Broadbent as William IV, with a barnet straight out of Alice in Wonderland!