Book chapter
Two Films and Two Wars in the Public Sphere
France and Its Spaces of War, pp.277-288
Palgrave Macmillan US
2009
DOI: 10.1057/9780230100763_20
Abstract
Attention: un train peut en cacher un autre!” Some railroad crossings in France still display a sign warning pedestrians to look both ways because a train going one way on one track often hides a second train coming from the opposite direction on a second track. I take the sign as a cautionary reminder with reference to what I have seen while drafting this paper, which I began a year ago as a study of La Trahison (The Betrayal), a 2005 feature-length film about a French military unit stationed in an isolated part of southeastern Algeria in March 1960. Director Philippe Faucon adapted the film with journalist Claude Sales from the latter’s 1999 memoir based on an incident during Sales’ tour of duty as an officer in the French army. I first saw La Trahison in January 2006 and was drawn to the economy with which it conveyed complexities affecting all parties to the incident in question. I considered the film’s mix of drama and historical account to support its status as a possible commentary on and allegory of the Algerian war close to 50 years after the fact. I was also curious how the film’s release in early 2006 might be understood in light of a February 2005 proposal by then President Jacques Chirac for the national school system to present in a positive light the contributions of colonization in overseas territories formerly occupied by France. (Chirac withdrew the proposal in January 2006.) La Trahison was by all measures a small-scale film—low-budget and marketed mainly on the independent and art-house circuits—whose perspective on a large and complex topic I found worthy of further scrutiny.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Two Films and Two Wars in the Public Sphere
- Creators
- Steven Ungar - University of Iowa, French and Italian
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- France and Its Spaces of War, pp.277-288
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan US; New York
- DOI
- 10.1057/9780230100763_20
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2009
- Academic Unit
- French and Italian; Cinematic Arts
- Record Identifier
- 9984397922802771
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