La Haine

This film reflects the brutal reality of inequality in Paris. Three features of the film help to accomplish this with powerful results: 1) It was filmed in Black in White with actual footage of riots in the opening credits; 2) It followed three angry young males who represented the three leading ethnic groups in the banliues; and, 3) It was based on a single day (and night).   Another strength to the overall message of the film was the ways in which the director left many parts of it ambiguous or open to interpretation. Two parts that exemplify this were the story of Grunwalski on the train to Siberia that the old man told to Said, Vinz, and Hubert in the bathroom and the Cow that Vinz saw. We already unpacked the first a bit. What do you think of the cow?  Is it perhaps an omen that something bad is going to happen to Vinz? What was the point of it?

Days of Glory and Battle of Algiers

Although there were a few exceptions of sympathetic French toward colonial subjects shown in both films, the fact is they both intentionally try to show how "native" French do not see them as equally human.  This is supported by, for example, the tomato incident in Days of Glory and in the decision to implement systematic torture as a strategy in The Battle of Algiers.  Say what you will about the complexities of the particular eras (WWII with the inhabitants of the colonies beginning to demand more autonomy and the Algerian War with France struggling to hold on to its position as a major world power), the fact is France had institutional racism.  This history is hard to face for most French today. Days of Glory is directly intended to correct this larger wrong through the case of soldiers in WWII because it is hard for the public to disagree.

Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles

The headstrong Mathilde is what makes this film such an effective juxtaposition of the atrocities of WWI and the emotional aftermath of loss experienced by survivors. Against all logical odds she holds on to her intuition and metaphysical connection to her fiance, Manech as she unravels the mystery of Bingo Crepuscule. I think at the heart of the odds against her is a negotiation for legitimate knowledge (epistimology) between the dominant male ways of knowing truth (reason) and women's ways of knowing (a different kind of reason that spans the gap between the head and the heart, or emotions/feelings and logical reasoning.  The latter ends up the most successful for trying to come to terms with the utter senselessness of that horrific war.

Black and White in Color

This films gives voice to a re-articulation of the critique of French colonialism at a time when there was fairly wide-scale disillusionment with some of the failed aspects of the Fifth Republic; namely, the failure of integration of diverse ethnic groups from former colonies and the break in economic progress after the Trente Glorieuses.


The most interesting figure in this is arguably Hubert, the young geographer.  He still marches forward in the spirit of post-enlightenment humanistic positivism yet he breaks the code in how "the natives" are viewed. There is more into it than that, I think.  Is he, perhaps, a projection of the director who clearly has sympathies for the Cameroonians?   Is he a model of a new Frenchman (more enlightened in a modern context of post-colonial globalization)?  Or, is he only a supporting character for someone else who is more crucial to the main point of the filmaker?

Pépé le Moko

In "Pépé le Moko or the Impossibility of being French in the 1930's, Martin O'Shaughnessy uses an interesting aanalyitical framework to show how the film Pépé le Moko helps remind us that, "A forward and outward-looking, civilizing, modern, virile power and an ageing, decrepit, introspective and xenophobic nation just would not gel"  In particular, he says the tensions are worked out in the arenas of national identity, the formation and/or sense of community, and in gender.  

Nowhere is this seen clearer than in the figure of Slimane--the potential antagonist or protagonist of the film, depending on how one might see the right way to work out the French empire (even if it was in the Third Republic, the colonial agenda was strong and running in Algieria). 

The Inspector Slimane proves his value as an good French national loyalist by patiently working to capture a clear enemy of the state--a bank robber.   Similarly, his style of integration in the Casbah might suggest the French national apparatus can work with diverse cultural players in diverse settings to bring these diverse communities in line with French national principles. Finally, his recognition that females (Inés and Gaby) held more power than they were formally granted tilts the balance toward including women within "The Republic" (i.e. French national identity).

Of course, another side (with some supporting points brought out in O'Shaughnessy's piece) is that he was devisive and took advantage of characters stuck in a liminal state (no fixed identity).

The popularity of the movie is because he can conveniently serve both audiences (those that see him as a protaganist and those who  seem him as an antagonist.