The French public must have heaved a huge sigh of relief when the Evian Accords were signed in 1962, thereby ending the Algerian War of Independence.
The aftermath was pretty grisly to say the least. In Algeria thousands of Muslims who had fought on the French side and their families were slaughtered like cattle by supporters of the FNL.
In France itself a bunch of disgruntled right-wing army officers motivated by 'patriotism' and calling themselves the OAS adopted terrorist tactics in order to de-stabilise the country and cause civil war, even to the point of attempting to assassinate President de Gaulle.
This film by Rene Glainville was released the same year as Fred Zinnermann's 'Day of the Jackal' and suffers by comparison. Glainville is certainly no Zinnemann but he is saved here by having a superlative cast.
One would assume that actors of the calibre of Michel Bouquet, Jean Rochefort, Raymond Pellegrin, Michel Duchaussoy and Marina Vlady are pretty bomb-proof and excel irrespective of who is in the director's chair and such is the case here but one feels that the film itself, despite some telling scenes, lacks the touch of a master. One wonders how Jean-Pierre Melville or Costa-Gavros would have handled this material.
The great directors all seem to have a musical sense and the best film composers a sense of the dramatic. Here alas Glainville and Michel Magne are both lacking in this respect. Magne's score is ineffectual.
Some have observed that the OAS comes off lightly here. On a personal level Jean Rochefort as Clavet, a leading OAS member, is shown in a sympathetic light and one asks oneself how such a man could get involved in this futile, ill-conceived enterprise. Conversely the slaying of a young woman who has had the courage to be a witness is utterly repugnant. As Commissaire Lelong tells OAS member Leblanc: "You are no longer a soldier. You are a murderer."
The highlight of the film is Leblanc's attempted escape from prison which has a tension that is otherwise lacking throughout.
Although far from being a classic this film is relevant now as countries are forced to come to terms with and face the consequences of their colonial past.
However despicable were the intentions of the OAS, it is painfully evident that the military, the FNL and de Gaulle himself hardly covered themselves in glory.
Samuel Johnson observed that ''Patriotism is the final refuge of the scoundrel". Even more apt here might be Oscar Wilde's "Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious".
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