To most American moviegoers, the words “French film” imply a certain air of delicacy and intellectual snobbery, possibly mixed with sex—everything that the French war film is not. From the 1960s on, these movies have been notable for their hard, semi-documentary approach and tightly controlled emotions. They've also been based on a sophisticated political awareness that…
La Bataille d'Alger La Battaglia di Algeri 1966 Gillo Pontecorvo In the mid-1960s, while Truman Capote was creating his “non-fiction novel” In Cold Blood, Italian writer-director Gillo Pontecorvo applied the same techniques to film. The Battle of Algiers has been just as popular with critics and audiences as Capote's work, and, if anything, it has grown more impressive…
Napoleon Vu par Abel Gance Napoleon Bonaparte 1927 Abel Gance Judged by any standard, Abel Gance's silent epic is a masterpiece, but the word carries with it images of a dry, high-minded, frowningly serious work, and that is certainly not true of this one. Napoleon is inventive, playful, screwy, and, almost a century after its creation, still surprising. It's also a film that challe…
1965 Pierre Schoendoerffer Pierre Schoendoerffer's fatalistic 1965 view of the French involvement in IndoChina can be seen as a preview to the American experience. The trappings, the characters, and the dramatic rise and fall of the plot have all been repeated both in reality and on film. Schoendoerffer scrupulously avoids any overt political statement, and so his film's relevance t…
1971 Sergei Bondarchuk To appreciate this realistic re-creation of one of Europe's most important battles, fans of war films must ignore the first hour. (Don't forget, every VCR has a fast forward button.) That part of the movie is devoted to Rod Steiger's maniacal portrayal of Napoleon. It may be his most apoplectic performance in a career not noted for restraint, and it is …