All Were Guilty

The most traumatic event in recent French history was unquestionably, the Algerian war, which claimed the lives of 20,000 French soldiers and an estimated 1,000,000 Algerians between 1954 and 1962. French memories of the war are still bitter, but passions have recently cooled enough to permit a few uncensored examinations of a conflict that brought France perilously close to civil war. First to "bring the skeleton out of the closet," as one reviewer put it, was General Jacques Massu, whose book La Vraie Balaille d'Alger (The Real Battle of Algiers) describes in chilling detail the tortures carried out by French paratroopers while he was military commander of the city--atrocities that had been officially denied by the French government.

Even more telling is a graphic film documentary called La Guerre d'Algerie, which is playing to packed houses in Paris. Reliving the war has proved to be a shattering experience for many viewers, and reactions range from stunned silence to horror and disgust. Shouts of "Salaud!" (bastard) fill the theater when former Premier Guy, Mollet is shown defending his policy of keeping draftees in the army for 30 months instead of the legal term of 18 months. "When the lights go on at the end of the film, you sit there crushed, speechless, heartsick," wrote Critic Jean Planchais in Le Monde. "It is a film that makes you sick," concluded Henri de Turenne of L'Express. "Sick at heart. Sick to the stomach."

Chain of Events. The two-hour, 40-minute documentary inevitably evokes comparison with The Sorrow and the Pity (TIME, March 27), an equally graphic chronicle of French life under Nazi occupation during World War II. La Guerre is the work of Yves Courriere, 36, a French journalist who quit his job with Radio Luxembourg to write a history of the Algerian war and later decided to make a film on the subject. "Very few people on either side really knew what was happening, even if they personally witnessed some of the events," says Courriere, who served with the French army in Algeria, and was expelled from the country in 1969 for writing about the power struggle within the rebel movement. "I wished to show the ineluctable chain of events. I wanted to make the point that neither side was all good or all evil."

With Co-director Philippe Monnier and Jacques Perrin (the producer of Z), Courriere spent 14 months traveling to eight countries in search of newsreels and still photos. From more than 500,000 ft. of film, the team selected 15,300 ft.--most of which had never been shown in France--and put it together, in Perrin's words, "as you would prepare a trial."

A trial it is, not simply of France's conduct of the war, but of French political life. The movie opens with an apparently mindless act of terrorism that occurred one day in 1954. A country bus is machine-gunned by Algerian rebels on a mountain road, and several Algerians, both French and Moslem, are killed. Though few realize it, the war has begun. The film goes on to trace the growth of Algerian nationalism, led for the most part by bemedaled Moslem veterans of World War II who fought with the Free French and came home to find that they themselves were not free.

Their demands for reforms meet with a repressive response from the French authorities. Gradually, a pattern of terrorism and reprisals build. Chilling sequences show French army recruits calmly shooting down unarmed Algerian civilians. Equally gruesome scenes depict Algerian nationalists' reprisals against French colonists. Instead of extinguishing what was at first a small rebel movement, the French policy of humiliation, imprisonment and virtually indiscriminate killing, spurs a nationwide demand for independence.

Comic Relief. Throughout the escalation of horrors, French politicians provide a kind of comic relief. In the hindsight of history, their words seem fatuous and self-serving. There is Leftist, Franc,ois Mitterrand, now head of the French Socialist Party, declaring, "Algeria is France!" And Defense Minister, Michel Debre, insisting that "the spurs of the Gallic rooster will cling fast to the oil of the Sahara." Even Charles de Gaulle has a bad moment or two, vowing in 1959 never to negotiate with the National Liberation Front. Soon after, De Gaulle sensibly reversed that policy and paved the way for the 1962 Evian accord giving Algeria its independence.

Despite some complaints about oversimplification, most critics have praised La Guerre d'Algerie as a dispassionate document of guilt. In the end, virtually everyone stands accused of complicity in the massacre of innocents. "Even at a distance of ten years," noted Critic Planchais, "the episode inspires shame and fear--shame that so little was done for so long to end a war that was officially never known as such, and fear in the face of a machine that made all Frenchmen, whether indifferent, ignorant, or deeply involved, connive serenely at so many crimes and so much stupidity."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.