French War Films and National Identity By Noah McLaughlin

not to say that the latter film is less rich. Quite the opposite: by adapting a written work about a historical period, ithas several layers. Furthermore, Chabrol uses the film to think not only about the past but the present as well. Une affaire de femmes is in effect three films in one: an adaptation, a historical film, and a topical commentary.

All of these functions respond in various ways to previous discourses. To examine the first two categories of response, a useful idea is that of “hypertextuality,” defined by Gérard Genette as “any relationship relating text B ([…] hypertext) to an earlier text A ([…] hypotext) upon which it is grafted in a manner that is not one of commentary.” ²² This is produced by either transformation or imitation. Transformation is a simple mechanical gesture, in effect copying. Imitation, or mimesis, requires a “matrix of imitation” that is interposed between the hypotext and hypertext. ²³ This matrix performs a generalizing function, one which essentializes the “idiolect” of text A. Its creation necessitates a certain mastery of specific qualities of the imitated text and then serves as a template for text B.

Therefore, “to imitate is to generalize,” ²⁴ and this has certain consequences for the hypertext. Firstly, “hypertextuality is most often revealed by a means of a paratextual sign that has contractual force.” ²⁵ A good example would be successful genre films, whose signs call upon previously existing symbols of more or less accepted meaning (i.e., black hats and white hats in the conventional Western). Secondly, “a simple understanding of the hypertext never necessitates resorting to the hypotext.” ²⁶ Hypertexts are more or less autonomous and stand only to gain from the reader’s or spectator’s knowledge of the work from which it draws. ²⁷

To the casual observer, these films would seem to have very little in common. They are separated by many decades, by different aesthetics, by different relations to literature and different historical subjects. Yet their common concern with the written word and their wartime settings lead them to espouse remarkably similar modes of thought. Both seek to investigate the past critically and to use film form to engage the audience in this critical investigation. Both also meditate upon the social function of the individual by examining people in moments of historical crisis.