French War Films and National Identity By Noah McLaughlin

history as well as a legitimate investigation of a real conflict. As documents of social history, what do these movies tell us about French society, both as snapshots of the era in which they were made and, when considered together, its evolution over the course of the twentieth century? As historical examinations, what do these works tell us about the bitter conflicts that the French endured during the past one hundred years?

In between these two broad areas, there lies historiography—and eventually historiophoty. One aim of this book is to trace an evolution of historical representation as well as popular ideas concerning both the discrete subjects of each film and the writing—or filming—of history in general. Thus, I explore the films in roughly chronological order of release, but the underlying logic is not necessarily causative. Exceptions to chronology, notably Une affaire de femmes (a 1988 film treated alongside the 1919 J’Accuse), complicate a simple historical narrative in a positive way.

Each of the following analytical chapters investigates a pair of films that illustrate a common signifying strategy. In chapters 1, 2, and 3, the emphasis is on exploring films as documents of social history. Employing such strategies as literary appropriation, allegory, and Barthesean myth, they are understood primarily as reflections of their respective societies of production. ¹⁸ (Even so, they may contribute something new to our knowledge and understanding of their respective subjects.)

If the primary function of the historical film is to meditate upon the relationship of the individual to society, some war films synthesize literary and cinematic concerns to do so. Literary appropriation groups two related but different strategies: bricolage and adaptation.Abel Gance’s 1919 J’Accuse irreverently borrows signs and tropes from nineteenth-century literature in order to craft a powerful and unique call to remembrance, mourning, and a public assumption of responsibility necessitated by the brutality of the Great War. Across a gulf of time, the literature/cinema rapport in Claude Chabrol’s Une affaire de femmes (1988) is characterized best by the concept of “hypertextuality.” The result of this process is a profusion of films all in a single and singular work; Une affaire de femmes not only adapts a previous text, but it also investigates women’s