French War Films and National Identity By Noah McLaughlin

times; through the modes of artificial myth and historical experimentalism, they also contribute valid meditations on the representation of history on-screen. What ties these disparate works together is epistemological skepticism. To varying degrees, each film is aware of itself as an artificial construct and it openly uses that artificiality to explore its historical subject.

Moving beyond the merely counter-mythic function of The Battle of Algiers, Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1969 L’Armée des ombres creates a Barthesean artificial myth. This two-step process requires a source myth but also that the human will behind the discourse be readily apparent. Melville accomplishes this by treating the Resistance with his trademark austerity. Remarkably, though L’Armée des ombres never lets the spectator forget that he is watching a feature film, it also manages to render the most moving and authentic representation of the Resistance experience ever put on the silver screen. Le Chagrin et la pitié (Marcel Ophüls, 1971) embraces this basic paradox of historical filmmaking: the more one openly lies, the closer one approaches the truth. Despite important criticisms accumulated across the decades since its release, Marcel Ophüls’ landmark documentary remains a bold and fundamental model of historiophoty—the representation of history on film.

The blend of creativity and critical thinking embodied in Le Chagrin has led some recent directors to create works of historical experimentation. Bertrand Tavernier’s 2002 Laissez-passer makes full use of the cinema’s greatest strengths for reconstructing the past, physically as well as psychologically. However, despite the film’s ability to parachute us into the Parisian film industry of the Occupation era, it also continues to circulate the myth of Resistancialism. A more successful experiment in history is Jeunet’s 2004 Un long dimanche de fiançailles, whose unrepentant artifice nonetheless widens our understanding of the Great War while at the same time acting as a critical model of historical thought that can question basic precepts of time and space.

Already we can see that the French war film leads us to unexpected and challenging places. It may occasionally share some aspects with its Anglo-American counterpart, but its greatest accomplishments are