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Catholic Church. Léon Morin, prêtre (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961) with its priestly central character is a notable exception. However, unlike Costa-Gavras's internationally produced Amen. (2002), France has largely left Catholic priests and nuns to fill secondary roles in ensemble casts of good Samaritans, such as those in Les Misérables , La Rafle and Monsieur Batignole. Perhaps films exploring these diverse identity groups will emerge in contemporary French cinema over the next twenty years as this unrelenting drive to reconcile previously forgotten aspects of
their actions ( 2003 ). They pretend to be resistants and this represents an ad hoc, spontaneous and ultimately counterproductive kind of heroism, made even more problematic when there are reprisals from the Germans, including taking hostages. The German authorities here will serve their own kind of justice by wrongfully convicting individuals and executing them unless the real culprits identify themselves. As previously seen in Séction spéciale (Costa-Gavras, 1975), the French judicial system of the time collaborated in delivering this perverted form of justice
the way in which structure ‘represents’ and ‘explains’ content, and claims to ‘know’ and ‘judge’ events within a ‘cause-effect chain’, Elephant serves to foreground the ideological mediation of the narrative process. The radicalism of this combination of form and narrative can be explored through reference to Loach’s Hidden Agenda, which approached Britain’s alleged shoot-to-kill policy through an investigative structure resembling a political thriller. John Hill (1997b: 131) located complaints about this structuring alongside the ‘Costa-Gavras debate’, which tied
Europe’s internal open border policies. The ready aero-mobility addressed in Chapter 3 means that distant coastal resorts can simultaneously occupy in popular imagination the role of remote and perilous borderline on the one hand and convenient vacation hub on the other. This confrontation is central to three of the films covered in this chapter. Eden à l’ouest / Eden Is West (Costa-Gavras
, including two César nominations for Métisse (Kassovitz, 1993) and Amen (Costa-Gavras, 2002) and one award for his performances in Regarde les hommes tomber (Audiard, 1994) as well as enjoying box-office success as the male-lead in Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Jeunet, 2001). In both France and abroad, Kassovitz has therefore made a considerable impact as director
she refuses him. This is a rose-coloured perspective, of course; other international films such as Amen. (2002, Costa-Gavras) reveal uncomfortable truths of Catholic complicity in collaboration during the war and also in hiding Nazis in the subsequent decades. Lelouch may tread lightly in his judgment of the Catholic Church, but the film's condemnation of the authorities and individuals who sought to profit from this ‘miserable’ situation is clear. In a heartbreaking scene, one of the last things Henri Fortin's father (Henri senior) says to his
to make the film, Chang offers that ‘the Mediterranean has more birth certificates than fish … an anonymous person is harder to expel’ (something displayed in a scene that is depicted in the 2009 film Eden à l’ouest / Eden is West (Costa-Gavras, France/Greece/Italy, 2009), covered in Chapter 4 ). Likewise, his arrival story on a train situates him in connection
identified as an actor of considerable talent with, potentially, a significant screen career ahead of him. Moreover, as he progressed to more prominent roles in films such as Un Héros très discret (Audiard, 1996), Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Jeuent, 2001) and Amen (Costa-Gavras, 2002), Kassovitz’s rising celebrity profile (as both director and actor) and obvious onscreen charisma even
its formal aspects do not correspond. It is exemplified principally by two directors: Constantin Costa-Gavras and Yves Boisset, who adapted the American and Italian political thriller to the French context. The most important single event for French society in the second half of the twentieth century, socially, politically and culturally, is undoubtedly May 1968. As Jill Forbes points out, ‘the Events of May 1968 led to a
Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002), in which the American actor Adrien Brody is unproblematically represented as a Polish Jew, and in which the use of English by all ‘Polish’ and ‘German’ characters (excepting some ambient dialogue and street signs) is both unbroken and unmentioned (2008: 190). Costa-Gavras’s later films, including 2002’s Amen and 2008’s Eden à l’ouest (in which a fake language is concocted from reversed French, so the migrant protagonist can retain an anonymous, almost mythical ‘Eastern’ identity), are much more interested in the power of languages