Terrorists in Retirement Review
by "Harvey S. Karten" (film_critic AT compuserve DOT com)January 1st, 2001
TERRORISTS IN RETIREMENT
Reviewed by Harvey Karten
No distributor to date
Director: Mosco Boucault
Cast: Simone Signoret, Gerard Desarthe, narrators
Screened at: Film Forum 209 W. Houston St. NYC and opening 1/10/01.
The ironic title--a more literal one would be "'Terrorists' in Retirement"--again makes clear the axiom that one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. The filmmaker of this potent and disturbing non-fiction piece, Mosco Boucault, wears his sympathies on his sleeve. Like most Frenchmen, he looks up to the Resistance which fought the German occupation of his country by assassinating Nazi officers on the streets and by planting homemade bombs in strategic places. He is distressed by the very thought that some of these brave fighters were sold out by their own fellow partisans--ordered to die (presumably because they were Jews) on the unmarked battlefields rather than escape to the countryside when to flee was the better part of valor.
The film, which was shown at Cannes in 1983, was effectively censored by French governments. Officials had been concerned that schoolchildren and others would turn the subject over in their minds and find feet of clay to replace the patriotic propaganda depicting only soul-felt bravery. While this documentary features the usual convention of talking heads, the most involving parts deal with the aging former Resistance fighters' dramatizing what they actually did on the locations of their "terrorism." As photographer Jean Orjollet takes testimony, Boucault makes sure that we see them performing their mundane tasks rather than simply sitting in easy chairs chatting with the interviewer. Where you might expect these noble folks to be seen carrying a French flag and raising their fists, they are instead still engaged (in 1983) at their mundane tasks at sewing machines, cutting fabrics, or simply cooking leftover grub on dilapidated stoves. They are unsung heroes. Why? Because the French simply want youngsters in school to believe that they were 100% French, "untainted" by foreign (i.e. Eastern European) names like Mitzflicker, Weissberg and Lojitski. In fact even the filmmaker, Mosco Boucault, is a Bulgarian Jew who is living in Paris--which would have made the French censors all the more eager to expunge all aspects of this expose.
Truth to tell, then, a large number of the so-called French freedom fighters were not French at all but emigre Jews from Czechoslovakia and Poland, people who had nothing to lose by joining the partisan group given the fact that they were steadily hunted down by the Gestapo eager to transport them to Auschwitz and other death camps. Some came over to France via false papers made by the communist party--with which they were affiliated while others journeyed by stowing away. For a while these communists followed the party line dictated from Stalin, who was their hero, but after the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact, a cynical treaty forming a temporary alliance between Nazi Germany and a communist Soviet Union, these Jewish communists were in a way adrift. Their goal became simply to disrupt and confound the Nazi occupiers through assassinations and bombings. At one point, a former fighter demonstrates how a home-made bomb is constructed--the necessary elements bleeped out by the filmmakers so that those without access today to The Anarchist's Cookbook would not have a clue on how to construct such a device.
While the most dramatic part of the film is a restructuring of the assassinations, the most upsetting point is the alleged sell-out of the Jewish partisans by fellow communists in the Resistance. Several theories abound, each explored through interviews, allowing the audience to make up their own minds about the truth of the allegations.
No-one other than a neo-Nazi today would really call these fighters terrorists, and in fact at the itme of the filming none of the fighters were in retirement. Whether carving out leather jackets at just $15 a pop or cooking their humble chow over dingy and battered stoves, these heroes had their memories of actions performed during a more glorious and challenging time in their lives. Too bad the French, who had regularly censored the showing of the mvove in TV, have been less than magnificent.
Not Rated. Running time: 84 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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