France’s Lost Jewel
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document in english
film studies
summaries
date published 03/05/2007
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SummaryUnlike Great Britain, France’s colonial wars tended to involve a great deal of violence on the part of the colonizers. Britain generally extricated itself from its colonies with relatively little immediate violence involving British soldiers. The differing ways in which the two countries disentangled themselves from their colonial empires are based on the views France and Britain held toward their colonies. The English saw the colonial people as inferior, and the colonies as resources to exploit. France, on the other hand, had a very difficult time letting go because France viewed its colonies as an extension of itself; the French (at least in principle) taught that “the civic and cultural attributes of Frenchness were open to all” (Postwar, p. 282). Thus, when the Algerian people began to resist French authority, the French wanted to avoid another defeat, like the one they faced at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. While the film The Battle of Algiers does not depict the entire eight-year colonial war that France fought against its “imperial crown jewel”, it illustrates the lengths the French were willing to go to retain Algeria, while also portraying the force of Algeria’s desire for self-determination.
Table of Contents
- During the war in Algeria, the international community and many people in France were appalled by the use of torture
- One very famous part of the film is Mathieu's 'tapeworm' speech
- The movie (and historical evidence) does not support Mathieu's hypothesis
- The Battle of Algiers, while very sympathetic to the Algerian cause, does not portray the French as evil
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