Communists come in all types, from harmless to ruthless: armchair theorist, industrial and peasant organiser, fighter against the class enemy, assassin. This film deals with the last two varieties and accords them some moral scruples. The Manouchian Group decline to blow up a brothel containing German soldiers and French girls; their poet-leader Missak Manouchian initially refuses the path of violence because his 'ethics' forbid him. Nazi-Vichy propaganda famously denied them any scruples by calling them an 'Army of Crime'.
It may be that the film sanitises and romanticises both their violence and their contribution: using the attractive Virginie Ledoyen to play the role of Manouchian's wife certainly increases one's sympathy for the main protagonist. 'Flame and Citron' (2008) and 'Max Manus' (2008) deal with similar material and clearly do not romanticise violent resistance to the Nazis. Both these films leave one wondering if the anti-German actions depicted were truly worthwhile or simply futile and counterproductive.
Army of Crime's aim is to rehabilitate these foreign Jews and Communists so they may join home-grown heroes in the Pantheon of The French Resistance. In that respect it hopes to accomplish what 'Paths of Glory' (2006) and 'A Love To Hide' (2005) successfully achieve for French Muslims and homosexuals. It is no wonder that it bombed at the box office, not that it is a bad film, but because its subject matter is so difficult and obscure and morally ambiguous for modern audiences facing 'terrorism' in a new guise.
The film is good at explaining the motives of the (mainly) young men who decide to shoot and bomb occupying Germans. Jewish families rounded up by Vichy police for the Germans, Republican fighters from the Spanish Civil War, anti-fascist refugees from Hungary and Romania combine to produce individuals with an axe to grind. They have seen Fascism up close and find it brutal and nasty. Their vendetta is personal. The assassinations and bombings are depicted well, in particular the shortage of weapons and lack of expertise in their use.
Less well depicted is the issue of German reprisals for such 'terrorism'. The film refers to imprisoned Communists being shot in retaliation but no mention is made of the many non-Communists – 'innocent civilians' - who paid the ultimate price for 'Communist terrorism'. Most early resistance groups disapproved of terrorism, seeing it as futile, dangerous and leading nowhere. Hitler's attack on Russia in June 1941 saw Stalin ordering the French Communist Party to organise an immediate 'Second Front' in order to take the pressure off the Russians.
On 21st August 1941 the Communist Pierre Georges assassinated a German soldier at a Paris Metro station. Other killings soon followed. The Germans shot 50 randomly selected hostages in October. A vicious cycle of attack and reprisal had begun. The Vichy police had largely wiped out the Communist underground by the summer of 1942 and the film shows them dealing efficiently with Manouchian a year later. Active resistance was always a minority affair and informing was widespread.
By 1943-4 Germany was losing the war and opinion was turning against Petain and in favour of more violent resistance. The Jewish deportations had begun and the film shows this as a prime motive in the Manouchian Affair. Manouchian refers to the Armenian genocide which killed his parents to explain his own empathy for his Jewish Communist comrades.
Asking an off-duty German soldier for a light and then shooting him at point blank range may seem rather brutal. So was Vichy torture. So was the Allied bombing of women and children. So were the Nazi deportations to the death camps. The only important question is, 'Did these attacks on Germans do any good?' When asked about the impact of the French Resistance on German war production, Albert Speer famously replied, 'What French Resistance?' Vichy continued to send labourers, food and materials to Germany and to pay for the occupation. Quantifying the contribution of the French Resistance to Allied victory remains problematic and this film provides no answer.
What the film does do is remind us how important the idea of Resistance was in forging post-war French identity. French Communists and their contribution were frozen out of the story as Gaullists and ex-Vichyists joined to create the Fourth French Republic which soon joined the anti-Communist NATO alliance. Anti-Nazi Germans, Spaniards, foreign Jews and Communists who fought alongside 'indigenous' Frenchmen in the 'Resistance' were largely excluded from this new national myth –making. This is what the film aims to redress.
As well as settling personal scores with the Nazis, the Manouchian Group were fighting for a Communist future. Throughout the Cold War period the Communist Red Orchestra in Germany (the subject of 2 little-known films) and the Manouchian Group in France were seen as Stalin's agents. Little sympathy in the West.
History was also being manipulated on the other side of Europe. How appropriate that the Polish film 'Katyn' should be released at the same time as 'Army of Crime.'! 15 months before ordering French Communists to wage war on occupying Germans, Stalin had decided to wipe out the Polish upper-class intelligentsia who did not fit in with his idea of a Communist future. Until 1989 Communist orthodoxy demanded that the 20,000 murdered Polish officers were victims of the Germans, not the Soviets.
I wonder if Karl Marx ever envisaged that 'Das Kapital' might be used to deliver a bomb to a bookshop ? Communism is a great idea. Like all great ideas it can bring out the best and worst in people. However, viewed from my own comfortable life lived through the best half of the 20th Century, I find it difficult to judge these young men who fought a ruthless foe. Within the first 6 months of the occupation, the Germans had beaten up the prefect Jean Moulin and shot Jacques Bonsergent for simply raising his fist against them. Moral ambiguities make this a difficult, murky, subject for a film.
It may be that the film sanitises and romanticises both their violence and their contribution: using the attractive Virginie Ledoyen to play the role of Manouchian's wife certainly increases one's sympathy for the main protagonist. 'Flame and Citron' (2008) and 'Max Manus' (2008) deal with similar material and clearly do not romanticise violent resistance to the Nazis. Both these films leave one wondering if the anti-German actions depicted were truly worthwhile or simply futile and counterproductive.
Army of Crime's aim is to rehabilitate these foreign Jews and Communists so they may join home-grown heroes in the Pantheon of The French Resistance. In that respect it hopes to accomplish what 'Paths of Glory' (2006) and 'A Love To Hide' (2005) successfully achieve for French Muslims and homosexuals. It is no wonder that it bombed at the box office, not that it is a bad film, but because its subject matter is so difficult and obscure and morally ambiguous for modern audiences facing 'terrorism' in a new guise.
The film is good at explaining the motives of the (mainly) young men who decide to shoot and bomb occupying Germans. Jewish families rounded up by Vichy police for the Germans, Republican fighters from the Spanish Civil War, anti-fascist refugees from Hungary and Romania combine to produce individuals with an axe to grind. They have seen Fascism up close and find it brutal and nasty. Their vendetta is personal. The assassinations and bombings are depicted well, in particular the shortage of weapons and lack of expertise in their use.
Less well depicted is the issue of German reprisals for such 'terrorism'. The film refers to imprisoned Communists being shot in retaliation but no mention is made of the many non-Communists – 'innocent civilians' - who paid the ultimate price for 'Communist terrorism'. Most early resistance groups disapproved of terrorism, seeing it as futile, dangerous and leading nowhere. Hitler's attack on Russia in June 1941 saw Stalin ordering the French Communist Party to organise an immediate 'Second Front' in order to take the pressure off the Russians.
On 21st August 1941 the Communist Pierre Georges assassinated a German soldier at a Paris Metro station. Other killings soon followed. The Germans shot 50 randomly selected hostages in October. A vicious cycle of attack and reprisal had begun. The Vichy police had largely wiped out the Communist underground by the summer of 1942 and the film shows them dealing efficiently with Manouchian a year later. Active resistance was always a minority affair and informing was widespread.
By 1943-4 Germany was losing the war and opinion was turning against Petain and in favour of more violent resistance. The Jewish deportations had begun and the film shows this as a prime motive in the Manouchian Affair. Manouchian refers to the Armenian genocide which killed his parents to explain his own empathy for his Jewish Communist comrades.
Asking an off-duty German soldier for a light and then shooting him at point blank range may seem rather brutal. So was Vichy torture. So was the Allied bombing of women and children. So were the Nazi deportations to the death camps. The only important question is, 'Did these attacks on Germans do any good?' When asked about the impact of the French Resistance on German war production, Albert Speer famously replied, 'What French Resistance?' Vichy continued to send labourers, food and materials to Germany and to pay for the occupation. Quantifying the contribution of the French Resistance to Allied victory remains problematic and this film provides no answer.
What the film does do is remind us how important the idea of Resistance was in forging post-war French identity. French Communists and their contribution were frozen out of the story as Gaullists and ex-Vichyists joined to create the Fourth French Republic which soon joined the anti-Communist NATO alliance. Anti-Nazi Germans, Spaniards, foreign Jews and Communists who fought alongside 'indigenous' Frenchmen in the 'Resistance' were largely excluded from this new national myth –making. This is what the film aims to redress.
As well as settling personal scores with the Nazis, the Manouchian Group were fighting for a Communist future. Throughout the Cold War period the Communist Red Orchestra in Germany (the subject of 2 little-known films) and the Manouchian Group in France were seen as Stalin's agents. Little sympathy in the West.
History was also being manipulated on the other side of Europe. How appropriate that the Polish film 'Katyn' should be released at the same time as 'Army of Crime.'! 15 months before ordering French Communists to wage war on occupying Germans, Stalin had decided to wipe out the Polish upper-class intelligentsia who did not fit in with his idea of a Communist future. Until 1989 Communist orthodoxy demanded that the 20,000 murdered Polish officers were victims of the Germans, not the Soviets.
I wonder if Karl Marx ever envisaged that 'Das Kapital' might be used to deliver a bomb to a bookshop ? Communism is a great idea. Like all great ideas it can bring out the best and worst in people. However, viewed from my own comfortable life lived through the best half of the 20th Century, I find it difficult to judge these young men who fought a ruthless foe. Within the first 6 months of the occupation, the Germans had beaten up the prefect Jean Moulin and shot Jacques Bonsergent for simply raising his fist against them. Moral ambiguities make this a difficult, murky, subject for a film.