Monthly Archives: November 2010

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The Army of Crime aka L’Armée du Crime (2009) The Latest Addition to my Top 10 War Movies or A Gut-wrenching Movie on the French Resistance

Robert Guédiguian‘s movie L’armée du Crime or The Army of Crime is one of the best war movies I have ever seen. I already said that it entered my Top 10 immediately. The question that remains: which one I am going to kick out? I’ll have to think about this later. For now let me tell you why I think The Army of Crime is such a brilliant piece of filmmaking. Apart from being based on actual events and being historically very accurate it is beautifully filmed. The actors are outstanding. The protagonists are heroical like not many but at the same time the movie doesn’t shy away to point its fingers not only at the Germans but also at the extremely shameful role the French government played during WWII. We had the heroism of the Resistance and Partisan groups on one side and the cowardly collaborators in the government, the police and among normal people on the other side. Shame on all of them. The movie shows all these aspects, nothing is hidden.  This is the third French movie I have seen in a short period, L’armée des ombres aka The Army of Shadows being the first, The Officers’ Ward aka La chambre des officiers the second.  I must say these movies manage something that not many others achieve. They get under your skin. You don’t only watch these movies, you live them. They don’t let you indifferent. Especially not this one.

1943, Paris, the Armenian poet Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian) becomes the leader of a special unit of the French Resistance. His people, men and women, are all very young immigrants. They are Hungarian, Polish and Romanian Jews and Spanish, Italian and Armenian Communists. They decide to form a group and fight for France, the country of the Human Rights, to free and to defend her. They are determined and well-organized and soon will be declared enemies number one. The German occupiers and the French police strike back savagely. They hunt them and use every possible way to capture and destroy them, be it bribery, torture or coercion. In the end they are betrayed and all of them are shot.

The movie tells not only the story of the group and their actions as a whole but shows many intimate portraits of all the individual members. I have hardly ever seen a movie displaying so much diversity. This is underlined by a brilliant score with influences of the music of all the different countries that came together in this fight.

The torture scenes are very graphic. We are not spared anything. The most incredible is that with the exception of one person none betrayed the others. Not even under the worst of torture I have ever herad of. While they were operating in the underground most of their families were being deported to camps. Manouchian is an exemplary man. A larger than life character. He does not use arms lightly unlike some of the other reckless young people. He is a poet, an orphan, a gentle man, married to a beautiful French wife, Melinée (Virginie Ledoyen), whom he loves dearly.

I would like to urge each and every reader to watch this movie as my words will never really manage to convey its utter beauty. It is also worth mentioning that we see a lot of Paris.  The Army of Crime is one of those very rare movies that are, simply put, masterpieces in which every element is perfect.

The following people died for France: (AR = found on the Red Poster or Affiche Rouge):
Celestino Alfonso (AR), Spanish, 27
Olga Bancic, Romanian, 31
Joseph Boczov [József Boczor; Wolff Ferenc] (AR), Hungarian, 38
Georges Cloarec, French, 20
Rino Della Negra, Italian, 19
Thomas Elek [Elek Tamás] (AR), Hungarian, 18
Maurice Fingercwajg (AR), Polish, 19
Spartaco Fontano (AR), Italian, 22
Jonas Geduldig, Polish, 26
Emeric Glasz [Békés (Glass) Imre], Hungarian, 42
Léon Goldberg, Polish, 19
Szlama Grzywacz (AR), Polish, 34
Stanislas Kubacki, Polish, 36
Césare Luccarini, Italian, 22
Missak Manouchian (AR), Armenian, 37
Armenak Arpen Manoukian, Armenian, 44
Marcel Rayman (AR), Polish, 21
Roger Rouxel, French, 18
Antoine Salvadori, Italian, 43
Willy Szapiro, Polish, 29
Amédéo Usséglio, Italian, 32
Wolf Wajsbrot (AR), Polish, 18
Robert Witchitz (AR), French, 19

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It Happened: My Top 10 Favourite War Movie List Needs Changing

I watched a movie last night that astonished me quite a bit. It was gut-wrenching and fabulously good and has managed what none before did manage, it has entered my Top 10. The question is now, which one of the 10 will I kick out? Of course you are wondering which one managed to enter my Top 10. Maybe the film stills will give you the answer. If not, you have to wait until my review is ready. Hopefully that will be tomorrow.

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The 19 War Movies, War Adventures and War Romances that Won the Academy Award for Best Film

A while back one of my readers, Cliff, suggested to do a post on war movies that won the Academy Award for Best Film. I finally collected them and am going to share the list with you. I must say I was amazed to see how many there are. There are of course a few I have never seen, but many are very familiar. Out of my Top 10 there is only one, Platoon. The posters I added for you are from the first and the last so far to win the award, Wings and The Hurt Locker. The list shows the year when the movie won which is not always identical with the year it was produced. You will see easily that there are not many infantry combat movies on that list, that’s probably why there is only one of my Top 10 List (that you can see here) as I chose mainly combat movies. Still it is an interesting list and it puts me in the mood to re-watch some of them. It seems to be as if the 90ies were THE war movie decade. I wonder why. Any ideas?

Wings (1928)

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Cavalcade (1933)

Casablanca (1943)

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

From Here to Eternity (1953)

Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

Ben Hur (1959)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Patton (1970)

The Deer Hunter (1978)

Platoon (1986)

Dances with Wolves (1990)

Schindler’s List (1993)

Forrest Gump (1994)

Braveheart (1995)

The English Patient (1996)

Gladiator (2000)

The Hurt Locker (2009)

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The Great Escape (1963) Tells Actually the Story of a War Crime

Maybe 90% of my readers are yawning now. I am very sorry but since I have seen The Great Escape for the first time only recently I had no clue. I thought it was basically the story of an escape, which it is, of course. The scene of Steve McQueen on a bike was very familiar as well (one of those memorable movie scenes), but apart from that: zero. I never heard it mentioned anywhere that it is based on the true story of a war crime. Are there any others out there like me who haven’t seen it yet? Maybe. For their sake I am not going to reveal why it is the story of a war crime. Just telling you, that it is.

Apart from that? Did I like it? Obviously when everybody tells you how great a movie is you start to expect something and if that is not what you get then you are slightly disappointed. So I was slightly disappointed. I didn’t expect such a summer camp like joyousness in the beginning. I rather expected something in the vein of The Colditz Story. Something a tad bleaker and grimmer. The feel of The Great Escape is much more adventure story than war movie. Plus English actors who play Englishmen  who pretend to be Germans and get away with it despite their heavy accents are not the height of realism.

What is my final conclusion? No, you are wrong, I don’t write it off but I will have to watch it again without the weird expectations that are never going to be fulfilled. A proper review will be due by the time I have watched it for the second time. After all its a classic, with a fabulous all-star cast and it’s just bad luck  I never watched it as a kid when it was on TV cause everyone who watched it then has the fondest memories. It’s definitely nice to have fond childhood movie memories. My only childhood war movie memory is A Bridge Too Far. Yeah well, not a bad one either, right?

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IMDb War Movie Parents Guide Film Quiz 9

I only recently saw that there was a parents guide to almost every movie describing in different paragraphs how explicit/graphic etc. a movie is and if or if not it can be watched with children. I read some of them and found many quite hilarious. Some movies come across in such an odd way seen like this…

I didn’t want to simply give you an example. Instead, let’s test your knowledge. Below you see the parents guide of a famous war movie. Guess which one it is.

There is reference to soldiers raping/attempting to rape some villagers

A man talks about how he loves pussy

In one scene, in the background, you can see a poster of a fully nude woman.

A man reads Playboy.

A man holds a small statue of a nude woman.

As this is a war film, there is graphic war violence throughout the picture.

Examples are a man is shot in the lungs and has trouble breathing while oozing blood. A man is piecing his internals back in. Many men are shot and killed, wounded, and screaming. A brief scene of taking wounded men back to an Aid zone, though it is a short scene there are many sitings of wounded men, dead mutilated bodies, and medics covered in blood. A scene of torturing a Vietnamese soldier ends in much blood shed (brains are implied but not seen).

A rape scene which is quickly ended by interruption.

The most disturbing scene is where the troops raid a village: a man with a mental illness gets beaten to death with the back of a gun and then they continue to shoot his distraught mother. Several adults and children get blown up with grenades (very graphic). A man shoots a woman in front of her son and grandaughter. He then put a gun to the head of the grandaughter, to torture the woman’s son. He nearly shoots the girl before his is interrupted.

Contains frequent strong language, including blasphemy, the ‘f’ word, and many uses of sh*t, a**, b*tch, and 1 use of the ‘n’ slur.

Alcohol, cigarette smoking and marijuana smoking are all depicted. It is implied that doing “shit” will wear you away from your worries.

a scene in which a Vietnamese villager is being tortured by soldiers, especially the conclusion, may be very disturbing to many viewers

one theme of the film is that of some of the soldiers who have been there for as short as two weeks going insane with bloodlust and mental visions. this may be disturbing to many viewers

Now, any ideas?

Here is your solution