0116: Adieu Philippine, Bonjour Algiers

So I watched a couple of amazing movies this week that were extremely different in tone, but dovetailed perfectly in content.

The first, Adieu Phillippine, is an underappreciated French New Wave love-triangle romance, directed by Jacques Rozier (I'd never heard of him either) and starring three first-time actors, all of whom are just so innocent and charming. I loved it.

Review of ‘Adieu Philippine’ (1962) ★★★★½

Michel is a young TV tech/cameraman at a small station with a pompadour and a pencil moustache, and he befriends a couple of young women, Juliette and Liliane, who happen to be waiting outside the…

That story ends (it's not much of a spoiler; he talks about it at the very beginning) with the guy, Michel, being drafted to go fight in the Algerian War, which would have possibly placed him somewhere, as a bad guy, in the second film I watched this week:

Review of ‘The Battle of Algiers’ (1966) ★★★★★

We have the benefit of knowing that this war was ultimately (eventually) a success for Algeria's independence, but there's little comfort in watching all the actions, all the street-corner combat,…

The Battle of Algiers is the greatest war movie I suspect I'll ever see. It's shot with a degree of tension and tightness that I've never seen before, and while, yes, the terrorism and street warfare scenes are jarringly violent, there's very little gore. It's all strategy and consequences, but so very depressingly, gloriously human.

Much as I sympathize with Michel from Adieu Philippine, he got drafted into the wrong side of this war. Fuck colonialism in all its forms, especially these days, period, full stop. Have a great Friday.