| Summary: | Pierre Schoendoerffer burst into the media landscape in 1965 with La 317ème section (The 317th platoon), a film about a local auxiliary platoon at the end of the First Indochina War. In his next works, till the last one Là-haut – a movie released in 2004 –, the movie maker carried on a tale from Indochina to Algerian, from Vietnam at war to the Arctic Seas. Thus, the destiny of a whole generation has been screened by Pierre Schoendoerffer: officers who were in their teens during the Occupation have become men in Indochina War and, as such, faced decisive choices in Algerian. While no national mythe really emerged during this period, his work takes a special meaning. The very development of the director’s art fascinates critics as well as the audience: war led Pierre Schoendoerffer (he was born in 1928) to cinema as he was a cameraman for the Service Presse-Information des Armées en Indochine, i.e. the Military Information Department in Indochina, in 1952. Captured in Dien Bien Phu, he pledged above all those who were killed around him to testimony. The way his work was welcome and understood is a good illustration of how memory on decolonization evolved. Pierre Schoendoerffer’s cinema undoubtedly reached its audience, even though some movies happened to meet a lesser/minor success. In the context of lack of representations of Indochina War, and while Algerian War remained an open wound in the imagined community, his fresque contributed to build a mythology. Pierre Schoendoerffer fait irruption dans le paysage médiatique en 1965 avec La 317ème section ce film met en scène une section locale supplétive à la fin de la guerre d’Indochine. Avec ses œuvres suivantes, jusqu’à Là-haut, sorti en 2004, le cinéaste poursuit un récit qui va de l’Indochine à l’Algérie, du Vietnam en guerre aux mers du grand Nord. C’est le destin d’une génération que Pierre Schoendoerffer porte à l’écran, de ces officiers qui, adolescents sous l’Occupation, sont devenus des hommes dans la guerre d’Indochine et ont dû faire des choix ...
|
|---|