War’s hype and the legendary status that the state officially confers on warriors versus war’s killing and maiming reality: Georges Franju’s 23-minute Hôtel des Invalides assaults France’s military mystique.
It is a subversive documentary, commissioned by the French government as a national self-advertisement; but Franju’s cunning handling of the material created a powerful antiwar film, a model of how an insinuated level of meaning can undercut surface meaning.
The film begins as an innocuous tour of the French National Military Museum in Paris, which includes halls of military displays, a care facility for veterans, and a chapel. Holistically addressing the ideology that perpetuates war as a necessary, even noble endeavor, it takes institutional aim at both the military and the Church, and intellectual aim at such concepts as heroism and honor. We hear voiceover, sardonic for being disembodied, as well as trite guides, themselves disabled veterans, and we overhear the touring visitors on their tour, in particular, a deflatingly unimpressed young couple. Franju cuts between ghostly military exhibits, punctuating these with closeups of details (for instance, a medal for valor), and all-too-real mutilated men. A famous cut juxtaposes a statue of Napoleon with a veteran in a wheelchair. In effect, Franju is confronting the idea of war, so attractive to so many, with the horrific consequences of war for actual human beings. The guides are a reminder that war is in part perpetuated by stricken warriors who feel compelled to justify and validate their own sacrifices and the ultimate sacrifices of comrades-in-arms.
The film’s subtle indirection accumulates into a quiet voice of reason and conscience revealing what individuals perhaps subconsciously feel about war in the face of its direct and official sanction and approval. The tour of L’Hôtel des Invalides unwinds somewhere in the mind of humanity.
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HOTEL DES INVALIDES (Georges Franju, 1951)
By grunesWar’s hype and the legendary status that the state officially confers on warriors versus war’s killing and maiming reality: Georges Franju’s 23-minute Hôtel des Invalides assaults France’s military mystique.
It is a subversive documentary, commissioned by the French government as a national self-advertisement; but Franju’s cunning handling of the material created a powerful antiwar film, a model of how an insinuated level of meaning can undercut surface meaning.
The film begins as an innocuous tour of the French National Military Museum in Paris, which includes halls of military displays, a care facility for veterans, and a chapel. Holistically addressing the ideology that perpetuates war as a necessary, even noble endeavor, it takes institutional aim at both the military and the Church, and intellectual aim at such concepts as heroism and honor. We hear voiceover, sardonic for being disembodied, as well as trite guides, themselves disabled veterans, and we overhear the touring visitors on their tour, in particular, a deflatingly unimpressed young couple. Franju cuts between ghostly military exhibits, punctuating these with closeups of details (for instance, a medal for valor), and all-too-real mutilated men. A famous cut juxtaposes a statue of Napoleon with a veteran in a wheelchair. In effect, Franju is confronting the idea of war, so attractive to so many, with the horrific consequences of war for actual human beings. The guides are a reminder that war is in part perpetuated by stricken warriors who feel compelled to justify and validate their own sacrifices and the ultimate sacrifices of comrades-in-arms.
The film’s subtle indirection accumulates into a quiet voice of reason and conscience revealing what individuals perhaps subconsciously feel about war in the face of its direct and official sanction and approval. The tour of L’Hôtel des Invalides unwinds somewhere in the mind of humanity.
Tags: Franju
This entry was posted on December 16, 2007 at 6:36 am and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.