L’Insoumis (1964) - film review

When his wife leaves him, Thomas enlists in the French foreign legion and is posted to Algeria.  During the 1961 uprising, Thomas deserts and goes into hiding.  One day he receives an unexpected visit from his former lieutenant, who has also defected and now works for the OAS, the group that opposes Algerian independence.  Thomas agrees to take part in a scheme to kidnap a lawyer, Dominique Servet, who is in Algiers to defend some Algerian nationalists.   Thomas finds himself attracted towards his woman prisoner and, at the risk of his own life, helps her to escape back to France.  Wounded in a fight with a fellow conspirator, Thomas struggles to make his way back home. At first, he intends returning to his ex-wife and his infant child, but then he changes his mind.  He must see Dominique again.  Little does he know that his enemies are not far behind…

Alain Delon’s acting career was very much in the ascendant when he agreed to co-produce and star in this controversial film noir thriller, one of his earliest outings in the genre with which he is particularly associated, the classic French polar.  Delon had already secured international renown for himself through his successful collaborations with Michelangelo Antonioni (L’Eclisse) and Luchino Visconti (Rocco and His Brothers) and was fast becoming the most popular, most highly paid actor in France.  L’Insoumis, however, did little for his career and was to be the actor’s first commercial failure - and it is not too difficult to see why the film was so ill-received at the time, even though today it stands up pretty well and is one Delon’s most compelling early films.

The film was partly intended as a commentary on France’s failed war in Algeria, and therein was the cause of its popularity.  When the film came out, memories of the war, which had ended with Algeria gaining independence in June 1962, still rankled and the French cinema-going public were disinclined to be reminded of the losses and humiliation that had been incurred through De Gaulle’s mishandling of the Algerian crisis.  The film also suffered at the hands of the government censor, who insisted on a number of cuts which pretty well destroyed the film’s integrity and undermined its central messages.  Even with the cuts, L’Insoumis was an extremely daring film for its time, although it fails to be quite as shocking as that other notable Nouvelle Vague comment on the Algerian War, Jean-Luc Godard’s uncompromising Le Petit soldat (1963).

L’Insoumis was directed by Alain Cavalier, one of the lesser directors of the French New Wave, who had previously directed Delon’s then real-life fiancée Romy Schneider in another, equally realistic noir thriller, Le Combat dans l’île (1962).  Although far less prolific than his better known contemporaries, Cavalier is generally well-regarded as a film auteur and would win the top two Césars (for Best Film and Best Director) for his 1987 film Thérèse.  Cavalier’s flair for dogged realism is noticeable in all of his films, but is particularly apparent in L’Insoumis, which combines something of the classic film noir aesthetic (notably its oppressive high contrast black and white photography) with a typically Gallic sense of bleak introspection.  Aided by a memorably tortured and humane performance by Delon, Cavalier delivers a portrait of existential abandonment that is both poignant and unsettling, arguably his darkest and most inspired film.

© James Travers 2005-2011

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