Section spéciale (1975) - film review

In 1941, a demonstration by French communists against the Vichy government is broken up by Nazi soldiers.   When a handful of the demonstrators are executed, their comrades take revenge by killing a German naval officer.  The Nazi authorities demand an immediate response from the French government – a hundred hostages will be taken and shot unless six communist terrorists are executed.   A new law is hastily introduced, allowing those previously convicted of terrorist offences to be tried again, with the prospect of a harsher sentence, and a special court is created to achieve the desired outcome: six convenient death sentences...

Section spéciale recounts the story of one of the many atrocities perpetrated by the Vichy government during World War II in an attempt to appease their Nazi bedfellows.  Admittedly, the arbitrary execution of three political prisoners isn’t in quite the same league as willing complicity in the deportation of tens of thousands of Jewish men, women and children to the death camps, but the incident clearly demonstrates the lack of moral fibre in the Vichy administration.  The film also works as a parable of how the power of the state can be misused by misguided legislators to achieve an outcome that has a spurious machine logic but which is morally indefensible by any decent human being.

This is the fourth in a series of acclaimed political thrillers made in France by the Greek director Costa-Gavras.  After the sombre realist tone of Costa-Gavras’s previous political thrillers L’Aveu (1970) and État de siège (1973), Section spéciale is a return to the lighter, more tongue-in-cheek tone of his earlier Oscar-winning thriller Z (1969).  The absurdity of the situation portrayed by the film lends itself more naturally to a blackly comedic rather than a realist approach, and whilst the film is at times quite funny, the abysmally tragic aspect of the story is always felt.  This stylish and compelling film earned Costa-Gavras the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1975.

© James Travers 2008

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