'Le Petit Soldat" is Jean-Luc Godard's second film after his exciting 'Breathless'. Banned by France, it came out a year after the end of the Algerian war and creation of Algeria in 1962. It has none of the power of Pontecorvo's 'Battle of Algiers', but it does deal with the secret war of intelligence agencies on both sides of the divide who don't refrain from torture and murder. Godard has found his muse in Anna Karina, who will appear in other films of his. And the dead pan Michel Subor as Bruno Forestier, a deserter in neutral Switzerland. Karina is a love interest but she is working for the FLN, the Algerians. The narrative is full of literary illusions, of quotes from say Cocteau 'Thomas the Impostor', and predictably the Algerians read Lenin and Mao. There is a didacticism that seeps into Godard's films, the summit being 'la Chinoise'. And the tendency to lecture can be disconcerting. Who in 2015 will recognize the significance of the way the right-wingers honked the horns of their automobiles? Al ger ie francaise. The battle cry to keep Algeria French no matter which wasn't so evident in 1958 when the story takes place. Godard's film has some resonance today when torture has come back with a vengeance.
Review of The Little Soldier
