Captain Conan

This is a film which is worth viewing several times, for - like in a good novel - interesting details appear at each new viewing. By the way, the eponymous novel by Roger Vercel is excellent! This is my fourth viewing and this time I have been fascinated by the story of Jean Erlane (played by Pierre Val), the son of a good family with a Naval officer father and an Aviation pilot brother who both died fighting for France. Jean, who himself volunteered to join the Army, proved in action to be an irrepressible coward - to the point of being condemned to death by a Court Martial for desertion and transmittal of secrets to the enemy. The delicate matter of cowardice as a medical condition is approached, but obliquely. The reconstitution of the fateful night when Jean Erlane went to the Bulgarian lines, made on-site by the three men implicated in his trial - Samuel Le Bihan (as Lt Norbert, his prosecutor), Claude Brosset (as Father Dubreuil, his defensor), and Philippe Torreton (as Capt. Conan, the combat expert and witness of the night's events) -, is a magnificent moment of cinema. The whole movie is an excellent depiction of Army life during a war, with its glorious moments, its awful massacres, its long periods of tedium in far away places, its comical episodes and its instances where troops become unruly, at times up to the point of utter banditry. The main actors are all very good in their roles as officers, belonging to a generation where all male Frenchmen were familiar with things military, having undergone compulsory service (and for some of them the war in Algeria); but maybe Claude Rich (as Gen. Pitard de Lauzier), somewhat overplays his part of an inept and exasperating General! The filming of Bertrand Tavernier is very realistic and one gets gripped by the story, so that the two hours pass like a breeze. ___ .

Capitaine Conan by B.Tavernier:

Captaine Conan by B.Tavernier is certainly a great moie. The story takes place during the WW1 in the French's army. French's army go into European West and notably Romania, the Balkans, up to Russia. One of the officer , Captan Conan led a special force composed of murderes,criminals. This special force group commites sneak attacks and kills the foes by hand. In Budapest they are bored and commite criminal action.. When I saw this movie, I was fascineted by the way war scenes are filmed. Tavernier films "craggy" landscape in the Balkans to give the impression of a busy war. The special's effect as canon shoot, bombs add to this fabulous spectacle. On top of that, the director dwells on this dark period with dim scene. It participates in the tragic atmosphere and certainly in the total realism of this movie. It obviously an emergency in the French army and its hypocrisies. Its silly organisation critisized throught commandant Bouvier, a stupid man. Actors are exellent for instance P.Torreton as Captain Conan with his witty eloquence. This is a magnificient movie in spite of the lack of communication about the context which losts spectactors.

Briefly by this movie Tavernier fullfills a successful career. This movie as La princesse de Montpensier occurs in the margins of history. It is why he declared " I want to film histor at man size"

A great World War I film, arguably better than Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" and far superior to Mendes's "1917." More significantly, it is one of the best anti-war films as well for viewers who can dispassionately perceive it as such in the league of Malick's "The Thin Red Line." What surprises me no end is why critics rarely discuss this work with fine direction, scriptwriting and performances. To get a heroic soldier to aid a comrade who is a pacifist and not inclined to kill the enemy is described by this line in the script "Ask a dog to adapt to salad." The film applauds the heroics of the soldiers who win a war and at the same time chastises the bad deeds of the heroes. It also discusses the plight of soldiers who do not like to actively participate in the war and the decisions of top generals who are out of touch with ground reality. The following actors were a treat to watch: Samuel Le Bihan as Lt Norbet, Philippe Torreton as Captain Conan, and Catherine Rich as a well-bred lady with social connections, whose son is a soldier awarded capital punishment for being scared and for running away from battle lines. The fascinating tale is based on a novel by Roger Vercel. Tavernier was a director who could direct varied types of tales and make them well. What a talent!

One of the assistant directors to Tavernier was the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu who later won major awards at Cannes for his films: "4 Months, 3 weeks and 2 days," "Beyond the Hills" and "Graduation."

This movie left me severely impressed. Most war films, particularly those intended to be viewed as a deep form of art tend to be much more shallow (Perhaps it has something to do with a lack of first hand military experience among film makers in the US.) Often the writers and directors are simply trying to support an anti war thesis by illustrating suffering, injustice and cruelty. But anyone can illustrate suffering, injustice and cruelty in a generic way and then squeeze it into an ill fitting war context. What impressed me about Bertrand's work is that he didn't do this. There were no shallow caricatures and he did not spoon feed the audience with anti war propaganda. Bertrand instead, tried to paint an accurate picture of some very complicated events and circumstances, and the equally complicated people who are trying to deal with them. The suffering, injustice and cruelty are there, but the audience must find these elements for themselves.

This is in many ways a very good war film but not in the typical way. The film opens in the closing days of WW1 on the Eastern Front where Capitaine Conan (Philippe Torreton in a Cesar winning performance) leads a band of ruthless hand to hand fighters, equivalent to a modern special forces unit. They prove themselves far more effective than the regular army in the final defeat and are envied by many including a friend of Conan, Lt Norbet (Samuel Le Bihan, IIRC was nominated for a Cesar in this). But when the armistice is signed Conan and his men find themselves in limbo while Norbert, working for the Court Martials finds himself accusing the very men he admired for robbery and murder. This film does take a while to get going but it is worth it, giving time for the characters to develop and also establishing the monotony the soldiers find, going from combat to walking the streets of Bucharest. The film also deals with the beginnings of the Russian Civil War and the problem of soldiers fighting with no motivation. Tavernier's direction is superb and visually the film equals a number of classic war films while the performances help to give it an edge as it goes into territory that Hollywood war film's in particular have tended not to go into.