Word: algerianness
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...most traumatic event in recent French history was unquestionably, the Algerian war, which claimed the lives of 20,000 French soldiers and an estimated 1,000,000 Algerians between 1954 and 1962. French memories of the war are still bitter, but passions have recently cooled enough to permit a few uncensored examinations of a conflict that brought France perilously close to civil war. First to "bring the skeleton out of the closet," as one reviewer put it, was General Jacques Massu, whose book La Vraie Balaille d'Alger (The Real Battle of Algiers) describes in chilling detail the tortures...
...Sorrow and the Pity (TIME, March 27), an equally graphic chronicle of French life under Nazi occupation during World War II. La Guerre is the work of Yves Courrière, 36, a French journalist who quit his job with Radio Luxembourg to write a history of the Algerian war and later decided to make a film on the subject. "Very few people on either side really knew what was happening, even if they personally witnessed some of the events," says Courrière, who served with the French army in Algeria, and was expelled from the country...
...every change there is always a lingering, sometimes highly emotional resistance. The reforms of Vatican II angered and alienated many traditional Roman Catholics. The U.S. political right is up in arms over Nixon's journey to China. France verged on civil war over the Algerian settlement, and at least two assassinations of De Gaulle were attempted. The intensity of the cultural conflict between generations in the U.S. testifies to the agony of rapid change in living styles...
...then have granted amnesty to achieve reconciliation after a civil war or a period of internal strife. France, which has seen more such conflict than most countries, has made amnesty almost a habit; the latest example occurred in 1968 when right-wing opponents of Charles de Gaulle's Algerian policy were forgiven their earlier campaign of terror. Britain, with a more placid history, has had less reason to grant amnesty; it did so, however, after its civil war in the 17th century, after the Restoration of Charles II a few years later, and again in the 18th century...
Grandiose Pretensions. What is original in the play-its scrambled, meandering documentary account of the Algerian war-is almost worse than what is borrowed. Even when one sees the French Legionnaires and the Algerian revolutionaries, they seem like a confused army of extras recruited from Central Casting. This is not really the fault of Director Minos Volanakis or the Chelsea Theater Center, which has staged Volanakis' translation at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Rather the flaw is in the script's grandiose pretensions, which dwarf interest in any individual...